Campaign Initiatives
Climate and Energy
Field-defining faculty seek solutions that balance the risks of a changing climate with the need for growth to raise living standards in communities around the world.
Chicago minds for climate and growth
In many places around the world, fossil fuels have powered growth, providing a pathway to better living standards and economic mobility. In their work to safeguard a livable planet, decarbonization efforts too often ignore this reality. But what if we don’t have to choose between confronting climate change and advancing prosperity?
Chicago minds tackle the hardest questions from every angle. For climate and energy, that means a century-deep tradition of using economics to solve key social problems. It means the fearless pursuit of evidence-backed solutions: cutting-edge research on climate systems engineering to protect societies from a warming world and breakthrough battery technologies to jump-start the transition to clean energy. And it means the conviction that none of this works unless it moves beyond campus into the communities where decisions get made. This synthesis of economics, science and technology, and public policy is what the climate and energy challenge demands.
The Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth is the home for this work. Through the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), the Energy Technologies Initiative (ETI), and the Climate Systems Engineering initiative (CSEi), alongside a first-of-its-kind curriculum training the next generation to tackle the full complexity of this challenge, the institute is producing the research, the graduates, and the real-world interventions that will reshape the climate conversation.
Together we can keep scaling this work from proof-of-concept to global practice.
Numbers at a glance
- 20 million people in India benefitting from emissions markets developed with institute researchers, with plans to expand these markets to 5 Indian states
- 700+ air quality monitors being installed across 19+ countries by institute researchers, helping to gather reliable data for the 5 billion people worldwide without access to clean air.
- 24,378 districts of the world for which institute researchers have quantified the impacts of climate change
- 45 percent increase in the EPA’s detection of pollution violations thanks to AI learning techniques developed by institute researchers.
- 335 patents for energy technologies, of which 210 are specifically for battery technologies—making batteries the University’s second most patented area.
- 40 million Indian farmers warned of extreme weather by AI models developed by institute researchers, a first step to offset the $143 billion annual cost of extreme weather events attributable climate change.
Fueled by your support
- Naming opportunities: An endowed gift to name the institute or its research initiatives future-proofs the research, education, and policy work defining humanity’s response to the climate challenge, ensuring its impact endures for generations to come.
- Endowed professorships: Named chairs attract and retain the world’s most consequential climate researchers, giving them the stability and resources to pursue the next-generation research necessary to advance the climate conversation.
- Investing in pioneering ideas by leading minds: The institute’s venture and seed fund program gives institute researchers the freedom to pursue high-risk, high-reward ideas across energy policy, climate systems engineering, artificial intelligence, battery technologies, and much more.
- Outreach and communications: Philanthropic support for the institute’s outreach and communications work funds its efforts to translate frontier findings into tools, accessible data, and public understanding, putting rigorous science into digestible formats.
- The Chicago Curriculum on Climate and Sustainable Growth: This first-of-its-kind curriculum introduces a new paradigm in education, one that incorporates classroom instruction, experiential learning, career development, and global experiences. Support for curriculum development ensures that the next generation of climate and energy entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, and policymakers graduates with a 360-degree understanding of the challenge: the science, the economics, the policy, and the stakes for human lives.
Contact
Erin Adcock
eadcock@uchicago.edu
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