News

Humanity can farm more food from the seas to help feed the planet while shrinking mariculture’s negative impacts on biodiversity, according to new research led by the University of Michigan.

Research led by the University of Michigan arrived at a surprisingly unsurprising result while assessing the sustainability gap between public transit and services like Uber and Lyft.

To try to understand how harmful algal blooms might evolve in Lake Erie in a warming climate, University of Michigan scientists helped conduct a survey of cyanobacteria in a gulf of Kenya’s Lake Victoria.

Research led by the University of Michigan shows that communities of color in Texas face pronounced risks of E. coli exposure in nearby waters after intense rain.

To combat climate change, the world needs to pivot away from fossil fuels. But building battery electric vehicles and infrastructure for renewable energy will require enormous amounts of minerals and resources.

According to a new report from the Center for Sustainable Systems, the Big Ten’s 2024 expansion will more than double the average conference game emissions for the University of Michigan football team.

The Mellon Foundation has awarded nearly $4 million in a first-of-its kind grant to bolster the University of Michigan’s leading work in environmental justice.

Built on the expertise and experiences of urban agriculturalists, along with research from the University of Michigan, a new policy brief urges Congress to fully fund the Office of Urban Agriculture.

A new study authored by University of Michigan highlights the opportunity for animal tracking data to help usher in a new era of conservation.

Carbon-based products are central to our economy, yet urgent action is needed to combat climate change. As part of Climate Week NYC, the Global CO2 Initiative held a discussion how carbon capture and utilization can mitigate the negative impacts of fossil fuel use, addressing the technology’s economic and social impacts, as well as its challenges.

Not all of us can afford to wear the latest styles fresh from the world’s maisons, so we often turn to fast-fashion retailers in order to participate in aesthetic trends. But our planet cannot sustain these habits, which cause an enormous amount of textile waste that unfairly burdens communities in the global South and actively harms the environment.

U-M has published a guidebook to help communities navigate the arrival of new battery energy storage systems amid changing energy policies.

As Mcity begins welcoming researchers in autonomous and connected vehicle technologies from around the U.S. to be remote users of its physical and virtual testing environment, its leadership is calling for federal standards for safety testing, arguing that the lack of clear goalposts is hampering development.

"Any product that undergoes significant processing is going to have some carbon footprint, and maple syrup is no different. However, maple farmers get to tell a different story because they are the stewards of a resource that they tap into year after year."

At the core of Campus Plan 2050 is a commitment to sustainability. The initiative proposes innovative infrastructure solutions, including geo-exchange systems designed for efficient heating and cooling through ground-source heat pumps, as well as extensive building retrofits that enhance energy efficiency and sustainability, and efficiency upgrades to the transit system.

Along M-22 in northwestern Michigan, people with mobility challenges can access breathtaking views of Lake Michigan from a 300-foot-high platform, explore rare birds and plants in a restored marsh or lose themselves in coastal dunes and forests once off-limits.

Hundreds of terrestrial and aquatic animal species live in the Boca do Mamirauá Reserve, located in the upper reaches of the Amazon, at the confluence of the Solimões and Japurá rivers. It is the first destination of the U-M Pantanal Partnership students this year.

The United States’ struggle to build electricity transmission capacity connecting low-cost producers has environmental and economic consequences for energy companies.

The University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems (CSS) and U-M's Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering have been awarded a $199,993 grant from the State of Michigan to develop a Michigan maritime strategy focused on climate action.

U.S. auto plants producing battery electric vehicles have required a larger workforce than traditional internal combustion engine plants—a finding that runs counter to early predictions about how EVs would impact the industry.

"Energy justice is this concept that really looks at how do communities participate in both the health environment and social impacts of our energy system, recognizing that the energy system has had certain burdens on communities. And so environmental justice is really saying that all communities, regardless of race and income and geography, should be afforded a clean environment."

The pathway to improving the health of hundreds of thousands of residents in Michigan’s largest cities is laid out in a new information hub that provides a panoramic look at the major factors impacting the wellbeing of these individuals.

U-M has received a $25 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to support collaborative research initiatives addressing critical environmental challenges in U.S. coastal communities.

Massive 2014 flooding event in southeast Michigan showed why systems thinking beats local thinking in flood protection.

Maximizing the benefits of clean energy requires new ways to store it, and U-M engineers will partner in a new research hub created by the U.S Department of Energy (DOE), designed to develop and further battery innovations.

Artisanal and small-scale mining plays a critical role in supplying the world with minerals vital for decarbonization, but this kind of mining typically lacks regulation and can be socially and environmentally harmful.

Despite ongoing geopolitical tensions, the United States and China have the opportunity to collaborate on reducing methane emissions, a critical greenhouse gas significantly contributing to about 30 percent of global warming.

In collaboration with the Michigan Climate Action Network (MiCAN) and Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition (MEJC), a group of 20 selected U-M graduate students recently published a comprehensive report about Michigan’s public power options.

For carbon capture and utilization (CCU), public support depends on which aspect of the technology is being considered and which people are considering it, according to a new study conducted by researchers from University of Michigan and other institutions.

The Center for EmPowering Communities, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office and the Michigan Department for Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, has expanded its pioneering renewable energy zoning database to detail solar zoning regulations across the Great Lakes region.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of Michigan parents worry whether they can afford to feed their children. Increased food prices, the state’s housing crisis, and the end of COVID-era financial support have all led to more Michigan families experiencing food insecurity today than before the pandemic.

As climate-induced migration increases in the U.S. and elsewhere around the world, what are the potential policies to help communities adapt and support residents? In a new Core Conversations podcast, Kaitlin Raimi explores how Americans view climate migrants, how policies could become a crucial factor influencing climate migration, and what the broader impacts of migration may mean for American society and the economy.

Green hydrogen is emerging as an important potential solution for decarbonizing transportation, but new energy efficiency findings indicate that it should be used strategically in heavy-duty road, rail, aviation and marine transportation, a U-M study shows.

Urban agriculture can support cities’ wider goals and provide residents with self-grown, nutritious food if more governments start supporting – instead of criminalizing – the practice, Taubman College faculty member Lesli Hoey argues in a new book.

People find it hard to resist negative messages. A recent U-M study reveals that recipients are more likely to engage with emails containing negative sentiment sent by the Environmental Defense Fund, a U.S. based nonprofit organization. Specifically, emails with a negative tone were more frequently opened, and recipients were more likely to click on links within these emails, compared to those with a positive tone.

The percentage of Michigan local governments that say they have or are considering renewable energy goals has doubled since 2019. Local officials also report that a variety of energy issues, such as energy infrastructure zoning and planning for electric vehicles, are more relevant to their communities than they were four years ago, and the tone of local policy discussions regarding zoning for renewable energy infrastructure is generally seen as constructive.

Faced with an ecological crisis, public health emergencies and socioeconomic inequities, agroecology emerges as a transdisciplinary beacon of hope.

An assessment ranks the feasibility of converting 245 operational coal power plants in the U.S. into advanced nuclear reactors, providing valuable insights for policymakers and utilities to meet decarbonization goals, according to a new study by University of Michigan researchers.

Traffic pollution emerges as a lead exacerbator for ailments that come with aging.

A recent University of Michigan study exposes a gap in sociology: a lack of focus on climate change. Societies fuel and face the consequences of this crisis, but sociology as a discipline appears insufficiently engaged with the issue, says Sofia Hiltner, U-M doctoral candidate in sociology.

A grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Integrated Ocean Observing System will establish a Great Lakes Biodiversity Observation Network to coordinate with and learn from biodiversity observation networks along the U.S. coasts and ocean waters and other BONs in ocean and freshwater habitats worldwide.

“Clarity on vulnerable subgroups more susceptible to heat-related deaths will enable policymakers to design effective intervention strategies targeted to these subgroups. Downstream, this will ensure greater climate action equity.”

Nestled by the St. Clair River, a small rural neighborhood in St. Clair Township, Michigan, is surrounded by a high concentration of hazardous crude oil and natural gas facilities. For decades, Murphy Drive residents have been exposed to unreported chemical releases, oil spills, poor air quality and harmful odors.

Currently the director of the Office of Energy Justice and Equity and the secretarial adviser on equity at the U.S. Department of Energy, and formerly the department’s chief diversity officer, Baker will advance sustainability education and research across U-M schools and colleges.

A team of scientists, including a U-M aquatic ecologist, is forecasting an above-average summer “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico covering about 5,827 square miles—an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

Identifying public concerns and misconceptions about nuclear energy can target efforts to bridge these gaps as nuclear energy will play a large role in goals to decarbonize by 2050, replacing oil and gas as a stable baseload electricity source.

“As people are worried about climate, we shouldn’t forget that a big part of the climate story is the ocean, which stores and transports a lot of heat and carbon.”

Great Lakes researchers at U-M have been awarded a $6.5 million, five-year federal grant to host a center for the study of links between climate change, harmful algal blooms and human health. Increased precipitation, more powerful storms and warming Great Lakes waters all encourage the proliferation of harmful algal blooms composed of cyanobacteria.

Improving electric motor efficiency, reducing costs and ultimately making them without heavy rare-earth elements are the goals of a new $2.6 million project led by U-M.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded a three-year, $614,000 grant to U-M and its international partners to create a new research initiative that will address the socioeconomic vulnerabilities of climate migrants in the Lake Victoria Basin (LVB) and Great Lakes Region (GLR).

Converting home heating systems from natural gas furnaces to electric heat pumps is seen as a way to address climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But a new U-M study of 51 Southeast Michigan households shows that switching to efficient, cold-climate heat pumps would increase annual utility bills by an average of about $1,100.

Three new U-M sustainability catalyst grants will support novel research projects to address vexing environmental challenges. “Catching the Waves” focuses on deploying wave energy converters to power remote coastal communities, starting with Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. “Mussel Roads” uses biomimicry to enhance asphalt durability by developing materials inspired by mussel-binding proteins. “Plast-ick,” leverages artificial intelligence and satellite data to predict pollutants like PFAS in water bodies.

About a third of the food produced globally each year goes to waste, while approximately 800 million people suffer from hunger, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

According to a U-M survey, 86% of respondents either strongly or somewhat support adding rooftop solar panels. The survey found some regional variation: Rooftop solar drew support from 83% of leaders in the Upper Peninsula, while garnering 89% support from southeastern Michigan officials.

Nearly half of the young people surveyed on disaster preparedness indicated they felt unprepared for any type of disaster event during a period when catastrophic climate disasters are becoming increasingly frequent, says a U-M researcher.

“Given that we sit in the heart of the Great Lakes and 21% of the world’s fresh surface water, we wanted to explore the region’s plans to identify the highest-impact, most innovative and scalable multi-state opportunities. We looked for what was working, to inform ways to accelerate community-based climate action."

Copper cannot be mined quickly enough to keep up with current U.S. policy guidelines to transition the country’s electricity and vehicle infrastructure to renewable energy, according to a U-M study.

