Climate Solutions

Faculty and students from across the Harvard community are working on ways to address climate change and its effects.

Teaching the next generation

How can we empower young children in the face of climate change?

Learn more from the Harvard Graduate School of Education

Solutions from the past

Explore the Graduate School of Design’s overview of the first-ever compendium of Indigenous technologies, which could provide a powerful toolkit for climate-resilient design.

Learn more about Indigenous technologies

Solutions on the brink

Harvard researchers are applying biological principles and their expertise across a range of disciplines to reduce pollution, water contamination, waste, and greenhouse gas emissions.

Explore some of the Wyss Institute’s projects

Solutions for the future

Explore the work of Harvard Business School alumni who are working to make tomorrow’s cities more sustainable across five key areas: mobility, power, construction, water, and waste.

Learn more about the future of cities

Better air conditioners

A new technology uses up to 75% less energy than traditional air conditioners, and relies on water rather than environment-damaging refrigerants.

Learn how cool the green future will be

Food from cyanobacteria

Biodegradable products from microbes

Artificial reefs fight climate change and food insecurity

Want to keep up on climate research?

Carbon capture

Researchers at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences outline an affordable approach for taking excess carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to help reduce the rising temperatures of climate change.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Respite from the heat and rain
Inexpensive, recyclable plastic
Easy to fabricate, transport, and assemble

The BLT battery will revolutionize electric cars

Long-lasting, quick-charging batteries are essential to the electric vehicle market, but today’s lithium-ion batteries fall short of what’s needed—they’re too heavy, too expensive, and take too long to charge. Enter the BLT battery.

Learn more about this battery

A planetary health diet

Harvard Chan School’s Walter Willett and the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health developed the world’s first scientific targets for a planetary health diet. The plant-forward diet emphasizes whole grains and plant-based proteins.

Learn more about this diet

Why we’re adapting

Rising temperatures

“Every year since 2013 has been warmer than it was in 2013 and every year prior in a record that dates back to 1880," says Peter Huybers of the Harvard John. A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Rising health concerns

When climate shocks occur, frontline health clinics are a safety net to people whose health is most at risk. Our work puts these clinics—and their patients—at the center of climate resilience.

Rising security risks

“In my judgment, climate change is the biggest non-state-actor threat there is, and we have a lot of planning to do,” says former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, now the special presidential envoy for climate change.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Rising tides

“Any intelligent coastal city has to be thinking about how are we going to protect ourselves against what we know is baked in at this point," says Elizabeth Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning author.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Rising inequality

Indigenous communities have a long history of living with and learning from the environment, but the extraction and transportation of fossil fuels near their communities, along with unjust policies, have put their health and the climate at risk and impacted tribal sovereignty.

Learn more in this talk from C-Change

Rising carbon dioxide

"In 2020, about 80% of the energy used by civilization worldwide still comes from these fossil fuels. It will take decades to free ourselves from them," says Professor of Environmental Policy John P. Holdren.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Rising wildfires

"What we can say is that the increase in fire activity in the West over the last 30 years is very likely tied to warmer temperatures under climate change, which has led to drier fuel," says Loretta Mickley, senior research fellow in chemistry-climate interactions at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Read more on The Harvard Gazette

Solutions from our campus

2.5 megawatts

of onsite solar energy installations
18

vegetated green roofs across campus
30%

of Harvard’s bus fleet is electric

Building a sustainable future

Our new Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) has been certified by two international building certification programs as one of the healthiest, most sustainable, and energy-efficient laboratories in the world.

Learn more about this revolutionary building