Energy, Environment & Sustainability

Cornell is a global leader in sustainability and climate change research, teaching and engagement. Our campuses are living laboratories for developing, testing and implementing solutions that address these most challenging issues.


Things to do: Apple Bake-Off, orchestra and wind, Mohawk River exhibit

Celebrate the season and give back with an apple bake-off this weekend, and enjoy symphony concerts and learn about New York’s Mohawk River through an exhibit at Mann Library.

Mini smart city drives design of safer automated transportation

The Information and Decision Science Laboratory is designing a better – and safer – future for transportation with the help of a 20-by-20-foot “smart” scaled city and a fleet of motorized cars, drones and virtual reality technology.

Making beneficiaries pay for new power lines is fair strategy

Using the “beneficiary pays” principle for new power infrastructure will encourage investment in the grid without causing disputes over cost-sharing, new research shows.

Town-Gown awardees foster business, community, sustainability

Partnerships aiming to minimize construction waste in Central New York, address isolation and cognitive loss through performance, and promote and nurture local startups received the annual Cornell Town-Gown Awards, announced Nov. 16 at Cinemapolis.

Global experts converge at Cornell to drive solutions in climate finance

Over 1,200 people from 49 countries convened at the inaugural “Global Climate Finance and Risks,” virtual conference co-hosted by Cornell Atkinson, the Cornell S.C. Johnson College of Business and the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Financial Research. This year’s U.N. COP29 in Baku will emphasize climate finance solutions. 

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Better, faster traffic analyses will speed new housing in NYC

The new “How NYC Moves” report, co-authored by a Cornell Tech expert and New York City’s Mayor’s Office, offers strategies to leverage technology to speed transportation analyses and unlock housing development.

Discarded silk yarn can clean up polluted waterways

A research team led by Larissa Shepherd, M.S. ’13, Ph.D. ’17, assistant professor in the College of Human Ecology, has developed an elegant and sustainable way to clean up waterways: reusing one waste product to remove another.

Colorado River basins could face tipping point, drought study warns

Water from Colorado’s West Slope basins plays a vital role in supporting the economy and natural environment across seven western U.S. states.

Students learn soil science in the field

Cornell AES manages nine research farms and 127,000 square feet of greenhouse space on Ithaca’s campus and across New York state. While these facilities are designed to support research, they are also used as unique teaching tools for two dozen courses covering topics in plant science, soil science, entomology, food systems, agricultural machinery, and more. This is the third story in a series about on-farm teaching.

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