The Earth Institute is pleased to welcome National Grid into the Corporate Circle, a collective partnership of leading corporations from across the globe committed to pursuing sustainable development objectives. Through a generous gift, National Grid will support sustainable energy research at the Earth Institute.
When the Environmental Defense Fund asked me to measure how biogas cook stoves were changing the lives of farmers in rural India, there wasn’t a word in that question with which I was comfortable. Having just graduated from the Undergraduate Program in Sustainable Development, I had never done fieldwork; and the concept of a biogas digester, which turns cow dung into natural gas through anaerobic digestion, was itself a mystery. I had no idea that this was the beginning of a steep learning curve into low-carbon development at a large scale. But even more, that it would provide a window into the lives of families whose existences have permanently improved thanks to the clean cooking stoves.
Interested in Human geography, undersea volcanoes, microgrids, climate change and melting ice sheets, technology and sustainability? The coming week’s lineup of Earth Institute events has you covered.
The Earth Institute Center for Environmental Sustainability (EICES) at Columbia University provides executive training in environmental sustainability through courses in science, economics and policy. We invite you to join our leading experts and practitioners, strengthen your understanding of human-ecosystem interactions, and become an effective environmental leader and decision-maker.
Watch a video about the Columbia Water Center’s project to address a looming water crisis in north Gujarat, India.
Actions by individuals and households to reduce carbon-based energy consumption have the potential to change the picture of U.S. energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in the near term by integrating insights from the behavioral and social sciences.
Researchers at the Earth Institute’s Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy working in collaboration with PepsiCo, Inc. have developed new software that rapidly calculates the carbon footprints of thousands of products simultaneously.
Taking a big step towards helping companies accurately label the carbon footprint of their products, researchers at the Earth Institute have developed new software that can calculate the carbon footprints of thousands of products simultaneously.
A year and a half after the Great East Japan Earthquake triggered one of the worst nuclear catastrophes in recorded history, the country is now in full energy conservation mode.
Although China dominates in the race to be the leading global manufacturer of clean renewable energy, they are not necessarily doing the most for the environment. China, consistently pushing the clean energy market towards an economic future, was expected to be a leading developing country in negotiations at Rio+20. Meanwhile, the United States, without a more forward-looking energy policy, simply cannot compete.
State of the Planet is a forum for discussion on varying viewpoints. The opinions expressed by the authors and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Earth Institute or Columbia University.
