Ashley Ward joins 97.9 The Hill’s "News on the Hill" program every other Thursday to comment on the latest climate news.

According to Copernicus, the EU agency that tracks global warming, extreme heat in 2024 will likely break records. “We’re talking about ecosystem change on a global scale that’s going to affect all of us,” Ashley Ward, director of the Duke Heat Policy Innovation Hub, told The New York Times. “Our energy systems, built environment, and medical services were never built with this type of temperature regime in mind.”

Extreme heat contributed to more U.S. deaths in 2023 than any other year in the last two decades. Ashley Ward, director of Duke's Heat Policy Innovation Hub, says there is no standardized way to report these deaths. “There needs to be guidance and standards developed for how we determine heat is a contributor,” she told USA Today.

The 2024 Duke Alumni Engagement and Development Impact Report highlights the launch of "Cooling Communities: Strategic Partnerships for Energy Equity in the Carolinas." This new project is led by experts at the Nicholas Institute and Duke Divinity School, and nonprofit groups N.C. Interfaith Power & Light, N.C. Council of Churches, and S.C. Interfaith Power & Light, alongside collaborators at Duke Energy.

Increasing temperatures, rising energy costs and systemic social disparity combine to put 16 percent of Americans in energy poverty. Ashley Ward, director of Duke's Heat Policy Innovation Hub, defined energy poverty for CBS News as "the layering of burdens without a means, at the individual level, to combat those burdens."

As high temperature records are set and broken again, cities are looking into establishing renters’ rights to cooling equipment. The major challenge rental cooling standards proponents need to overcome, is the public perception that air conditioning is a luxury, not a necessity, Ashley Ward, director of Duke University’s Heat Policy Innovation Hub, told Smart Cities Dive. “What we’re learning is we have to develop policies specific to the issue of heat,” Ward said.

The National Integrated Heat Health Information System (NIHHIS) on Wednesday released the first-ever National Heat Strategy to promote proactive coordination between federal agencies on heat planning, response and resilience. Duke University experts Ashley Ward and Jordan Clark provided comments for the media.

"We're racing against the clock" as global temperatures continue to rise, says Duke University expert Jordan Clark. Clark and Ashley Ward, researchers at Duke's Heat Policy Innovation Hub, talked with The New York Times about a new report in Nature Medicine showing that behavioral and social changes in Europe have reduced heat mortality.

Tennessee is one of many states that doesn’t define air conditioning as an essential utility, leaving renters responsible for purchasing window units to keep their homes cool if a landlord doesn’t provide them. “It is a moral failing in this country that we have people making the choice between running an air conditioner and buying food or medicine or having to go sit in their car to cool off at night because they have no air conditioning in their home,” said Ashley Ward, director of the Duke Heat Policy Innovation Hub. 

On the sidelines of Duke's inaugural HeatWise Policy Partnership Summit, Scott Tew (Trane Technologies), Ashley Ward (Duke Heat Policy Innovation Hub) and Helen Walter-Terrinoni (Trane Technologies) discussed how to elevate science and community insights to protect people from extreme heat. The three workshopped an example of rethinking heat policy—how to address the lack of adequate cooling for 36,000 public schools in the United States.