The new projects include “Plast-ick,” which leverages AI and satellite data to predict pollutants like PFAS in water bodies; “Catching the Waves,” which focuses on deploying wave energy converters to power remote coastal communities; and "Mussel Roads," which uses biomimicry to enhance asphalt durability by developing materials inspired by mussel-binding proteins.

In a new effort to support decarbonizing the maritime shipping industry, U-M has entered into a strategic partnership with the Copenhagen-based Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller Center for Zero Carbon Shipping.

The U-M Biological Station, a more than 10,000-acre research and teaching campus along Douglas Lake just south of the Mackinac Bridge, will host distinguished scientists, artists and authors from across the United States as part of its 2024 Summer Lecture Series.

Local officials across Michigan increasingly view electric vehicle infrastructure planning as relevant for their governments, though many cite too few public charging stations and costs associated with adding them as barriers to expansion.

Extreme heat is America’s deadliest weather hazard, killing more people than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined. Yet one obvious solution – increasing access to indoor cooling – is hindered by a lack of reliable data on which households have working air conditioning.

One of the most important things people can do to address climate change is talk about it, climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said. Citing statistics that two-thirds of people in the United States are worried about climate change, but only 8% are activated to do something about it, Hayhoe said talking about climate change doesn’t mean trying to change the minds of those who believe it is a hoax.

The Mcity AV Challenge will pit researchers in academia and industry against each other, measuring the performance of their decision-making modules in a world-leading, realistic simulated environment.

For long-haul routes below 300 miles, electrification can reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas damages by 13%, or $587 million annually, according to the study. For long-haul routes above 300 miles, electrification of just the urban segments facilitated by hub-based automation of highway driving can reduce damages by 35%, or $220 million annually.

Climate change will increase the future value of residential rooftop solar panels across the United States by up to 19% by the end of the century, according to a new U-M-led study.

Among residents living within 3 miles of large-scale solar energy developments, positive attitudes about the projects outnumbered negative attitudes by a nearly 3-to-1 margin, according to a new survey of nearly 1,000 large-scale solar neighbors across the United States.

A new study published online April 4 in the journal Science finds that agricultural diversification comes with significant benefits, and very few negative effects.

Researchers at U-M’s Rogel Cancer Center want to build a movement to understand how exposures to toxic metals, industrial pollution and “forever chemicals” called PFAS, are impacting the health and cancer risk of residents across Michigan.

A new data map showcasing diverse indicators of poverty and well-being throughout Michigan highlights the key challenges confronting residents in different parts of the state and suggests interventions for the state’s most critical needs.

In the fall of 1881, with the opening of the School of Political Science, Professor Volney M. Spalding began teaching what was considered the first forestry course in the United States.

U-M is marking late March and all of April with a series of events focused on sustainability and climate action, continuing a tradition that began with the first “Teach-In on the Environment” in 1970—which grew into what is now known as Earth Day.

“I think we’ve become more and more aware of that as a problem, and it’s tearing down Americans’ trust of their own country and their government, because they feel like the game is rigged. And if we want to try to restore some trust in the system, we need to unrig it."

What materials and methods will allow us to design and construct low-carbon buildings? How can architects and designers promote social justice through community ownership of land? Through its Pressing Matters grant program, Taubman College has funded five faculty-led research and creative practice projects that address these questions.

Melinda Su-En Lee, PharmD’21, co-founded Parcel Health in 2019, while studying at the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy. The company aims to solve the waste problem caused by traditional plastic prescription bottles.

The global challenges posed by climate change are widespread, impacting various aspects of human life, with water resources at the forefront of these challenges. As climate change advances, it is projected to exacerbate water scarcity and access issues, given the intensification of water-related hazards (such as hurricanes and flooding) and rising temperatures that will lead to sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion.

Improving the U.S. electricity grid is necessary to lower costs, boost reliability and help tackle climate change, but it will take some serious soul searching by the leaders of entities that control the grid.

The ClimateCAP MBA Summit, a conference that aims to prepare future business leaders on how to understand and respond to the climate crisis, was hosted at U-M this year.

Rackham Ph.D. candidate Etienne Herrick-Sutton works with Great Lakes region farmers to identify strategies for improving the environmental and economic outcomes of cover cropping.

Despite the possibility of climate-smart agriculture improving food security, most CSA practices and technologies are not widely adopted in South Asia.

Rice exported to Haiti—mostly from the United States—contains unhealthy levels of arsenic and cadmium, which can increase the risk of various cancers, heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses, new research shows.

Six new research projects will investigate the shifting dynamics of harmful algal blooms, economic trends in coastal communities, emerging fish viruses, and other issues relevant to the Great Lakes.

The threat of harmful algal blooms (HABs) continues to plague Lake Erie, prompting intensified efforts from binational jurisdictions to address this persistent environmental challenge. Central to this endeavor is the mitigation of phosphorus, recognized as a key driver of algal blooms, through coordinated action plans.

Spearheaded by SEAS PhD candidate Malu Castro, whose family is from Moloka‘i, the work of the first project supports one of the largest Land Back efforts in the modern era of the movement, and the second contributes to fostering and maintaining the longstanding tradition of subsistence agricultural production and other efforts to promote food sovereignty on the island.

Scientists have long warned that a warming climate will cause communities around the globe to face increasing risks due to unprecedented levels of flooding, wildfires, heat stress, sea-level rise and more. Though the science is sound—even showing that human-induced, climate-related natural disasters are growing in frequency and intensity sooner than originally anticipated—climate change is still not wholly accepted as true in the United States.

The City of Ann Arbor recently reached out to the Center for Sustainable Systems (CSS) to design a model of a geothermal energy system. The model will be used for public education and community outreach in Ann Arbor.

Alexa White studies sustainable agriculture in connection with a broader focus on environmental justice. What sustainable agriculture means to people from different parts of the world—and from different socioeconomic strata—is the focus of her dissertation work as a Ph.D. candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology. What environmental justice means to her is, “the right and autonomy for individuals to have access to fresh food, water, and basic human resources without being disenfranchised or oppressed.”

U-M is a partner in the Great Lakes Water Innovation Engine, one of ten regional hubs the National Science Foundation announced this week as part of a program that’s among the largest broad investments in place-based research and development in the nation’s history, according to NSF.

“Often we look at climate change or widespread human poverty or these deep inequities that hold so many communities back generation after generation, and we say to ourselves, these challenges are too complex. I’m just one person; what can I do to really make a difference?”

The United States recently passed major climate change laws, such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA), and the CHIPS and Science Act, which allocate funding with a goal of expanding energy-transition initiatives. Analysts suggest new investments could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 40% below 2005 levels by 2030.

“We are driving the development of modern mobility systems with our advanced modeling and simulation methods, such as high-fidelity synthetic environments, virtual vehicle prototypes and virtual reality tools for human-autonomy teaming."

This winter, researchers at the U-M Biological Station in northern Michigan are strengthening their snow science with new technology to track the snowpack at an hourly rate and get a deeper understanding of the complexities of global environmental change.

Four newly awarded sustainability “catalyst grants” at U-M are piloting innovative ways to bolster climate resilience and sustainability. Funded by the U-M Graham Sustainability Institute, these projects will explore renewable energy deployment in Nepal, climate justice in the Midwest, textile recycling innovation and equitable transportation planning.

Capturing carbon dioxide from the air or industries and recycling it can sound like a win-win climate solution. The greenhouse gas stays out of the atmosphere where it can warm the planet, and it avoids the use of more fossil fuels. But not all carbon-capture projects offer the same economic and environmental benefits. In fact, some can actually worsen climate change.

"“And the warming will continue to accelerate until we halt the burning of fossil fuels. This means continued worsening extreme heat and heat waves, but also many other worsening climate extremes driven by warmer temperatures. More severe droughts, more intense rainfall, more devastating hurricanes and bigger, more widespread wildfires."

Concern for climate change grows—along with support for policies to reduce emissions—when people read about Americans being forced to move within the U.S. because of it. That’s in sharp contrast to learning about climate-induced moves to the U.S. by non-Americans, which doesn’t move the dial on climate change beliefs or policy support.

Is it actually cheaper to own an electric vehicle instead of a gas vehicle? It depends. U-M researchers say that where you live matters. For instance, a midsize SUV costs more to own in Detroit than in San Francisco—one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Rackham student and sociologist Joyce Ho’s research seeks to understand homeowners’ experiences and insurance companies’ responses in the aftermath of forest fires in northern California.

At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, nearly 200 nations approved a global pact that calls for transitioning away from fossil fuels—a first. The deal also calls for tripling the use of renewable energy, doubling energy efficiency and slashing methane emissions.

The need for a compact came when, twenty-five years ago, a Canadian company decided they could fill tanker ships with Great Lakes water to sell to countries with water shortages. Wanting to protect the lakes, the Great Lakes states, along with Ontario and Quebec, began the complex negotiations that would lead to the formal agreement detailing how they’d work together to manage as well as protect the Great Lakes.

The Environmental Health Research-to-Action Academy is a community-academic partnership focused on building skills and intergenerational knowledge in environmental health, community science and policy advocacy to address cumulative environmental exposures in the nearby communities.

Autonomous and electric vehicles can be a positive force for people and the planet, but widespread gains require government incentives and investment to ensure access for users across the economic spectrum.

Once derided as “forever 30 years away,” fusion energy has a new swagger. Will it last?

Associate Professor Tony Reames will be returning to the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) from his leave of absence at the Department of Energy (DOE), where he served as the Principal Deputy Director for State and Community Energy Programs and the DOE’s Deputy Director for Energy Justice. Reames will become the Tishman Professor of Environmental Justice at SEAS and serve as the new Director of the SEAS Detroit Sustainability Clinic, effective January 2024.

LED lighting is up to 44% more efficient than 4-foot fluorescent tubes, according to a U-M study. Lighting is responsible for 11% of electricity use in commercial buildings and residential basements, garages and shops. Linear recessed lighting systems, which are also called linear fixtures or troffer lights, are among the largest opportunities for energy efficiency improvement, given their long operating hours.

Sixteen U-M students and their faculty adviser will attend the two-week COP28 climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The students will observe the negotiations, attend side events and interact with various experts. This year’s conference runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12. U-M has sent student delegations to U.N. climate change conferences since 2009.

Flint residents have learned to question everything in the decade since the city’s drinking water first began showing signs of lead contamination. Even now, after seven straight years with water meeting federal safety guidelines, the lack of trust remains for many. U-M researchers and their partners are addressing this lingering problem on multiple fronts — from continued testing to in-school education and consulting with the city.

Over the course of the semester, U-M students are investigating drinking water-related issues in Michigan — including contamination, accessibility and affordability — to propose novel solutions.

Electric vehicles (EVs) represent the largest auto industry shakeup since, perhaps, the introduction of the assembly line more than a century ago. Moving consumers from the internal combustion engines (ICE) that have powered their transportation since birth to something fundamentally different means major changes at all levels of the business.

As part of the Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers’ new initiative aimed at planting 250 million trees in the Great Lakes region by 2033, the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability partnered with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources ( and GSGP to hold a ceremonial tree planting on November 9 at one of SEAS’ research natural areas.

