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.


Scientists enhance recyclability of waste plastic

Cornell scientists working with the U.S. Department of Energy have developed a new method for recycling high-density polyethylene using a novel catalytic approach.

Around Cornell

Researchers pioneer ‘socioresilient materials’ field with NSF grant

Cornell Engineering faculty and alumni are reimagining design approaches to the materials that make up the world around us to mitigate unintended social and environmental consequences.

Around Cornell

Returning solar panel production to US eases climate change

Domestic production of photovoltaic solar panels – now made in Asia – can speed up decarbonization and reduce atmospheric climate change faster, according to new Cornell Engineering research.

Partnership seeks greener mining of critical minerals

Cornell’s Greeshma Gadikota will partner with Stillwater Critical Minerals to develop environmentally rigorous techniques to help the company extract a steady supply of elements.

Robot provides unprecedented views below Antarctic ice shelf

The Icefin team’s observations revealed more than a century of geological processes beneath the Ross Ice Shelf near where it meets Kamb Ice Stream, and will inform models of sea-level rise.

Made in the shade: Growing crops at solar farms yields efficiency

In the face of climate change, growing commercial crops under acres of solar panels is a potentially efficient use of agricultural land that can boost food production and improve panel longevity.

Innovation at the fringe: the transformative design and architecture of the rural-urban

The first of two Preston Thomas Memorial Symposia this spring brings leading architects, designers, urban theorists, and researchers together across continents to discuss innovations generated at the intersection of the urban and the rural.

Around Cornell

Cornell students help Tarrytown envision waterfront future

As sea levels rise over the next decades for low-lying Hudson River towns, Cornell landscape architecture students offered ideas for coping with climate change and embracing the water.

Cornell repatriates ancestral remains to Oneida Indian Nation

With apologies for causing harm and to right a wrong of history, Cornell returned ancestral remains that were kept on campus for six decades to the Oneida Indian Nation on Feb. 21.