Internal Funding

The Climate Research Clusters program supports ambitious endeavors that produce useful and practical solutions to climate problems. Research clusters represent interdisciplinary, cross-School efforts to take on climate problems that are narrow enough to ensure that concrete solutions emerge, but broad enough that the solutions represent significant progress in meeting the world’s climate challenge. The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability funded five projects in 2023. The next call for proposals will be announced in 2024.
Learn more from the updated FAQs

The OVCPS has created a consultative process to facilitate the development of strong proposals to the Climate Research Clusters Program. This process includes Q&A sessions, a networking reception, presentations of proposed projects, and consultations with prospective project teams. Please indicate whether you would like to participate in any of these events by using the respective RSVP links. While we encourage engagement in this process, participation in these events is optional.
Register for an event

The result of each research cluster will be a concrete proposal to address an aspect of the climate crisis based on the new knowledge produced. Research clusters will comprise Harvard University faculty, post-docs, and students, and they may include visiting scholars, practitioners, and other external collaborators.
Explore the updated RFP

The Office of the Vice Provost for Climate & Sustainability will award grants of up to $600,000 per research cluster, per year, for a period of up to three years. The application is now closed.

Promoting and advancing scholarship on carbon pricing policy that accounts for political and institutional incentives and constraints can inform future climate change policy. To encourage social science research on carbon pricing, the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, with the generous support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the HKS Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, and the Harvard University Center for the Environment, is sponsoring four pre-doctoral fellowships for Harvard doctoral students. The fellowship will cover a research period from October 1, 2022 through December 31, 2023. The fellowship will provide a stipend of $10,000. Proposals are due Tuesday, September 6 and the awards will be announced by September 15, 2022. To be eligible for the fellowship, an applicant must be enrolled as a full-time doctoral student in economics, public policy, political science, or other social sciences program at Harvard University. The Harvard Environmental Economics Program strongly encourages applications from women, minorities, individuals with disabilities, and veterans.

The Harvard Climate Internship Program (HCIP) is a university-wide program supporting graduate students who work in a climate policy-oriented summer internship. It aims to complement the classroom climate learning experience, build the climate community, showcase future climate leaders, and promote broad representation in the program. Recipients may receive up to $7,000, as well as mentoring and an opportunity to participate in Zoom-based programming with policy practitioners and Harvard faculty. The program is open to any Harvard graduate student who will return to campus for at least one semester after completion of the grant. Students are responsible for securing their own climate-related internships with a public, private, or non-profit organization.

This program is sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability and the Harvard Kennedy School. The 2022 application cycle is now closed.

The Harvard University Climate Change Solutions Fund, established by President Emerita Drew Gilpin Faust in 2014, supports research and policy initiatives intended to reduce the risks of climate change, hasten the transition from fossil fuel-based energy systems to those that rely on renewable energy sources, to develop methods for diminishing the impact of existing fossil fuel-based energy systems on the climate, to understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change, and to propel scientific, technological, legal, behavioral, policy and artistic innovations needed to accelerate progress toward cleaner energy, improved human health, and a greener world.