A U-M Public Health research team will support community leaders from the Southwest Detroit Community Benefits Coalition and the Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, who are working to develop an app that quantifies truck traffic using data from phones and other electronic devices.

More than 100 U-M community members gathered Nov. 3 at the site of the future Central Campus residential development to observe construction efforts that will advance the university’s progress toward carbon neutrality.

One of the goals outlined by the Biden administration’s National Climate Task Force in 2021 was to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 50%-52% below 2005 levels by 2030. Now, a U-M study investigates one of the strategies to achieve this goal, which is to increase new vehicle sales to 50% electric by 2030. The study also reveals a path to meeting the targets.

LSA’s Detroit River Story Lab teaches students from elementary school through college about the past and future of the vibrant body of water.

Ann Arbor and other cities across the Midwest and Northeast have been referred to by climate specialists as “climate havens,” natural areas of refuge that are relatively safe from extreme weather events such as intense heat and tropical storms.

“Over a third of the energy we use in our homes goes to waste. That’s a lot! Programs like TCLP’s are essential in helping residents save money, support their health, and protect the environment.”

"In many parts of the world, the air pollution monitoring network is inadequate, so people just don't know how bad pollution is in their neighborhoods. And even when they have a monitor nearby, households might not be aware of the full range of health damages that they could be experiencing. So people don't always take adequate measures to protect themselves."

Each peer-reviewed factsheet presents data on patterns of use, life cycle impacts, and sustainable solutions. Updated annually by a current SEAS graduate student, the collection is a free resource to inform journalists, policymakers, business professionals, students, teachers and the public.

Nearly $1.23 billion has been spent by the U.S. government since 2004 on the cleanup of toxic pollutants in waterways resulting from manufacturing activities in historic areas around the Great Lakes.

"The possibility of a sudden shift [of policy] would be pretty shocking for the industry to absorb. (...) I can’t imagine the industry is going to want to be jerked back and forth every four or eight years.”

“Water management will be one of the challenges of our generation,” Gilchrist told students. “In order to understand how we can meet that challenge, we need smart, we need bold, we need connected information professionals to be part of the process.”

Since 2010, the university has reduced its total greenhouse gas emissions by 28%, even as total building area has increased by 14%. U-M is on pace to reduce its total quantified emissions by 50% by 2025, exceeding Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change guidance to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030.

We are in an “extraordinary moment” to create an equitable clean energy future. And Michigan, like other states, is an “essential part” of bringing forth that future.

Electric and hybrid aircraft, hydrogen power, advanced airframes and more were on the table at U-M's first symposium on sustainable aviation.

"Michigan’s legislative leadership earlier this year announced its intention to introduce a package of bills to accelerate the Mi Healthy Climate Plan. Recently, Governor Whitmer put her support behind the proposal and echoed what those involved in the renewable energy transition have noted for some time: the current approach to permitting clean energy projects is broken."

U-M researchers will lead a new effort to strengthen the climate change resilience of vulnerable communities that span international boundaries and jurisdictions. The U.S. National Science Foundation has awarded $5 million to U-M to establish the Global Center for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Transboundary Waters.

PFAS have contaminated water, food, and people through products such as Teflon pans, waterproof clothing, stain-resistant carpets and fabrics, and food packaging. They are often referred to as “forever chemicals” because they are resistant to breaking down and therefore last for decades in the environment.

“Water conservation and access” brings a slew of images to mind: wastewater flowing through main lines to a city treatment plant, a fisherman yanking invasive mussels off the hull of a trawler, the installation of filters in communities that lack access to safely managed drinking water.

The old adage “the end justifies the means” is one way to critically paraphrase the philosophical underpinnings of the early 20th century environmental conservation movement. Historically, conservation leaders have stolen land from Indigenous people, enacted eminent domain land grabs, and perpetrated other unjust actions in service of environmental conservation. Rackham alum Rebeca Villegas (M.S., M.U.R.P. ’20) is changing that harmful dynamic.

The BioMatters team at U-M has developed a fully biodegradable, reusable and recyclable material to replace the wasteful concrete formwork traditionally used across the construction industry. The base of this material is upcycled sawdust—millions of tons of sawdust waste are created each year from the 15 billion cut trees and often burned or dumped in landfills left to contribute to environmental pollution.

The devastating floods that ripped through the northeast United States are among the most recent in a long string of severe flooding events occurring worldwide, which make it plain that better flood predictions and safety plans are needed. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, flooding causes $8 billion in losses on average annually in the U.S. alone.

Should states and Indigenous nations be able to influence energy projects they view as harmful or contrary to their laws and values? This question lies at the center of a heated debate over Enbridge Energy’s Line 5 pipeline, which carries oil and natural gas across Wisconsin and Michigan.

“The e-mobility revolution presents an opportunity for all of us to lead the world toward a more sustainable future. And, at Michigan, this means land, sea, space, and air mobility.”

The tools and policies that worked to significantly reduce threats to the Great Lakes over the past century are ill-equipped to handle today’s complex and interrelated challenges. A new set of stewardship principles is needed to work holistically and systematically on long-term social, economic, environmental, and racial-equity and resiliency concerns that have too often been sidelined in a rush for immediate results.

Rather than being solely detrimental, cracks in the positive electrode of lithium-ion batteries reduce battery charge time, research done at U-M shows. This runs counter to the view of many electric vehicle manufacturers, who try to minimize cracking because it decreases battery longevity.

In an effort to speed the licensing of advanced nuclear reactors, ensure that communities are respected during reactor siting, monitor and limit corrosion in nuclear reactors, and more, the Department of Energy has awarded $7.5 million to Michigan Engineering researchers.

Producing palm oil has caused deforestation and biodiversity loss across Southeast Asia and elsewhere, including Central America. Efforts to curtail the damage have largely focused on voluntary environmental certification programs that label qualifying palm-oil sources as “sustainable.”

The Center for EmPowering Communities will help Michigan communities tackle the planning and zoning challenges related to renewable energy projects such as wind and solar installations. In addition, the center will spur collaborative research that integrates social science with technology design, community engagement and policymaking.

"Join the conversations already happening rather than remake the wheel. Climate anxiety is very real, and research shows individual actions don’t help reduce that, but collective action—joining groups, clubs, green teams, nonprofit organizations, local watershed coalitions—actually does reduce climate anxiety and eco grief."

An updated textbook has been released that provides a fundamental introduction to aquatic life and ecosystems and multidisciplinary fish studies, including an understanding of the anatomical, environmental, and ethological topics of fish ecology.

Air pollution is known to cause a host of negative effects on human health, with urban populations at particular risk. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) estimates that 9 out of 10 urban area residents are impacted by air pollution.

The hemlocks of eastern North America are threatened by the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), an invasive, sap-sucking bug that was introduced to the eastern United States from Japan in 1951. Because HWA is a nonnative species, there are no natural predators to control its population size in eastern North America, and the region’s hemlocks haven’t evolved any resistance against it, so eastern hemlocks can be sucked dry by severe HWA infestations.

Lake Erie harmful algal blooms consisting of cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, are capable of producing microcystin, a known liver toxin that poses a risk to human and wildlife health. Such blooms may force cities and local governments to treat drinking water and to close beaches, and they can harm vital local economies by preventing people from fishing, swimming, boating and visiting the shoreline.

The winning submission provided a hyperlocal blueprint for safe CO2 sequestration and integrative city planning in Houston, Texas, with a replicable pipeline system designed for major metropolitan areas.

In this role, Clark will lead a new initiative aimed at linking the university’s expanding sustainability research, collaborations and engagement with external partners to accelerate climate action across the state of Michigan and beyond.

A cross-functional group is working to advance a strategic roadmap for developing targeted research domains and building out capacity and industry partnerships that will position U-M as a leader in accelerating low-carbon building innovations.

"There’s a huge need for people who understand the natural environment and want to work in the urban setting. It’s a surprising gap where best and promising practices from natural resource management don’t make it into the urban planning and urban design space."

Discussions of valuable but threatened ocean ecosystems often focus on coral reefs or coastal mangrove forests. Seagrass meadows get a lot less attention, even though they provide wide-ranging services to society and store lots of climate-warming carbon.

"We often say you don’t know where you’re going unless you know where you came from. Studying our history and being aware of all of the deep nuances of Black ag history is so important for what we’re doing today."

Reading about climate-induced immigration prompted negative, nativist attitudes among people toward the affected migrants—an unintended, perhaps even paradoxical effect of many delivering the original messages, according to researchers at U-M and elsewhere. The findings, the researchers say, raise cautionary flags for reporters, advocates and other communicators in their work related to forced migration caused by global climate change.

Engaging researchers from nine units across U-M and several other academic institutions, along with multisectoral partners, the projects will explore community solar, agrivoltaics, carbon-neutral building materials, aviation fuel waste reduction, and sustainable archeology.

Michigan is blessed with a significant portion of the world’s freshwater supply, but water quality and affordability have been persistent issues affecting households throughout the state. Because of the suburbanization of poverty, there are now more residents struggling to afford and access clean, safe water in suburban communities where there are also fewer social welfare institutions to meet their needs.

On the heels of the global chip shortage, U-M is part of a new public-private partnership that will establish a global semiconductor center of excellence in Michigan that focuses on the auto industry.

A new study evaluated the potential decarbonization of industry through the use of nuclear energy, specifically small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). Researchers performed an analysis on individual facilities and grouped processes within them to quantify the technoeconomic potential when compared to existing fossil fuels. They also tested the economic benefits available if these facilities additionally sell electricity onto the wholesale power market as an additional revenue stream. Key findings of the paper are discussed below.

U-M has launched a report on the use of $300 million in “green bonds,” updated sustainability dashboards and building guidelines, and announced that it is the first university to join the First Movers Coalition, which aims to advance sustainable industrial technologies.

Globally, health care plastics packaging was 14.5 billion pounds in 2020 with projections up to nearly 19 billion pounds by 2025. Around 25% of all waste generated at hospitals is plastic. Moreover, 35% of all waste generated at hospitals occurs in the operating room setting, ending at a landfill due to lack of viable recycling options. To address this sizable issue, the medical plastics recycling initiative was created.

In an effort to cultivate a robust EV ecosystem in the place where the modern auto industry was born, the U-M Electric Vehicle Center is launching with these three focus areas: accelerating collaborative R&D, developing a highly skilled workforce, and establishing advanced campus infrastructure and facilities to support both research and education.

"This is really important work, especially in the face of all the [negativity] that goes on in the world. I want to be able to go to bed at the end of each day with the satisfaction of knowing that I am contributing to the world in a positive way.”

An expanded renewable energy zoning database from U-M brings together more than 1,600 local ordinances from six Great Lakes states. The database is designed to simplify matchmaking between renewable energy developers and interested host communities in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin.

President Biden signed a historic executive order called Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All, which will direct federal agencies to focus on confronting longstanding environmental injustices. Kyle Whyte, the George Willis Pack Professor at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), a U.S. Science Envoy, and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, served as an advisor on the development of the executive order.

