India needs a mix of all kinds of strategies to fight climate change—reducing emissions through decreases in fossil fuel use, while also implementing carbon dioxide removal and carbon capture methods, Duke University expert Sandeep Pai told The Wire. “There is no way to reach net zero without some level of carbon removal and carbon capture technology,” he said.

This interview with Martin Doyle (Duke University) and Matt Ross (Colorado State University) focuses on water quality data accessibility and a partnership between the Radical Open Science Syndicate (ROSS) at Colorado State and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This collaborative effort improved an existing EPA toolkit empowering water resource managers to use the data they collect.

A new Aspen National Water Strategy, published today by the Aspen Institute’s Energy & Environment Program, provides a comprehensive roadmap to strengthen water security across the United States and ensure that communities, economies, and ecosystems can thrive amid growing water-related challenges. Martin Doyle  co-chaired the effort with Newsha Ajami of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

As artificial intelligence accelerates a wave of massive new data centers, North Carolina’s race to power AI is colliding with its climate goals and could reshape water use, emissions and electricity costs for decades, WRAL reports. “This is a statewide climate and infrastructure question,” said Nicholas Institute expert Jackson Ewing. “And it’s arriving faster than the regulatory framework designed to manage it.”

Duke expert Sandeep Pai joined FORESIGHT Climate & Energy's The Jolt podcast to discuss why repurposing old coal infrastructure needs better planning. Pai explained findings from a new study he co-authored that revealed insights on the topic from South Africa, India, and the United States.

Duke postdoctoral fellow Dimitris Floros is working with the Nicholas School of the Environment's GRACE Lab to explore whether the existing grid could be run in a “smarter” way by analyzing, understanding and reconciling uncertainty and modeling it. An evolution of the GRACE work, the Nicholas Institute brings together modelers such as Floros with lawyers, market experts and policy scholars to answer a pressing question: How can massive new loads—especially AI-driven data centers—connect to the grid without wrecking reliability or affordability?

Many Duke faculty have used small, strategic investments from the Provost’s Intellectual Community Planning Grants program to launch interdisciplinary collaborations that later attracted major external funding, created new academic programs and shaped public policy. One example is the Plastic Pollution Working Group, comprised of more than 60 Duke faculty, students, staff and postdocs aiming to better understand the issues around plastic pollution while working to develop solutions.

Recent federal orders that keep retiring coal-fired power plants open run the risk of reducing U.S. energy policy to "episodic exercises of emergency authority, untethered from economics, planning or climate reality," writes Nicholas Institute Director Brian Murray. In an op-ed for The Hill, Murray lays out steps the United States could take to ensure its energy policy supports national security goals in the long run.

As the United States retreats from climate policy, China signaled its rising intent to lead a transition away from fossil fuels and toward Chinese-made renewable energy technologies in remarks to world leaders at the World Economic Forum. “They are taking measures that have real climate importance, even if the drivers of those measures aren’t always primarily climate change,” Nicholas Institute expert Jackson Ewing told Inside Climate News.

In 2019, a team of researchers led by Ashley Ward, now director of Duke University's Heat Policy Innovation Hub, found higher overnight temperatures led to up to a 6% increase in preterm births in some regions of North Carolina. A person without access to cooling could historically open a window at night and find relief, "but when outdoor temperatures overnight remain high, it means that mechanism for cooling isn’t really available anymore," Ward told the Tampa Bay Times.

Energy executives told The Associated Press that companies can't make billion-dollar investments in clean energy projects with so much policy uncertainty. Consequently, greenhouse gas emissions will fall at a much lower rate than previously projected in the U.S., Nicholas Institute Director Brian Murray said.

Many of China's borrowers have been forced to roll over their loans, reducing the debt’s ultimate value. In that context, accepting an immediate payment for environmental protections rather than uncertain payments in the future—while also accruing geopolitical goodwill at a moment when the United States is retreating from climate and environmental cooperation—may be the more strategic choice, Duke expert Elizabeth Losos told Inside Climate News.

U.S. energy policy is colliding with explosive electricity demand from AI, rising power prices and growing political backlash. Nicholas Institute Director Brian Murray writes about how policy uncertainty, grid constraints and the Intelligence Age are reshaping the energy landscape in 2025—and what to watch next.

This month the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability and James E. Rogers Energy Access Project at Duke University welcomed Sandeep Pai as an executive in residence and senior lead for international energy transitions. Pai brings more than a decade of leadership experience at the intersection of research, program strategy and policy to the role.

Price responsiveness informs utility forecasts of load growth and peak demand, regulatory evaluations of investments and rate structures and government analyses of energy policies and their impacts. A new report from Duke University experts presents updated estimates of one measure of price responsiveness in the U.S. residential electricity market—the price elasticity of demand for electricity—and explores how it varies across all 50 states.