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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Learn how we can mitigate

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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.

Erosion barrier robots

Researchers have designed robots that drive interlocking sheet piles into granular soils like sand on a beach.

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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.

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.”

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.

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.

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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

Learn how we can adapt

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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.

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.

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.

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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.

Biomass production

A startup founded by Harvard postdoctoral fellow Javier Farago Escobar is making sustainable bioenergy from eucalyptus wood pellets.

A solar-powered China

Research shows that solar energy can be cheap and reliable across China by 2060.

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

Learn how we can finance a green future

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How environmental innovation happens

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

Watch more videos from Harvard Speaks on Climate Change

Innovating at the intersections of business and environment

Innovation will reduce agriculture impacts and help farmers adapt.

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.

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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.”

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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

Learn how we can collarborate

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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.

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Is climate change the path to greater US-China cooperation?

Decarbonization can serve as an opportunity for both countries to set aside their political tensions and work towards a common policy objective.

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.

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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.

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

Art's role in climate change

Robin Kelsey, who specializes in the history of photography and American art, explains that seeing the beauty of nature is often the first step to wanting to protect it from climate devastation.