Now more than 100 years old, the Biological Station is a 10,000-acre property in the northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan whose core mission is to advance environmental field research, engage students in scientific discovery, and provide information needed to understand and sustain ecosystems from local to global scales.

Participating in our democracy, particularly locally, and organizing for systems and policy change to promote the collective good is critical to building a clean energy future that is just and works for all. This was the overall sentiment of a panel that brought together three community activists and organizers who have emerged as powerful leaders that work on pushing forward solutions that consider the rights of all people.

The Catalyst Leadership Circle (CLC) Fellowship has selected nine graduate students for its 2023 cohort. Partnering with ten townships across the state of Michigan, fellows will undertake a summer applied research experience in advanced sustainability projects.

Replacing all of the oldest school buses in the nation could lead to 1.3 million fewer daily absences annually, according to a U-M study. The suspected cause of these preventable absences is exposure to high levels of diesel exhaust fumes, which can leak into school bus cabins or enter buses through open windows. Over time, exposure can exacerbate respiratory illnesses and other conditions and lead to missed school days.

By directly measuring greenhouse gas emissions from an airplane flying over the Gulf of Mexico, a U-M team found that the nation’s largest offshore fossil fuel production basin has twice the climate warming impact as official estimates.

Instances of injustice lie everywhere—from workers’ rights violations to pollution that disproportionately harms low-income communities of color. The Erb Institute recently convened the workshop “Building Connections for Business, Sustainability & Justice Research,” bringing together scholars, corporate leaders and advocates to explore how research can inform solutions to pressing environmental, social and racial justice challenges.

“Campus sustainability is a process. It isn't something you achieve at some point. Every wave of students who come through has to be brought into that new culture. "

“Our students are already, and will continue to be, impacted by climate change. They want to be empowered to make a difference through actions in their lives, communities and their future professions. Moreover, employers want a workforce able to anticipate and meet the challenges ahead.”

“By having access to this information, people can make informed decisions about their behavior if they have a personal concern about the levels of pathogens detected in their community.”

With more than half of the world’s population active on social media networks, user-generated data has proved to be fertile ground for social scientists who study attitudes about the environment and sustainability. But several challenges threaten the success of what’s known as social media data science.

Human well-being is often measured by economic prosperity metrics, like GDP and poverty rates. In a new article, Jenna Bednar argues that the framing needs to be expanded beyond purely financial targets to include an emphasis on community, human dignity, sustainability, and beauty.

A strong majority of Michigan local government leaders feel that good governance includes promoting environmental sustainability and “being green." A survey of nearly 1,400 leaders across the state found that fully 94% of Michigan local officials support local access to recycling in their communities.

“We are on the cusp of a clean-energy world, which we should all be immensely excited about and look forward to. Yet, we have this strange paradox where our world continues to warm 2.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and we don’t talk about it."

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education recently awarded U-M a Gold rating in recognition of universitywide climate action and sustainability work. U-M earned 73.84 points — more than four higher than its previous submission, due in large part to new sustainable investing strategies and renewable power purchase agreements.

As climate change and population growth make water scarcity increasingly common, a much larger share of the global population will be forced to reckon with the costs of urban water scarcity. A new study sheds light on how households bear the monetary and nonmonetary costs when water supply is intermittent, rather than continuous—with policy implications that could help make urban water safer, more sustainable and more equitable.

Janet Napolitano, former UC president, U.S. secretary of homeland security and Arizona governor, joined U-M sustainability experts for a panel discussion on climate action. The discussion, entitled “Working Together to Tackle the Climate Crisis,” centered around mobilizing government, higher education, the private sector, community stakeholders and individuals toward addressing the climate crisis.

U-M is a partner in a major state-sponsored initiative to promote careers and attract talent to the state of Michigan’s burgeoning electric vehicle and transportation mobility sector.

“I wish to use this fellowship to answer these questions in the context of Mexico, documenting through “day in the life”-style illustrations of various people and communities interacting with water. I hope my findings can be transferable to other countries and regions facing similar challenges.”

U-M is planning to build on-campus solar installations with a capacity of 25 megawatts across the Dearborn, Flint and Ann Arbor campuses, including Michigan Medicine and Athletics. The total amount of electricity that would be generated by the installations is estimated to equal the power consumed by approximately 3,000 homes annually.

U-M will continue to lead regional efforts aimed at transitioning the nation to connected and automated vehicles—bolstered by a new $15 million, five-year grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The Graham Sustainability Institute’s Carbon Neutrality Acceleration Program (CNAP) announced $1,160,000 in funding for six new faculty research projects. They tackle a range of carbon neutrality topics and augment the CNAP portfolio, which addresses six critical technological and social decarbonization opportunities: energy storage; capturing, converting, and storing carbon; changing public opinion and behavior; ensuring an equitable and inclusive transition; material and process innovation; and transportation and alternative fuels.

The U-M Museum of Art’s recent interactive discussion, “Talking Trash,” shared insights and advice on combating the overwhelming effects of single-use plastic. The event was inspired by The Plastic Bag Store, an immersive public art installation created by Robin Frohardt that provides social commentary on our plastic consumption.

Climate change deniers are using new strategies to spread their beliefs — namely the conspiracy theory that climate change is a hoax meant to subdue populations.

The U-M Ann Arbor campus achieved two of its 2025 sustainability goals in 2022, according to an annual Planet Blue fact sheet. It reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 25% from its 2006 benchmark — three years ahead of schedule — and exceeded its goal of applying 40% less chemicals to campus landscapes, compared with 2006, for the fourth consecutive year.

Most Southeast Michigan residents do not have equal access to urban green spaces, according to a new U-M study. Researchers analyzed data from seven counties in Southeast Michigan and looked at how far residents must travel to reach a park, community garden or some other form of urban green space.

The report calls for “urgency” in cleaning up toxic sediment on the bottom of the Detroit River. Remediation is needed on the Detroit side, but not on the Canadian side, according to the report.

Michigan Sea Grant recently received $500,000 in funding to help improve resilience under future climate change scenarios in disadvantaged coastal communities in Michigan and Wisconsin. The project will assess flood risk for disadvantaged communities in Berrien County, Michigan, and Milwaukee, and will provide a framework to extend the analysis throughout the Great Lakes.

U-M ranks eighth on the Green Power Partnership’s quarterly Top 30 College & University List and 89th on its National Top 100 List.

A U-M startup that helped accelerate the removal of dangerous lead pipes in Flint and many other communities has joined a White House partnership aimed at replacing all of the nation’s lead service lines in a decade. The public-private initiative aims to expedite the removal of lead in drinking water — a problem that rose to national prominence when lead was discovered in Flint’s drinking water several years ago and spurred a public health crisis.

The Urban Climate Law Module aims to support countries in building legal frameworks that can effectively implement the Paris Agreement and address their environmental issues in an urban context. The reports assess existing urban planning legislation and identify the climate priorities of each country to create a customized legal outline for the country’s climate action.

In the video, tribal leaders and Native community members share the ways that Line 5 harms Native communities and how a future with clean energy is possible and essential.

The Dow Sustainability Fellows Program, administered by the Graham Sustainability Institute, will award over $800,000 in tuition and project funding in 2023. The funds will support more than 40 outstanding graduate students from ten University of Michigan (U-M) schools, colleges, and units, including two large student projects funded by Dow Distinguished Awards.

In the effort to reduce plastic waste in the restaurant industry—single-use takeout containers, specifically—U-M researchers compared the lifetime environmental impacts of single-use and reusable food containers. Their findings support the idea that the number of times a reusable takeout container gets used is a key factor impacting its sustainability performance.

During a U-M visit to promote the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to address climate change—which include the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the CHIPS and Science Act—Vice President Kamala Harris told the packed crowd that “we are modeling some of the best of what innovation looks like at this moment.

“I think that we are at one of the most incredible moments in this movement — a movement that, yes, we are a big part of, but that you all will be leading for years to come, and I’m so excited."

More than 90% of vehicle-owning households in the United States would see a reduction in the percentage of income spent on transportation energy—the gasoline or electricity that powers their cars, SUVs and pickups—if they switched to electric vehicles. However, more than half of the lowest-income U.S. households (an estimated 8.3 million households) would continue to experience high transportation energy burdens, defined in this study as spending more than 4% of household income on filling the tank or charging up.

"From my vantage point at a large public university, I know firsthand how activism and energy of students, with support from faculty and other university communities, has galvanized our institution to make real commitments and progress toward carbon neutrality."

A new law that gives the state’s 32 ports tools to expand and grow the maritime economy started out as a community project for a handful of U-M students.

Hydrogen is an important energy carrier that can play a key role in reducing carbon emissions from heavy-duty vehicles and aviation, heating and distributed power, and industrial applications like steelmaking, glassmaking and semiconductor manufacturing. With growing interest around wider adoption of hydrogen and its potential economic and environmental benefits, U-M has launched a new initiative to support and catalyze multidisciplinary research involving the universe’s lightest and most abundant element.

Recent investments in renewable energy and fuel will prompt considerable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions associated with the U-M endowment. Avoided emissions from U-M investments are on track to exceed the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by the Ann Arbor campus in 2023.

U-M environmental justice expert Kyle Whyte is one of seven distinguished scientists in the country named U.S. Science Envoys by the Department of State. Through the Science Envoy Program, eminent U.S. scientists and engineers travel to foreign countries as private citizens, leveraging their expertise and networks to forge connections and identify opportunities for sustained international cooperation.

Efforts to promote the future health of both wild bees and managed honeybee colonies need to consider specific habitat needs, such as the density of wildflowers. At the same time, improving other habitat measures—such as the amount of natural habitat surrounding croplands—may increase bee diversity while having mixed effects on overall bee health.

Since returning from COP27, the United Nations climate change conference, University of Michigan student delegates have been reflecting on their experiences. At the conclusion of COP, the Conference of the Parties agreed to establish loss and damage funding for vulnerable communities and recommitted to keeping the 1.5°C target goal alive through a new mitigation work program.

Access to quality housing is essential to our well-being and the gateway to resources. Unfortunately, this basic necessity remains out of reach for far too many families, creating an ongoing crisis plaguing millions of Americans.

Global climate talks in Egypt are heading into the home stretch with many issues still unresolved. Negotiators from nearly 200 countries have gathered in Sharm el-Sheikh for the COP27 conference in an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst ravages of climate change.

U-M Professor Ivette Perfecto recently highlighted the intersection of biodiversity conservation with agriculture on coffee farms. She stated that “about 40% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface is an agricultural system.” While many people may think that agriculture is always harmful to biodiversity, Perfecto says that many agricultural systems, such as the coffee agroforestry systems, can be diverse and “contribute significantly to the conservation of biodiversity.”

Flooding is the leading cause of property damage and deaths in the U.S. It’s bigger than earthquakes and forest fires put together. Branko Kerkez, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, and his students at the Digital Water Lab partnered with researchers at the U-M Center for Social Solutions to measure, better understand and prevent flooding and its aftermath in some of the most vulnerable communities.

