Max Zhang

Mechanical engineer Max Zhang researches the intersection of energy and the environment. “There are a lot of ambitious goals of where we want to be in 2030. To me, that’s fascinating,” he said. “Everything has to be accelerated, but we have to be thoughtful in how we pursue this transition to sustainable energy. It must be just and equitable… We need to benefit society and leave nobody behind.” The work excites him and his students, who can see the impact of their research quickly because of the rapid movement toward climate solutions. Energy of the future will hopefully be more democratized; Zhang imagines a “highly electrified” society where most people are prosumers, both producers and consumers of electricity. “We’re making progress every day,” said Zhang.

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New assessment maps emissions in New York neighborhoods near industrial areas

Joseph McFadden

Animal scientist Joseph McFadden researches the interactions between nutrition, environment and food animal production. He’s also leading the development of four respiration chambers that measure complete gas exchange to help quantify greenhouse emissions from an animal through the testing of feed ingredients, additives and drugs. It’s only with this holistic approach, McFadden believes, that we can provide transparency while simultaneously accelerating the approval of effective dietary approaches – by reducing methane emissions in the short-term, and by reducing CO2 as a longer-term climate goal. Farms of the future will also need to focus on global solutions. “I’m optimistic that we’ll have dietary approaches to suppress methanogenesis without compromising efficiency. What’s going to be more challenging is identifying solutions to enhance efficiency in underdeveloped countries. Every region is going to require a unique solution,” he said. “Now is the time for us to use our training for the betterment of society.”

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Grants fund study, outreach on sustainable milk production

Mario Herrero

Mario Herrero, professor of sustainable food systems and global change, is studying circular food systems that seek to reduce the more than 30% of food wasted in production and consumption. “Lots of that food can be recycled and repurposed as feed, as fertilizer or as energy,” Herrero said. Managing a dairy farm early in his career, Herrero saw how growing food demand could contribute to deforestation in Latin America, and the need for better planning and incentives. His research since has led him to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, and at Cornell he’s among scholars working to improve crop yields, feeding and management strategies and policy solutions. Important upcoming work, he said, will investigate the “true cost of food” – accounting for its environmental and social costs, potentially through smart pricing systems and revised subsidies. “There’s just so much that ends up in landfills,” Herrero said. “We really need to move towards a more regenerative culture.”

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Heat stress for cattle may cost billions by century’s end

Greeshma Gadikota

Civil and environmental engineer Greeshma Gadikota has long been fascinated by the intersection of energy and the environment – and a believer, she said, that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too. “We’re starting to realize the impacts of unabated fossil energy consumption,” Gadikota said. “It’s led to tremendous economic development and growth, but we have to be very intentional about managing the impacts.” Research by Gadikota’s Sustainable Energy and Resource Recovery Group is advancing carbon capture and sequestration technologies. One that could be used to prevent emissions from power plant or steel factory flues would use solvents to trap carbon dioxide in a liquid phase – like fizz in a pressurized soda can, minus the pressure – then convert it into a durable solid. “We’ve simulated it in the lab, we know it works,” she said. “Now we have to do it with the real thing.”

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Cornell, startup receive $7M for novel clean energy tech

Linda Shi

City and regional planning expert Linda Shi grew up passionate about the environment, reading Ranger Rick magazines and leading school clubs. Only later did she become aware of deep inequities tied to climate change and adaptation that are now the focus of her research, and a pillar of The 2030 Project. “The people who have contributed the least carbon emissions are likely to experience the greatest impacts,” Shi said. “They’re also the least able to adapt to some of those impacts because of their financial resources, where their housing is and how much political voice they have.” Shi seeks to reveal those vulnerabilities and identify drivers in the areas of land use policy, tax policy, property rights and community engagement, frequently working across disciplines. “It’s only through collaboration across these different points of view,” she said, “that we’re going to come up with new solutions for these difficult challenges.”

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Revealing climate change inequities, redress, and environmental justice

Carla Gomes

Computer scientist Carla Gomes has seen excitement about computational sustainability grow dramatically since she helped pioneer the field some 15 years ago. “We showed you can have an impact in the world and in computer science addressing these challenges,” Gomes said. “The questions are so challenging that they do lead to fundamental advances in AI.” As director of the Institute for Computational Sustainability, Gomes has applied AI and machine learning methodologies to predict bird distributions, design grizzly bear conservation corridors, discover clean energy materials and, recently, assess the placement of hydropower dams in the Amazon basin. The research allows policymakers to play “what if” games based on different criteria and scales, Gomes said, and identify harmful outcomes. “AI is changing the world, and the next frontier is AI for science and sustainability,” she said. “What really drives me is addressing meaningful questions, while also advancing AI.”

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AI enables strategic hydropower planning across Amazon basin

Héctor D. Abruña

Electrochemist Héctor Abruña’s research team is developing new materials for batteries and hydrogen fuel cells that will be critical to storing renewable energy and enabling more efficient vehicles. He cites recent advances in lithium sulfur batteries and fuel cells that don’t require expensive precious metals. “I feel very positive this will be something that will be viable in the very near future,” he said. Abruña says his proudest achievement is having mentored dozens of doctoral and post-doctoral students now working around the world to advance climate solutions. Significant federal and private investments in hydrogen herald further progress. But Abruña said addressing complex climate challenges will require both new technology and political will, engaging large, multidisciplinary teams that span science and public policy. “Cornell was meant for this kind of challenge,” Abruña said. “It’s almost in our DNA that we’re very collaborative.”

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Carbon-coated nickel enables fuel cell free of precious metals

Natalie Mahowald

From studying volcanoes to observing Earth’s surface from space, atmospheric scientist and Cornell Atkinson Senior Faculty Fellow Natalie Mahowald strives to better understand earth system feedback mechanisms that impact climate change and could improve climate models. Examples include NASA-funded missions investigating the atmospheric movement of volcanic ash and desert dust, including measurements from a science instrument being launched to the International Space Station. “This will help us understand a lot more about how desert dust – an important source of aerosols to the atmosphere – changes the energy budget of the planet,” Mahowald said. “Is it going to cause us to warm more or cool more?” An author of a 2018 U.N. report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, Mahowald draws inspiration from her students working to innovate and implement climate solutions. “It makes me very optimistic that we can solve some of these great challenges,” she said.

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Maria Cristina Garcia

American Studies professor Maria Cristina Garcia’s research on immigration, refugees and asylum seekers is something that’s always been personal to her, having left Cuba for the USA with her family in the 1960s. “The experience of coming as part of a refugee migration sensitized me to the experience of other refugees,” she said. Her research into the unequal impact of climate change on vulnerable populations is something Garcia hopes will help guide future policy. Governments tend to pigeonhole refugees and asylum seekers into discrete categories, but migration has always been multicausal, Garcia argues, with people often originally displaced by the environmental drivers her research aims to highlight. She believes we should not only focus on ways to mitigate climate change, but also on ways to help populations become resilient to its impacts. Societies of the future will need to share the burden of accommodating displaced people — and not lose faith. “Hope is a discipline,” Garcia said. “It’s very easy to despair, so you have to make a conscious choice to look for reasons to hope.”

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Migration, Forced by Climate Change