Top teams from Syracuse, Duke and McGill universities were collectively awarded $15,000 in the finals of the 2024 Energy in Emerging Markets Case Competition held Tuesday as part of Energy Week at Duke. Over the fall, the competition challenged more than 70 teams to develop energy business models for Ugandan e-mobility company Zembo.

Senior representatives from Duke Kunshan University’s founding partners were joined by renowned scholars, policymakers, entrepreneurs and investors for the 2024 Duke International Forum, an annual meeting of minds focusing this year on “Renovating Climate Policy and Green Finance for Future Sustainability.” Nicholas Institute experts Brian Murray, Jackson Ewing and Jonathan Phillips were among the participants.

How can we bridge the climate adaptation and resilience funding gap, currently less than a third of the $200 billion needed annually?

This World Economic Forum blog post from Jonathan Phillips (Director, James E. Rogers Energy Access Project), alongside Jo Puri (UN Assistant Secretary General, International Fund for Agricultural Development [IFAD]) and Rania A. Al-Mashat (Minister of International Cooperation, Arab Republic of Egypt), explores innovative approaches to monetizing resilience benefits, highlighting the value propositions for different stakeholders, and the financial and nonfinancial returns from resilience investments.

Forty-five Duke University scholars will pursue new research on sustainable, equitable solutions to address climate change and its effects, supported by grants from the Duke Climate Research Innovation Seed Program (CRISP).

Twelve teams have collectively been awarded nearly $700,000 to investigate topics such as equitable disaster recovery, community insurance, financing climate-smart agriculture, water quality challenges posed by sea level rise, forest-based carbon offsets and more.

How often do we take for granted the ease of flipping on a light switch and being able to read, cook or do work with abundant light? Watch this webinar recording from Duke Alumni Lifelong Learning  to hear Duke experts, including Jonathan Phillips, Director of the James E. Rogers Energy Access Project, discuss the interconnected nature of climate and human development policies and goals—ultimately fostering a more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive future for all. See the other videos in the playlist here.

Investments aimed at building the resilience of climate-vulnerable communities are falling woefully short—and the private sector is almost entirely absent, write Rania A. Al-Mashat (Egypt’s Minister of International Cooperation), Jyotsna Puri (International Fund for Agricultural Development) and Jonathan Phillips (James E. Rogers Energy Access Project at Duke) in a blog post for NextBillion. To help enable this investment, the trio discuss an initiative to measure and monetize climate resilience in an effort to establish a "resilience credit."

The Rhodes Information Initiative at Duke (Rhodes iiD), in partnership with the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, is now accepting student applications for this summer’s Climate+ projects.

Toddi Steelman, Duke’s vice president and vice provost for climate and sustainability, will travel to Singapore and China from Nov. 6–18 to meet with Duke partners to discuss climate and sustainability efforts. Duke representatives joining Steelman for the Duke International Forum on Nov. 17 include Nicholas Institute experts Brian Murray, Jackson Ewing, Jonathan Phillips and Elizabeth Losos.

The director of the James E. Rogers Energy Access Project at Duke University will work with DKU’s International Master of Environmental Policy program, furthering research on low-carbon development and investment.

In this episode of the Ways & Means podcast from the Sanford School of Public Policy, experts working with the James E. Rogers Energy Access Project at Duke University discuss new research into how solar mini-grids could change lives for farmers in Ethiopia, and why that matters for the climate as a whole.