A $2.2 million, four-year grant from the CDC will fund a study examining the effects of illegal dumping interventions on the prevention of violent crime in Flint, Michigan. U-M School of Public Health researchers are partnering with Genesee County Land Bank and the Center for Community Progress to conduct the research on county-owned vacant lots to develop sustainable approaches to curb illegal dumping and community violence.

Communities that are engaged in cleaning, mowing and repurposing vacant spaces are likely to experience greater reductions in violence and crime than neighborhoods that do not participate in these activities, according to new research led by the University of Michigan.

The Responsible Battery Coalition (RBC) today announced the launch of a comprehensive research project with the U-M Center for Sustainable Systems to compare the total cost of ownership of gas and electric vehicles (EVs).

When the Global CO2 Initiative first came to the University of Michigan in 2018, removing carbon dioxide from emissions or the air and using it to make profitable products seemed like a distant dream. That’s beginning to change, says Volker Sick, director of the initiative and a professor of mechanical engineering.

Did you know that the average North American household uses roughly 240 gallons of water daily? Or that the Department of Energy estimates that 75% of U.S. energy will come from fossil fuels in 2050, which is widely inconsistent with IPCC carbon reduction goals? Did you know that just 16¢ of every dollar spent on food in 2020 went back to the farm, whereas, in 1975, it was 40¢?

Communities in the Great Lakes region need to start planning now for a future that may include “climate migrants” who leave behind increasingly frequent natural disasters in other parts of the country. And user-friendly web-based tools can be a central part of that planning process.

Michigan Sea Grant and the state of Michigan have launched a project to support Michigan small harbors’ efforts to become economically, socially and environmentally sustainable, and to equip coastal community leaders with the tools to assess and strengthen their waterfront assets.

Many small and mid-sized communities like Goshen, IN simply don’t have the resources to tackle a global crisis like climate change on their own. So in 2018, Goshen was one of 12 cities that partnered with Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments (GLISA), an organization led by U-M that’s working to help small and mid-sized cities plan for a future that will be shaped by a changing climate.

Nearly one-quarter of adults age 25 and older in the United States experience transportation insecurity, meaning they are unable to move from place to place in a safe or timely manner. More than half of people living below the poverty line experience transportation insecurity, which is higher than the rate of food insecurity among people in poverty.

Ford School professor Barry Rabe has saluted the U.S. government’s “pivot from global climate laggard to leader” with the passage, by a 69-to-27 Senate supermajority to formally enter the binding global regime to achieve rapid phase-down of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). The chemicals are highly-intensive climate pollutants used widely in air conditioning and refrigeration systems as well as many aerosols and foams.

Reames received the award in recognition of his widely influential research into the intersections of affordability, access to clean energy resources and related disparities across race, class and place, which has been the cornerstone of discussions about equity among policy makers at all levels of government.

As U-M works toward carbon neutrality, plans are moving forward for renewable purchased electricity, widespread geo-exchange heating and cooling systems, and innovative financing mechanisms.

Hydrogen, the most abundant and lightest element in the universe, can play a significant role in accelerating Michigan’s clean-energy transition away from fossil fuels in the coming decades, according to a new report released today by U-M and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

"Water levels are getting lower and lower because of two big problems. First, the long agreed-upon annual allocation of water to about 40 million users in seven states (e.g., California) and Mexico exceeds the supply of water flowing in the river. Second, and ignored by many, the water flowing in the river is also dropping relentlessly, as a warmer, drier climate reduces the amount from snow and rain that reaches the river."

Projects will pursue a range of carbon neutrality pathways, including carbon capture, renewable fuels, energy storage, aircraft electrification, solar power, chemical production, and circular economies.

Mcity, which operates the world’s first purpose-built test environment for connected and autonomous vehicles (AVs), will invest $5.1 million from the National Science Foundation to supercharge the facility’s evolution into a test track unlike any other. By enhancing its physical testing environment, adding virtual reality software and generating real-world datasets, Mcity can provide tailor-made simulation scenarios for AV software testing.

Growing up in a small town in southern Brazil, Ana Paula Pimentel Walker witnessed firsthand the hardships endured by struggling, low-income families who lived in disenfranchised communities with few services and limited opportunities for self-betterment.

People who respond less emotionally to images of damage to the environment are also less emotional and empathic in general, according to a new U-M study. Differences in political ideology can limit policy adjustments that address climate change. However, some people appear less emotionally impacted by environmental destruction—particularly those who are more ideologically conservative and less pro-environmental, the study showed.

To bolster a just transition to cleaner, more resilient energy systems, the U-M Energy Equity Project has released the first standardized national framework for comprehensively measuring and advancing energy equity. Energy equity recognizes the historical and cumulative burdens of the energy system borne by frontline and low-income communities.

The Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Biden this month contains $3 billion to help the U.S. Postal Service decarbonize its mail-delivery fleet and shift to electric vehicles. A new U-M study finds that making the switch to all-electric mail-delivery vehicles would lead to far greater reductions in greenhouse gas emissions than previously estimated by the USPS.

"One major component of the legislation addresses methane, a major climate pollutant that has tended to get less attention than carbon dioxide until recently. The new statute established a fee on methane releases from the oil and gas sector, designed to complement other regulatory policies that are being developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. With this step, the U.S. would join Norway as only the second major national producer of oil and gas to establish a tax or fee on methane emissions in an attempt to incentivize less waste."

Across the United States, local wind and solar jobs can fully replace the coal-plant jobs that will be lost as the nation’s power-generation system moves away from fossil fuels in the coming decades, according to a new U-M study. As of 2019, coal-fired electricity generation directly employed nearly 80,000 workers at more than 250 plants in 43 U.S. states. The study quantifies—for the first time—the technical feasibility and costs of replacing those coal jobs with local wind and solar employment across the country.

U-M and Ford Motor Co. researchers modeled emissions for a single 36-item grocery basket transported to the customer via dozens of traditional and e-commerce pathways. Of the various scenarios analyzed by the researchers, in-store shopping by a customer driving an internal-combustion-engine pickup truck produced the most emissions (expressed as kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalents).

U-M will work with Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and regional and state stakeholders to craft policies that will ensure safe drinking water at low cost. Labeled the Michigan Center for Freshwater Innovation (MFIC), the partnership will work with the state’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) to fulfill the promise of directives issued late last year by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on safe drinking water.

How should scientists, advocates, and others communicate to the general public about new geoengineering technologies that mitigate climate change? Specifically, does the discussion of climate change technologies create a moral hazard effect, in which individuals feel less threatened by climate change and less supportive of policies to address it?

"Europe has been the global leader on climate policy for at least the last 10 years. They have done the most in making their own adjustments. They’ve tried to find ways to put pressure on the U.S., the rest of the world and move this forward. And despite all of these efforts — and some real emission reductions in Europe — they aren’t able to hide from the effects of this either."

In an important step toward bringing transparent solar cells to home windows, U-M researchers have developed a way to manufacture their highly efficient and semitransparent solar cells.

"Our growing global warming and heat wave problem is scorching our economy in many ways, racking up a trillion-dollar-plus price tag in the U.S. alone. Impacts are often highest locally where extreme heat occurs, but global supply chains are also at increasing risk due to heat-supercharged extremes, including drought, wildfire, flooding and deadly storms."

Santa J. Ono, an accomplished biomedical researcher and the president and vice chancellor of the University of British Columbia, has been named the 15th president of the University of Michigan. Ono is the leader of the University Climate Change Coalition, a network that connects 23 of the world’s leading research universities and university systems committed to accelerating climate action.

Ford School PhD graduate Michael Lerner (Political Science, 2021) has been chosen to receive the Virginia Walsh Dissertation Award for his dissertation, "Green Catalysts? The Impact of Transnational Advocacy on Environmental Policy Leadership.“ The dissertation examines the impact of transnational advocacy on the development of national environmental policy.

“If we can generate syngas from carbon dioxide utilizing only solar energy, we can use this as a precursor for methanol and other chemicals and fuels. This will significantly reduce overall CO2 emissions,” said Zetian Mi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan.

"The ability of presidents to reinterpret established laws to address emerging challenges such as climate change is further eroded by today's Supreme Court decision. The majority concludes the Obama administration exceeded its authority in using the Clean Air Act to try to address climate, putting tight limits on the ability of President Biden or subsequent presidents to use these powers on climate issues."

U-M has been awarded a five-year, $53 million renewal agreement from the federal government to continue and expand the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, with the goal of helping to conserve and manage the region’s natural resources.

Testing the longevity of new electric vehicle battery designs could be four times faster with a streamlined approach, researchers at U-M have shown. Their optimization framework could drastically reduce the cost of assessing how battery configurations will perform over the long haul.

Michigan Groundwater Table members agreed that Michigan’s groundwater is a “critical and often overlooked resource,” vital to the state’s public health, agriculture and other businesses, coldwater fisheries, stream ecology, and wetlands, and accounts for at least 25% of the total water inflow to the Great Lakes via groundwater inflow into tributaries. They also found that Michigan has underinvested in monitoring, mapping, and reporting groundwater quantity and quality.

“For some states, high energy prices are a boon. In Wyoming, New Mexico, Alaska, North Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and even parts of California, Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Utah, high energy prices translate into not just jobs, but also surging government revenue."

A team of scientists including a University of Michigan aquatic ecologist is forecasting a summer “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico of 5,364 square miles, about average for the 35-year history of the measurements. The forecast is lower than last year’s measured size and slightly lower than the five-year average measured size of 5,380 square miles. The 2022 Gulf of Mexico hypoxia forecast was released today by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which funds the work.

Because environmental justice screening tools will affect community members impacted by disproportionate environmental burdens, soliciting input from the environmental justice community is crucial to developing and using screening tools, according to a new study from U-M.

A wide-scale look at Detroit’s urban gardens finds that while they don’t seem to foreshadow gentrification in the city, there are some unsettling trends about where they’re located and the sociodemographics in those areas.

"Greenprint Detroit: Advancing Ecological Literacy through the Lens of Legacy Soils" aims to advance ecological literacy of the community members of the McDougall-Hunt Neighborhood (bounded by Gratiot, Vernor, and Mt. Elliot) on Detroit’s east side.

U-M experts are exploring how participation in co-curricular sustainability activities fosters climate change leadership development and sustainability activism among students.

As the world turns its attention to electric vehicles as a replacement for gas-powered cars and trucks, some vehicles such as long-haul trucks and planes will need a bridge between gas and electric. Natural gas could be a viable alternative. It’s widely available and burns more cleanly than gasoline. There are even conversion kits already available to allow your passenger cars or long-haul trucks to run on natural gas, says Adam Matzger, a U-M professor of chemistry.

"As members of the Michigan Business Sustainability Roundtable (MBSR), convened by the Erb Institute at University of Michigan, we urge all Michiganders to come together in collaboration and support of Michigan’s movement toward a healthier and more sustainable economy."

The North American Colloquium (NAC) is a forum that strengthens a wider North American conversation and more fruitful trilateral cooperation between Canada, Mexico and the U.S., led by the International Policy Center at the U-M Ford School of Public Policy, the Autonomous National University of Mexico’s Center for Research on North America, and the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs.

