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Harvard and COP26

In Focus

Harvard and COP26

This global climate crisis requires a network of citizens, scientists, politicians, and business leaders to come together and take action.
Now.

The UN Climate Change Conference (COP26)

This year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow brings together representatives from over 200 countries and NGOs to focus on four goals that address and reverse runaway climate change:
Mitigation | Adaption | Finance | Collaboration

Heat, urgency, and hope on the rise

Harvard environmental experts outline what to expect from this year’s global conference.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Emilly Fan

Reporting from Glasgow

Emilly Fan, who is concentrating in Environmental Science and Public Policy, says her trip to COP26 has included urgent warnings, good news for South Africa, and a Leonardo DiCaprio sighting.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

A crowd of people holding a sign that says "Net Zero"

Lessons from the conference

“COP26 was an eye-opening experience that demonstrated to me the importance of maintaining a balance between promoting ground-level environmental justice while advancing high-level institutional change across sectors,” says Emilly Fan.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Rob Stavins

Separating signal from noise at COP26

The Kennedy School’s Rob Stavins says that the United Nations Conference, while a mixed bag, maintained progress toward global climate goals.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Goals for a better future

Explore how Harvard is researching and implementing the four goals being discussed at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference: Mitigation, Adaptation, Finance, and Collaboration.

Mitigation

Reducing the severity of climate change with programs like:

Learn how we can mitigate
Click to Play Video

Solar geoengineering

Reflecting a small fraction of sunlight back into space or increasing the amount of solar radiation that escapes back into space to cool the planet.

Hear more on the Kennedy School podcast

Managed retreat

Social scientist and lawyer A.R. Siders argues that housing buyouts and managed retreat should be a part of the climate change playbook, alongside seawalls and elevated roads.
Read more on To Serve Better

Erosion barrier robots

Researchers have designed robots that drive interlocking sheet piles into granular soils like sand on a beach.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Fast-growing cyanobacteria

These bacteria pull carbon dioxide out of the air and use it to build their bodies, which we could take advantage of in different ways.
Read more from the Wyss Institute

Greener computers

“Over the next decade, the demand, number and types of devices is only going to grow,” said Udit Gupta, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at SEAS. “We want to know what impact that will have on the environment and how we, as a field, should be thinking about how we adopt more sustainable practices.”
Read more from the Center for the Environment

Bionic leaf fuel

Researchers created a system that uses sunlight to split water molecules and combine them with carbon dioxide from air to produce renewable fuel.
Read more from the Center for the Environment

Managing food waste

"About 8 to 10% of global anthropogenic emissions come from food waste," says Emily Broad Leib, director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Mitigating through building design, permafrost preservation, and more

Harvard’s Climate Change Solutions Fund awards research projects $1 million in grants every year.
See all the Climate Change Solutions Fund projects

Adaption

Green innovations for new and existing technologies from programs like:

Learn how we can adapt
Click to Play Video

Building green homes

Using existing technologies to transform houses into ultra-efficient buildings by designing and renovating for zero energy heating and cooling, zero electric lighting during the day, and operating with 100% natural ventilation.

Read more from The Harvard Gazette

Carbon capture

Harvard Professor David Keith has a plan to repurpose existing technology to slash the costs of carbon capture.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Air conditioning that cools people and the planet

A new spin on an old technology cools air without adding humidity at a fraction of the energy cost.
Learn more from the Wyss Institute

Zero-waste architecture

“I wouldn’t have discovered this composition if I hadn’t placed the constraint [of no waste] at the forefront of my design strategy. For me, constraint serves as a catalyst for innovation,” says Iman S. Fayyad, lecturer in architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Read more from the School of Design

Batteries on the grid

New types of batteries enable safer, more convenient energy storage from intermittent sources like wind and solar, and could push renewable energy forward.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Adapting through design

The Future of the American City initiative is looking to help urban areas find remedies for challenges such as adapting to climate change.
Read more from To Serve Better

Biomass production

A startup founded by Harvard postdoctoral fellow Javier Farago Escobar is making sustainable bioenergy from eucalyptus wood pellets.
Read more from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

A solar-powered China

Research shows that solar energy can be cheap and reliable across China by 2060.
Learn more from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Urban forest, volcanic vents, and ultra-low-energy information technologies

Harvard’s Climate Change Solutions Fund awards research projects $1 million in grants every year.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Finance

Investing in a sustainable future through programs like:

Learn how we can finance a green future
Click to Play Video

How environmental innovation happens

Increasing demand and decreasing the initial costs are just a few ways to get businesses to adopt green technologies.

Innovating at the intersections of business and environment

Innovation will reduce agriculture impacts and help farmers adapt.
Read more from the Business School

Making a marketplace for captured carbon

Taking on climate change by developing a technology that captures carbon already in the air. The potential benefits of this approach are huge, but the challenges are still significant.
Listen to the Business School podcast

Climate change and workers

Patrick Behrer, environmental and developmental economist, says a hotter world imposes large costs on those who work outdoors or in factories lacking air conditioning or ventilation.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Helping development and developing countries

“What the developed countries need to do is make it easy and cheap for the rest of the world to be green.”
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Nature might be our best ally

Kennedy School student Siddarth Shrikanth lays out the goals and hurdles ahead for onboarding business and government to climate change solutions.
Red more from the Kennedy School

Data science, removing atmospheric carbon dioxide, and more

Harvard’s Climate Change Solutions Fund awards research projects $1 million in grants every year.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Collaboration

A common goal in these uncommon times requires programs like:

Learn how we can collarborate
Click to Play Video

The ratchet mechanism

Energy and economic development Professor Robert Stavins explains how the United Nations is working globally to make every nation’s emission reductions continually more ambitious.

America in one room

In the lead-up to COP26, 962 Americans gathered to consider climate and energy policy proposals from across the political spectrum. Polling before and after the event found that the forum yielded strong, bipartisan alignment on policies to address climate change.
Watch the Harvard Chan School video

Paths to collaboration and solutions

The "Climate Conversations" series brings researchers, leaders, practitioners, and organizers together.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Michael Pollan’s climate forecast

The professor of the practice of nonfiction at Harvard and Lewis K. Chan Arts Lecturer said that, with the right global awareness, things can change, sometimes rapidly.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Schools' carbon footprint

A new climate plan reveals the surprising impact K–12 schools have on the environment and what they can do to be more green.
Read more from the School of Education

How do you get environmentalists to actually vote?

Nathaniel Stinnett of the Environmental Voter Project offered advice on how to get environmentalists to the polls.
Read more on The Harvard Gazette

The climate of compassion for all beings

Buddhist scholar Janet Gyatso explores how compassion for all living things can help us better understand Climate Change as part of the Weather Report series.
Watch the Divinity School video

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