Climate Leaders in Residence (CLIR)
Launched in 2024, the CLIR program brings top thought leaders to Duke to share insights and expertise, sparking discussion and action to advance climate solutions. The program advances the aims of the Duke Climate Commitment and is overseen by the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability.
Duke students step into the complex world of utilities, working with industry partners to turn classroom learning into climate solutions.
Powering islands as sea level rises. Optimizing operations while adhering to climate goals. Treating wastewater during increasingly severe storms.
Those are a few of the climate and sustainability issues facing North Carolina utilities—challenges that 20 Duke University students tackled this spring in a practicum course.
Jeff Hughes, a Duke University Climate Leader in Residence, co-taught the utilities practicum with Luana Lima (Nicholas School of the Environment) and Sara Oliver (Pratt School of Engineering). Fresh off a six-year term on the North Carolina Public Utilities Commission, Hughes joined Duke last fall, in part, to contribute to educational offerings in energy finance, engineering and governance. His residency is hosted by Pratt and the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability.
A Pratt alumnus, Hughes has taught at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke—including with Lima and Oliver—and he had a new idea for connecting students directly with utilities.
Students jumped at the opportunity. Instructors selected participants from more than 50 applicants across Duke degree programs.
Hands-on learning with clients
Throughout the semester, instructors covered how utilities are financed, governed and regulated. Guest speakers discussed utilities’ role in addressing climate challenges.
But the heart of the practicum was the client-based work. The instructors paired interdisciplinary student teams with utilities, each operating under a distinct governance model and facing a unique climate or sustainability challenge:
- Orange Water and Sewer Authority (OWASA) – The public water utility for Chapel Hill and Carrboro needs a backup power solution to keep two wastewater lift stations operating during increasingly frequent outages caused by storms.
- Duke Energy – The investor-owned utility’s fleet electrification unit is working with large customers such as Duke University to help them better understand the financial impact of fleet electrification.
- Tideland Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) – The rural cooperative in northeastern North Carolina is evaluating additional efforts to make electrical infrastructure more climate-resilient on remote Ocracoke Island, part of the Outer Banks.
- Duke University Facilities Management – Utilities Services is looking for ways to optimize its operations while helping the university better meet its climate goals.
Each team devised potential solutions to their utility’s challenge, presenting to clients at the end of the semester.
Student takeaways from the course
During client presentations, Jack DuPuy, a graduate student in Pratt’s Climate & Sustainability Engineering program, demonstrated a dashboard his team developed for Duke University Facilities Management. The dashboard tracks how much steam two on-campus plants produce to meet the university’s heating needs. It then creates outlier reports for days when the plants use more—or less—steam than expected given the outdoor temperature, helping Facilities Management pinpoint potential efficiency improvements.
DuPuy said he wanted to join the course because he is interested in how utilities are adapting to rising energy demand.
“There’s so much innovation going on right now in the energy space because of everything with data centers and this huge new demand,” he said. “This course really attracted me to understand the nuances better, especially from people with the expertise that Jeff, Sara and Luana all have.”
Students praised the teams’ interdisciplinary makeup.
Emma Derr, an MBA student at the Fuqua School of Business, worked on the OWASA project with teammates from the Nicholas School of the Environment and Sanford School of Public Policy. Their varying perspectives informed a well-rounded deliverable, Derr said.
The team toured OWASA’s facilities, including the two lift stations, which pump wastewater from lower to higher elevations. The lift stations sit in residential areas, with small footprints and lots of tree cover. Those factors ruled out solar power, so the team recommended battery backups.
“A lot of us have real hopes that we’re going to move forward toward ‘clean’ as a goal on par with affordable, reliable utility services,” said Russell Bargmann, who is pursuing dual master’s degrees in environmental management and public policy at the Nicholas and Sanford schools. “But I took away from this class that there are just a lot of practical steps you have to get through to make climate solutions real.”
Lasting impacts for utilities and students
Tideland EMC General Manager and CEO Paul Spruill requested a study of the vulnerability of the cooperative’s electric infrastructure on Ocracoke. A hotspot for coastal erosion and sea level rise threatens the connection between the island and the mainland grid, as well as Highway 12, the lone road to the island.
The student team traveled to Ocracoke to get a firsthand look.
“Seeing the erosion and infrastructure risks up close reinforced that climate risk is already shaping real-time infrastructure decisions, and that adaptation is an immediate, deeply local reality,” said Ananya Aggarwal, who graduated in spring 2026 with a master of environmental management from the Nicholas School of the Environment. “This experience made the trade-offs utilities face around cost, timing and resilience much more tangible.”
The visit helped students to tailor recommendations for Ocracoke’s specific conditions. Their study included detailed research on expenses for infrastructure, planning and permitting, along with specific timelines for initiating work. Spruill praised the team’s “determined effort” to understand the problem’s impacts now and over the next 10 to 20 years.
“The report will be the cornerstone of our infrastructure planning for Ocracoke in the coming years,” said Spruill.
For the instructors, one measure of the practicum’s impact is what the students go on to do with their careers. Many entered the course interested in energy or management consulting, but some left considering utility or local government careers.
“We don't do a good job telling the stories of what these jobs are,” Oliver said. “I think a course like this is a good first step.”