Recycling remains popular with local government leaders in Michigan, which recently established a goal of tripling the state’s current per capita recycling rate. Still, those leaders often encounter difficulties in implementing their programs, tied to costs, improper recycling practices by users and a lack of end markets for their recycled materials, according to a new U-M report.

School for Environment and Sustainability dean Jonathan Overpeck: "Although a great deal is known about the problem, its cause, and its solutions, the crisis just keeps growing due to the lack of rapid action to combat it."

Earth Day comes twice a year for U-M chemist Anne McNeil and her lab—at least it has since last year. On Earth Day 2021, the McNeil lab organized the inaugural Huron River Watershed Cleanup. Graduate and undergraduate students in the Department of Chemistry picked up thousands of pieces of trash from about 20 metroparks along the Huron River in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti.

On the campaign trail, President Biden promised climate action. But, a few bumps in the road have delayed that action. Specifically, the Build Back Better bill, which includes provisions for action on climate policy, has been stalled. Barry Rabe, J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Professor of Public Policy, explained what the bill could achieve if passed.

The state of Michigan has released a draft of the Michigan Environmental Justice Mapping and Screening Tool (MiEJScreen), which helps identify and address places where residents are disproportionately burdened by environmental hazards. The screening tool was developed to help inform planning and policy decisions and be a resource for all Michiganders to better understand and address the environmental factors that communities face.

Interdisciplinary teams of Sustainability Scholars—senior undergraduate students—recently presented the results of their engaged research projects. Projects pertained to farmland preservation, sustainable energy data, STEM kits and gardens, and water quality, respectively.

Each year, the Graham Sustainability Institute supports a limited number of paid summer internships for Graham Sustainability Scholars and actively seeks partners offering paid internships. This summer, supported by the City of Ann Arbor’s carbon neutrality efforts, additional Graham Scholars will receive hands-on experience assisting with carbon benchmarking.

The Great Lakes Impact Investment Platform announced the environmental performance of its participating projects across eight U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. Collectively, the projects are reducing 3 million tons of carbon, protecting more than 30,000 acres of forest and farmland, saving 110 million kilowatts of energy, and saving 5.4 million gallons of water.

Despite Detroit’s reputation as a mecca for urban agriculture, a new analysis of the city’s Lower Eastside, which covers 15 square miles, found that community and private gardens occupy less than 1% of the vacant land. Even so, gardens there play an important role in reducing neighborhood blight and have the potential to provide other significant benefits to residents in the future.

U-M announced steps toward procuring 100% renewable purchased power, expanded plans for geothermal heating and cooling systems, and $10 million in funding for additional LED lighting in approximately 100 buildings across all three campuses. The announcements come as the university launches a progress-tracking dashboard — available online for interested members of the community — and $300 million in “green bonds” for projects that align with U-M carbon neutrality goals.

The majority of Michigan local leaders report recycling is somewhat or very important to their community members, with 65% of officials from the state’s largest jurisdictions saying recycling issues are very important in their communities, according to a U-M survey. The findings come as the state, once a national leader in recycling, has fallen behind the national average over time.

"Critics [who prefer traditional climate policies] fear that adopting simpler behavioral interventions may divert attention from and even crowd out public support for climate policies."

The Dow Innovation Teacher Fellowship was created for K-12 teachers of all disciplines interested in teaching sustainability issues. It trains and supports educators who teach primarily in Michigan’s Arenac, Bay, Gratiot, Isabella, Midland and Saginaw counties.

A new study by researchers at U-M and Carnegie Mellon University assessed how and where automation might replace operator hours in long-haul trucking. They found that up to 94% of operator hours may be impacted if automated trucking technology improves to operate in all weather conditions across the continental United States. Currently, automated trucking is being tested mainly in the Sun Belt.

To Paul Draus, a trash-filled city alleyway is an opportunity, a river abused by industrial waste has potential and people battling addiction have promise. Detroit has plenty of all three, and Draus has joined arms with people trying to transform those seemingly undesirable qualities into something beneficial and beautiful.

Researcgers found that for sedans, SUVs and pickup trucks, battery-electric vehicles have approximately 64% lower cradle-to-grave life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than internal-combustion-engine vehicles on average across the United States.

"In a world without the ideal carbon emissions regulation that we might hope for, we need to be careful about the unintended consequences of our policies, especially around things like new technologies or changes to electricity markets."

"Instead of supporting knee-jerk policy shifts to produce more fossil fuels, we need to take a deep breath and examine how we got into this energy jam. Throughout the history of the fossil fuel era, wars have been fought over access to oil and gas, and fossil fuels have been used for political advantage both within petro-states and internationally for strategic goals."

The Food Literacy for All series is a community-academic partnership course that invites guest speakers each week to address “challenges and opportunities of diverse food systems.” Recent speaker Dr. Priya Fielding-Singh, a sociologist and assistant professor at the University of Utah, researches the causes and consequences of health disparities in the US, with a focus on gender and family.

For the environmental movement to be effective, it must be something that everyone participates in, marine biologist and climate policy expert Ayana Elizabeth Johnson said.

In a new U-M study, researchers set out to understand the air pollutant emissions impacts of electrifying motorcycle taxis in Kampala, Uganda. Findings indicate that electrified motorcycles can reduce emissions of global and some local air pollutants, yielding global and potentially local sustainability benefits.

Geo-exchange systems, which are similar to more widely known geothermal systems, use the Earth’s constant subsurface temperature as a low-grade energy source. They can be used as either a heat-sink in the summer or low-grade heat source in the winter, thus maximizing energy efficiency.

Marine biologist and climate policy expert Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson will deliver the Wege Lecture on Sustainability on February 23. Johnson is the co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for coastal cities, and co-creator (and former co-host) of the Spotify/Gimlet podcast “How to Save a Planet,” which discusses climate solutions.

Five newly awarded catalyst grants from the Graham Sustainability Institute will fund projects designed to advance potential infrastructure solutions across energy, transportation, and the built environment. The projects will facilitate climate change adaptation, test products aimed to reduce carbon emissions, and foreground equity and justice in sustainability interventions.

The Great Lakes support more than 3,500 species of plants and animals, including more than 170 species of fish, and a population of 34 million people in the United States and Canada who rely on these waters for recreation, employment, drinking water supply, and more.

When the attendees of COP26 met in Glasgow last November to address climate change, they were a long way from rain gardens in Washtenaw County. Yet, the link between that global assembly and a southeastern Michigan water initiative illustrates different approaches in pursuit of the same goal: how to connect science and policy in order to improve our environment.

As U-M advances its commitments to climate action and universitywide carbon neutrality, it joins more than 25 universities, nonprofit organizations, corporations and local governments in founding the Midwest Climate Collaborative.

Jose Alfaro, an assistant professor of practice at U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability, has pioneered new ways to harness sustainable energy from bio-waste through innovative gasification technology.

State-level environmental justice screening tools are being supported by environmental justice advocacy groups in Michigan and across the country, according to a new U-M study. These screening tools document the communities that are hardest hit by environmental injustices.

In recent years, lakeside communities have struggled to cope with the effect of rising water levels and erosion on the beaches that have made them such attractive places for vacationers and residents alike. As a professor of urban and regional planning, Richard Norton’s work explores how humans can safely adapt to these environmental changes, while also protecting the unique ecosystems that make the Great Lakes region special.

When Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist, was elected as Brazil’s president in 2018, people began wondering about the consequences of that election for the environment, food systems, and trade, among many other social and ecological issues.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (MI-12) toured the U-M Matthaei Botanical Gardens to showcase the success of the Great Lakes Fish and Wildlife Restoration Act and Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) funds over the years and how the additional $1 billion included in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for the GLRI will help projects across the Great Lakes Basin for the long-term economic and environmental health of the region.

Jacob Allgeier, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, studies how nutrients and energy cycle through tropical ecosystems in order to better manage fisheries. The artificial reefs he’s building are an inexpensive, effective way to sustainably improve fisheries’ productivity.

"One of the biggest surprises about the 117th Congress is, in an era where the conventional thinking is that carbon pricing is politically impossible, at least in the United States, how well some of the pricing policies have done.”

Following its commitment last year to achieve universitywide carbon neutrality, U-M is unveiling an initial $5 million investment in energy conservation measures that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Measures include substantial LED lighting projects, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning improvements that span U-M campuses and units.

In the new Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up,” two astronomers discover a comet on a collision course with Earth and struggle to convince people to take them seriously. The film is a satire about society’s inability to cope with climate change. Several real-world scientists from U-M comment on the movie’s climate-change messages.

Mcity, a public-private mobility research partnership to advance transportation safety, sustainability, equity and accessibility is starting the new year with new leadership.

Headlines decrying tiny particles in our drinking water and swirling masses like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have centered plastic waste as the modern scourge of marine ecosystems. But Michiganders may be surprised to learn that this threat hits particularly close to home: recent studies show that at times, the Great Lakes contain the highest concentration of plastics anywhere on the planet.

By pioneering new methods in life cycle analysis, design, and optimization, researchers have made real impacts on the future of alternative vehicle technology, renewable energy systems, buildings and infrastructure, information technology, food and agricultural systems, and packaging alternatives.

The U.S. has set the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. As part of the leadership of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Rackham and Barbour Scholarship alumna Xin Sun is playing a key role in helping it get there.

Poverty Solutions at U-M joined Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and researchers from Wayne State University to present findings from a new report that suggests the 2020 U.S. Census may have significantly undercounted Detroit’s population. An undercount of this magnitude would result in a significant reduction in the financial resources that Detroiters and Michiganders receive.

There is a policy tool to reduce the burning of fossil fuels that is broadly favored by economists: charge fossil fuel companies a carbon fee and return the revenue to households as a dividend or rebate.

Jonathan Levine, a professor of urban and regional planning at Taubman College, has been championing a transportation system that moves away from focusing on planning for the movement of cars. “The problem with that way of planning is that it misunderstands the purpose of transportation, which is not movement but rather access to our destinations,” he says.

How do human and social capital affect people in the aftermath of a disastrous shock? Ford School professor Elisabeth Gerber and School for Environment and Sustainability professor Arun Agrawal examined the question with data gathered before and after the 2015 earthquakes in Nepal, using a novel machine-learning based analytical approach.

Recent years have seen the business community become more aware of and active in sustainability issues, but real progress remains elusive. Professor Tom Lyon—who holds a joint appointment at the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability, and serves as faculty director of the Erb Institute—discusses how to move forward.

Water and sewer service affordability, at both the household and community levels, is a widespread and growing problem across Michigan. Left unchecked, it is likely to increase in the future, according to a new statewide assessment.

Thirteen U-M graduate students and their faculty adviser, Avik Basu, attended the recent COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. Several members of the delegation share their perspectives and experiences.

“Each time there is lots of drama, high expectations, and usually in the end we are underwhelmed but there is some progress. I would put the Glasgow meeting in that category, there are few areas where we have seen marginal incremental progress, there are few areas where we were not able to achieve as much as some have hoped. And yet I'm not sure that most of the work on climate change is really done.”

“The COP26 left the desired global warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius barely alive. But there is still a way to save the planet from the most devastating impacts of climate change.”

The two-week COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, ended with an agreement among nearly 200 nations aimed at intensifying global efforts to fight climate change and to aid vulnerable nations, while leaving some crucial questions unresolved.

The School for Environment and Sustainability has launched the SEAS Sustainability Clinic, which aims to help the city of Detroit and nonprofits serving it address the impacts of climate change on the natural and built environment, human health and city finances, while working to enhance sustainability policy and action.

“1.5 is again a tremendous goal but it seems more aspirational than something we’re going to be able to realistically achieve. (...) We are seeing a growing willingness in many nations to spend more—more than ever before....the reluctance to spend money goes up when it is transferred somewhere else. That is going to be a huge challenge for the United States.”

Thirteen University of Michigan graduate students and their faculty adviser are attending the two-week COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The students will observe the negotiations, attend side events and interact with various experts. U-M has sent student delegations to U.N. climate change conferences since 2009.

What actions are we taking to adapt to climate change around the world, and how successful are our efforts? A global network of 126 researchers sought to answer those questions, producing the most systematic and comprehensive assessment of implemented human adaptation to climate change to date.

As demand for electric vehicle batteries continues to grow, U-M researchers have developed a method for predicting how changes to manufacturing processes and materials will impact battery life.

Not a week goes by, it seems, without another corporation announcing some green initiative or another. But how are you supposed to know, one way or another? When a company pledges to do X, Y or Z for the environment, it’s not like there’s a rulebook to follow.

In order to motivate people to address climate change, you need to speak about it in “human terms,” said Gina McCarthy, the country’s first National Climate Advisor, during the Oct. 14 Peter M. Wege Lecture on Sustainability.

“Obtawaing” is the Anishinaabemowin word for “at the halfway place.” Now, the word has been adapted to describe the Obtawaing Biosphere Region, a newly awarded and ambitious designation springing from the U-M Biological Station in Pellston.

As Michigan utilities look to meet clean energy regulations and transition to renewables, a new guide is available to help communities across the state address solar-energy-system, or SES, siting within their planning policies and zoning regulations.

A coaster minibusiness grew from a U-M course that brought together students of business, engineering and art and design. The class worked closely with Cass Community Social Services, a Detroit-based nonprofit dedicated to providing food, housing, health services and job programs, to brainstorm and set up the business. It uses materials that would otherwise enter the waste stream, like rubber, glass and wood.

Nearly 30 students from the Ford School and SEAS recently got a view of Michigan that will become increasingly familiar, visiting a 239 MW solar energy installation in Shiawassee County and a 150 MW wind park in Middleton. As the state moves toward its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050, more sites like these will dot the landscape—especially in rural areas.

While the move from petroleum fuels to biofuels is not as environmentally drastic as a complete transition from diesel to electric motor power, switching to vehicles run with biofuels is a more immediate solution. Even though it is estimated that half of new cars sold will be electric in the year 2030, it will still take many more years after to make a significant dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

Municipal takeover policies are often presented by supporters as rational, apolitical and technocratic responses to municipal financial distress. But a U-M researcher and colleagues found that a city’s level of financial distress is an unreliable predictor of the likelihood of state takeover, while the race and economic status of residents, as well as a city’s level of reliance on state revenue sharing, were better predictors.

Taking a walk in the park or just going outdoors could help youth feel better, and promoting public health policies that actively support time spent outside could help promote overall well-being among teens and young adults, according to a new U-M survey.

Pulling heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the air and turning it into useful products, a concept called carbon capture and utilization, has the potential to offer both environmental and economic benefits. By some optimistic estimates, it could generate annual revenues of more than $800 billion by 2030 while reducing climate-altering carbon dioxide emissions by up to 15%.

The U-M Ford School of Public Policy is launching a new Center for Racial Justice designed to expand knowledge about the complex intersections between race and public policy and create a community of leaders, scholars and students engaged in social justice work focused on racial equity.

Communities across the western United States face an existential crisis. As forests become drier and thicker with vegetation, and development encroaches further into forested areas, wildfires grow larger, more frequent and more damaging. U-M experts are working with practitioners across the west to address this growing concern.

Whether a robot or a person delivers your package, the carbon footprint would essentially be the same, according to a U-M study that could help inform the future of automated delivery as the pandemic fuels a dramatic rise in online shopping.

“It's never too late. even if some of these extreme impacts, there is still so much we can do to minimize the human misery that might come from it. Our best shot at slowing the warming is to focus in the near term on some of the very potent greenhouse gases that aren’t carbon dioxide, and by that I mean methane."

The new IPCC report, released Monday, says some devastating impacts of global warming are now unavoidable, but there is still a short window to stop things from getting even worse. It calls climate change a “code red for humanity.”

The push for consumers to go electric for their energy needs has significant environmental benefits as the world deals with the disruptive, deadly effects of climate change. Yet the economic burden of a big switch could fall more on lower-income, minority communities.

A rare bipartisan initiative to reduce greenhouse gasses was included as part of the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, the $900 billion pandemic relief bill passed in December 2020. The initiative created a significant phase down of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) use. U-M Ford School professor Barry Rabe notes that the move may not offer a template for other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and black carbon.

One alleyway on Detroit’s northwest side is being staged to power lights through rainwater harvesting as part of a plan to make more of the city’s 9,000+ alleys functional and sustainable. The test installation project has brought together community leaders with U-M researchers and students to build on the city’s large-scale program to clear alleys of debris and overgrown vegetation.

The recent flooding in the Detroit area has raised many issues for residents. Homes that were already in need of repairs were damaged even further. Detroiters don't want to move, but restricted government funds for home repairs are making that option look better each day.

“We are not accustomed to thinking about equity in the context of innovation. But in recent years, we have begun to recognize that marginalized communities — including those who are low-income and those who come from historically disadvantaged communities of color — are often unable to access the benefits of science and technology, but may be disproportionately subject to the harms.”

Like many regions across the country, southwestern Michigan is preparing for the closure of a nuclear power facility, the Palisades Nuclear Power Plant. The impact of this transition on a community can lead to reduced tax base, lost employment, reduction in services and an unused site.

How will actions taken towards preventing climate change affect communities that rely on a fossil fuel economy? In a recent report titled "Mapping the US Energy Economy to Inform Transition Planning," Daniel Raimi, Ford School lecturer and fellow at Resources for the Future, explored the economic consequences of moving away from fossil fuels for those communities.

U-M researchers surveying wastewater systems for SARS-COV-2 will be able to increase testing sites and continue monitoring until 2023 after receiving more than $5 million from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Ensuring water access and affordability for Detroit residents is critical. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of universal access to safe and affordable water for public health, as well as the barriers and challenges to this goal created by conditions of high poverty and aging infrastructure.

The routes and schedules of public transit, the presence or absence of sidewalks, the availability of different transportation options, and the design of highways that have divided cities—these are examples of aspects of transportation systems that can profoundly impact underserved communities’ access to basic needs like jobs, healthcare, education, and even food.

Despite widespread calls for a just transition to cleaner, more resilient energy systems, there isn’t a standardized measurement framework for evaluating the equity of clean energy programs. As a result, utility administrators, regulators, and energy advocates have been judging equity on an ad hoc basis. The Urban Energy Justice Lab at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability announced a new program aimed at addressing this gap.

U-M will achieve carbon neutrality across all greenhouse gas emission scopes, committing to geothermal heating and cooling projects, electric buses, the creation of a revolving fund for energy-efficiency projects and the appointment of a new executive-level leader, reporting to the president, focusing on carbon neutrality-related efforts.

As the deadline approaches for Canadian oil company Enbridge to shut down a 4.5-mile section of the Line 5 pipeline that runs beneath Lake Michigan, U-M engineering researchers offered insights into how the company might go about doing that, and also how they might construct a tunnel under the lakebed for a replacement section of the line.

The impact of our world's ever-growing population and resulting pollution only compounds concerns related to our Earth's rapidly changing climate. In a recent conversation, U-M climate, environment, and sustainability experts discuss climate change and what we can do to address it in our community, across the nation, and around the world.

Corporations like to make statements about their responsibility to society, but follow-through is sometimes lacking. The Erb Institute—a partnership between the Ross School of Business and the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan—has launched an effort to bridge that gap. The institute’s new Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce will develop a set of principles to guide companies in doing the right thing.

The "Green Revolution" in seed and fertilizer technology that bolstered food production and economic well-being in Asian and Latin American countries which began 50 years ago bypassed sub-Saharan African nations. In 2006, a number of those countries embarked on an ambitious plan to invest billions of dollars into their own green revolution.

Michigan Alumnus spoke with Shelie Miller, an associate professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability and director of the U-M Program in the Environment, about some common misperceptions regarding sustainability.

As promises for greenhouse gas reductions become more ambitious, international forecasts projecting that nuclear energy may contribute at most 10 percent of the global energy supply by 2050 are not ambitious enough.

Private sector initiatives may be the key to spurring climate action across the political spectrum, particularly among moderates and conservatives. That finding is based on new research by Kaitlin Raimi, an assistant professor at the U-M Ford School of Public Policy, and her colleagues that has been published in Energy Research & Social Science.

The Biden administration is proposing a massive infrastructure plan to replace the nation’s crumbling bridges, roads and other critical structures. But to make those investments pay off, the U.S. will need designs that can endure the changing climate.

The White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC) was established by President Biden’s Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad to fulfill his and Vice President Harris's commitment to confronting long standing environmental injustices and to ensuring that historically marginalized and polluted, overburdened communities have greater input on federal policies and decisions.

The University of Michigan will immediately shift its natural resources investments to focus more on renewable energy, stop investing in funds primarily focused on certain fossil fuels and discontinue direct investments in publicly traded companies that are the largest contributors to greenhouse gases.

The President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality at the University of Michigan has submitted its final report, which contains recommendations to help the university achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. The report includes 50 recommendations that U-M could take to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions across the Ann Arbor, Dearborn and Flint campuses.

Co-producing climate information improves Great Lakes cities' adaptation to climate change, but how can these partnerships be sustained long-term? One successful model, according to a Gala learning case, is through the Great Lakes Climate Adaptation Network (GLCAN), which has linked a number of organizations together to provide Great Lakes cities with the information they need to adapt.

As robots and autonomous systems are poised to become part of our everyday lives, the University of Michigan and Ford Motor Company are opening a one-of-a-kind facility where they’ll develop robots and roboticists that help make lives better, keep people safer and build a more equitable society.

Pursuing energy and climate innovations grows ever more critical, but must include the involvement and participation of marginalized, vulnerable communities from the beginning.

The virtual conferencing that has replaced large, in-person gatherings in the age of COVID-19 represents a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, but those online meetings still come with their own environmental costs, new research from U-M shows.

General Motors announced Thursday, January 28, that it would eliminate gasoline and diesel powered engines in their passenger cars, vans, and SUVs by 2035. They also pledged to make their factories carbon neutral by 2040. In an interview, the U-M Ford School’s Barry Rabe commented on the gravity of GM’s decision, saying, “This is a very significant pivot (...) especially for such an iconic American institution.”

A $3 million gift from the Dow Company Foundation will continue the Dow Sustainability Fellows Program at U-M. Since the inception of the program, more than 400 students from 17 of the 19 schools and colleges on the Ann Arbor campus have served as fellows, and an additional 500 scholars have been supported through the program.

Robert Hampshire, associate professor at U-M's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, whose research and policy engagement focuses on understanding the societal, climate and equity implications of autonomous and connected vehicles and other innovative mobility services, has joined the Biden administration to work in the U.S. Transportation Department.

In the 2010s, global conditions including increasing temperatures, worsening income inequality, and insufficient access to social services catalyzed improved community building and localized solutions for climate-related challenges. This led to the conceptualization of resilience hubs—spaces that support residents and aid in distribution of resources before, during, and after a climate-related stressor.

In 2019, U-M launched a commission to help it achieve carbon neutrality. Rackham nursing graduate Megan Czerwinski used her expertise in sustainability and health education to help members of the U-M community understand the stakes and learn how they can contribute.

Sarah Mills, senior project manager at the Center on Local, State, and Urban Policy, and Michael Craig, assistant professor at the School for Environment and Sustainability, have been selected for a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office. The two will research how rural communities in the Great Lakes region learn about and decide whether to zone for utility-scale solar.

The President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality, charged with recommending scalable and transferable strategies for U-M to achieve net-zero emissions, has released its preliminary draft recommendations for public comment. The draft report includes a collection of steps that U-M could take to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across the Flint, Dearborn and Ann Arbor campuses, including Michigan Medicine.

Kaitlin Raimi, U-M Assistant Professor of Public Policy, explains her research on how people compare their own beliefs and behaviors to those of others, specifically climate change and environmental behaviors.

Methane is the primary component of natural gas, a greenhouse gas with 34 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide. More than one percent of methane in the U.S. supply chain escapes into the atmosphere, much of which is caused by degraded pipes and loose-fitting components during distribution of natural gas. Ford School professor Catherine Hausman’s research has been cited as the primary influence of a law that passed in Washington state to address the problem.

Some Detroiters spend up to 30% of their monthly income on home energy bills, a sky-high rate that places the city among the Top 10 nationally in a category that researchers call household energy burden. The COVID-19 pandemic has only worsened the situation, adding financial challenges that make it increasingly difficult for many low- and moderate-income residents to pay their utility bills.

Today’s automobiles rely heavily on the extraction of virgin raw materials for manufacturing and fossil fuels for vehicle operation. However, industry investment in vehicle electrification will lead to greater renewable energy use, and manufacturers are reducing reliance on virgin raw materials by increasing recycled content.

As part of a nine-member National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) Working Group, Barry Rabe, U-M Professor of Environmental Policy, recommended near-time actions to address climate change to the next Administration.

In a new book published by the Brookings Institution Press, Ford School professor Barry Rabe looks at the impact of the administrative presidency, and at the “forces of federalism” that constrained some of those impacts. In the book, Rabe focuses on environmental policy.

Few local governments in Michigan report collaborating with another community on energy and sustainability issues, yet nearly half expressed interest in teaming up with others to pursue opportunities, according to a new U-M survey.

Catherine Hausman, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the U-M Ford School of Public Policy and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research, explains the concept and arguments for and against a carbon tax.

It’s no secret that business pokes its head into policymaking and government mingles in the market, even as the sides eye each other with suspicion. What surprised U-M professor Andy Hoffman was how little the relationships between them and their influences upon each other were being covered in business schools.

Forest restoration is a crucial element in strategies to mitigate climate change and conserve global biodiversity in the coming decades, and much of the focus is on formerly tree-covered lands in the tropics. A new study finds that nearly 300 million people in the tropics live on lands suitable for forest restoration, and about a billion people live within 5 miles of such lands.

U-M is a partner in a major mobility initiative Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced to develop a first-of-its-kind corridor for connected and autonomous vehicles. The first phase of the project is a feasibility assessment to test technology and explore the viability of a 40+-mile driverless vehicle corridor between Downtown Detroit and Ann Arbor.

When pursuing carbon neutrality, it’s often easy to focus on the technical, whether energy efficiency standards of new buildings, electricity procurement options, or how to power campus vehicles. For two research teams supporting the President’s Commission on Carbon Neutrality, these strategies, though crucial, represent one side of a coin.

Ford School professor Barry Rabe explains that environmental activists are setting themselves up well to be part of the conversation if Democrats sweep in November and look to pass some kind of major stimulus and infrastructure bill to respond to the pandemic-induced economic downturn.

The homes of wealthy Americans generate about 25% more greenhouse gases than residences in lower-income neighborhoods, mainly due to their larger size. In the nation’s most affluent suburbs, those emissions can be as much as 15 times higher than in nearby lower-income neighborhoods.

Concurrent failures of federal drinking water standards and Michigan’s emergency manager law reinforced and magnified each other, leading to the Flint water crisis, according to Sara Hughes, an assistant professor at U-M's School for Environment and Sustainability.

"So should the 46th president follow in the footsteps of his immediate four predecessors, possibly as soon as January 2021, and prepare a more far-reaching set of environmental initiatives for an early-term administrative launch, regardless of what happens on the legislative front?," Ford School professor Barry Rabe asks.

Steven L. Yaffee, a professor of natural resources and environmental policy at SEAS, has authored a newly published book that highlights California’s efforts to establish a system of marine protected areas off its coast that would safeguard miles of fragile ocean resources.

At a forum convened by the House Natural Resources Committee Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources on June 1, Daniel Raimi, Ford School lecturer, testified about the feasibility of capping some 56-thousand such oil and gas wells.

Ford School professor Barry Rabe says he sees little political risk in Biden soliciting the ideas of former rival Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with the shared task force on climate change.

Why do companies have an easier time setting sustainability goals than achieving them? Modern corporations create astonishing wealth and innovation, but they have so far struggled to transform themselves to operate within the sustainable boundaries of natural resource systems, such as the atmosphere, forests, fisheries and soil systems.

Representing a new line of research, Ford School professor Barry Rabe explores the politics around taxing methane gas releases. Rabe argues that consensus among economists is “the best way to reduce climate risks linked to carbon dioxide emissions is to tax them.”

A U-M study quantitatively shows, for the first time, that during a 30-year period, coverage of climate change has not only become dominated by partisan voices, but also that those voices are associated with increasingly different messages about climate change.

Households that are unable to meet their energy needs—such as heating, cooling, and electric—are known as “energy poor.” But despite the prevalence of energy poor households in the U.S, energy poverty is not recognized as a distinct problem on the federal level. This results in limited responses—and little assistance—to households in need.

U-M researchers have created a searchable, sortable public database of Michigan zoning ordinances related to siting renewable energy, such as windmill farms and solar panel fields.

Half of Michigan’s local governments have taken steps to improve energy efficiency in their facilities—more than double the 22% who reported similar efforts a decade ago, according to a survey by the U-M Ford School of Public Policy.

Multinational corporations wield immense power. A mere 100 companies control a quarter of global trade. In choosing where to invest, what products to develop and push, and what environmental and labor standards to uphold, these corporations continually shape the global economy’s geography and its effects.

Most of the cities in Michigan will be dealing with harsh consequences of climate change, and vulnerable groups who are disproportionately affected by it will continue to do so now and into the future, according to a new U-M study.

New research supported by Erb Institute Faculty Director Joe Árvai suggests that age is not a great predictor of environmental action—instead, values and political views are more likely to drive action.

In what is believed to be the first comprehensive study of unofficial footpaths in a large urban area, U-M's Joshua Newell and colleague Alec Foster of Illinois State University mapped 5,680 unofficial footpaths in the city of Detroit—that's 157 linear miles of trails—visible from space.

In this era of conflicting ideologies, fake news about climate change—especially on Facebook—can embolden those who remain unconvinced that it’s a threat and can easily influence people who only casually follow the issue.

Sustainability needs evidence. But evidence can get caught up in larger social and societal conflicts. Consider the political polarization surrounding climate change: research shows that people on either side of the political spectrum are likely to have different perceptions of the strength of the evidence suggesting climate change is happening.

Why do some sustainability initiatives become firmly embedded in an organization while others fizzle out?It may have something to do with how your employees interact as they tackle the sustainability issue at hand.

A new study by a U-M student team has identified “hot spots” of environmental injustice across the state. U.S. census tracts in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, Saginaw, Lansing and Kalamazoo are among the hot spots identified in the study, which was released today.

Deploying a fleet of electric autonomous taxis in a city could result in an 87 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to conventional vehicular travel, according to a new UM-led study.

The Flint Water Crisis prompted the state of Michigan to adopt a new Lead and Copper Rule (LCR)—the guidelines that water utilities must follow to ensure the public’s health is protected. The most proactive LCR in the country, the University of Michigan Water Center formed a project team, funded by the CS Mott Foundation, to help guide the implementation process.

For sustainability initiatives in food retail, do the largest hurdles lie in the supply chain, or within the walls of corporate headquarters? As sustainability becomes a bigger priority for food producers and retailers, more and more companies are forming sustainability teams to push toward a new food economy through supply chain transformation.

Rapidly advancing developments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), a category of computer science, hold immense promise for helping to solve complex sustainability problems such as climate change. But uncertainties loom about AI’s potential ill effects on the workplace.

Tom Lyon, a U-M professor of business economics and public policy and professor of environment and sustainability, shares his point of view on the Green New Deal and what it could mean to the business community.

Not a month goes by without a media campaign linking the supply chain of a well-known brand with unsavory labor practices or environmental mismanagement. Beyond financial and reputational risks, a corporation that doesn’t know its supply chain can be caught flat-footed when the regions it sources from are rocked by political and environmental upheaval.

The federal response to hurricanes Harvey and Irma was faster and more generous than the help sent to Puerto Rico in preparation and in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, according to U-M researchers.

“I think we're getting our handle on adaptation,” said School for Environment and Sustainability Dean Jonathan Overpeck. “That's a big focus of our efforts here at the University of Michigan and elsewhere around the state. But adaptation will only get you so far. What we really want is a strong, resilient, and sustainable economy for this state.”

Experiencing extreme weather is not enough to convince climate change skeptics that humans are damaging the environment, a new study shows. Political bias and partisan news reporting influence whether people indicate experiencing certain extreme weather events, according to the study involving researchers from U-M and other universities.

About three out of every four Americans support hotly debated net energy metering policies, which allow residents with wind turbines and solar panels to sell excess energy back to the grid at retail rates, according to a national poll by U-M researchers.

A majority of Americans across the political spectrum believe states are responsible for addressing climate change in the absence of federal policy, according to a new survey by U-M researchers.

“Energy justice started out as a global research area—looking at disparities in energy consumption, access to energy efficiency, and access to energy technology. Much of that research highlighted the disparities between developed countries and undeveloped countries,” explains U-M assistant professor Tony Reames.

An analysis of more than 40 climate-adaptation plans from across the U.S. shows that local communities are good at developing strategies to combat the harmful effects of climate change but often fail to prioritize their goals or to provide implementation details.