Photo at the Innovation Showcase during Energy Week 2025.

Thank you to every member of the community who is helping to advance our Duke Climate Commitment! The 2025 State of the Duke Climate Commitment report highlights more than 100 examples of climate action and sustainability across Duke—each one a testament to what we can accomplish together. Learn more about how we are taking climate and sustainability action through research innovation, education integration, external engagement, sustainable operations and community partnerships. 

A graduate student team of five earned first place in the 2025 Energy in Emerging Markets Case Competition held at the Fuqua School of Business in November. They are the first “home” team in the competition’s 13-year history to take top honors! 

First-place team included (in photo, left to right):
* Shiyu (Judy) Zhu (Nicholas School of the Environment)
* Jeffrey (Hsuan-Yu) Chu (Nicholas School of the Environment)
* Yuan Yuan (Nicholas School of the Environment)
* Ruiqin Wu (Fuqua School of Business)
* Si Min Loo (Duke University Graduate School) 

In addition, a Duke student team from the Nicholas School of the Environment earned second place in the competition. Congrats to all!

Over the fall, the competition engaged 57 teams of graduate students from 44 universities in seven countries — the United States, Canada, India, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea and the United Kingdom — to develop business solutions to a real-world energy challenge facing this year's industry partner, Gridless.

The competition is part of Energy Week at Duke, an annual student-organized event series. It is sponsored by the Duke Fuqua MBA Energy Club and The James E. Rogers Energy Access Project at Duke. 

Powering up AI. Improving grid resilience. Breaking into energy finance. Several of many topics on the table at the 10th Energy Week at Duke in November, organized by dozens of undergraduate and graduate students from diverse Duke degree programs.

Can the future of health care reform also be a future of climate resilience—one that makes health care more sustainable, affordable, and accessible while reducing its environmental impact?  That question framed the recent Duke Climate Collaboration Symposium co-hosted by the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy and the Duke University School of Medicine. The event convened leaders across disciplines to explore how the health care landscape can adapt and lead in the face of a changing climate. 

Duke University’s U.N. Climate Change Negotiations Practicum is a hands-on course that explores international climate change negotiations and climate policy under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Sixteen Duke students are sharing their insights in real time on LinkedIn via #DukeCOP30 as they attend the 2025 U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP30).

What if the real cost of plastic isn't what we pay at checkout but something far larger? Duke research estimates that plastics are costing the U.S. $436 billion to $1.1 trillion every year. From health impacts (think exposures to chemicals) to environmental damage and greenhouse-gas emissions, the hidden costs are massive and growing. What does this mean for businesses, policymakers and individuals alike? And how do we turn these staggering figures into action? 

Duke School of Nursing faculty Iris Padilla and Valerie Sabol have a new publication in The Journal for Nurse Practitioners exploring the growing connection between climate change and type 2 diabetes. Their work highlights how environmental stressors—from extreme heat to food insecurity—are compounding risks for people living with diabetes, and how nurse practitioners are uniquely positioned to respond.

Tyler Norris’ work is shaping industry and policy conversations, with bipartisan policy efforts, academic impact and a new career opportunity. A study on rethinking load growth in U.S. power systems he co-authored has made waves across the energy sector. His research has led to a spot on the 2025 TIME100 Climate list, a guest essay in The New York Times and a new position at Google focused on energy innovation.

For the 10th annual Haunted Hospital at Duke in October, more than 100 students from Duke health care programs came together before Halloween to engage in fun and interactive simulations that connected health, climate and sustainability. During “Eco-Ween,” stations featuring patients suffering from extreme heat exhaustion to those affected by flooding brought the realities of the climate challenge into the classroom.

Eco-Ween was an interdisciplinary collaboration led by Dr. Margie Molloy, assistant director of the Duke IPEC, and co-sponsored by Duke AHEAD and Duke AHEC. 

Dr. Valerie Sabol, director of planetary health in the School of Nursing, suggested this year’s theme and said: “As healthcare professionals, we have actually always cared about the environment because we know that the environment does impact human health, and so it’s really important to make sure that we are embedding these concepts into our educational delivery and structures.” 

💡Sustainable Sparks is a new project highlighting Duke community members sparking change for a more sustainable campus.🌎✨ 

Could underground heat help reduce the carbon footprint and costs of running Duke’s campus-wide HVAC system? A research team aims to find out, in partnership with Duke Facilities Management and the Climate Commitment. In October, the team bored deep into the earth near Chiller Plant II on West Campus to gather rock samples and heat flow data for analysis. The data will help the team better understand how geothermal energy might help reduce Duke's carbon footprint.

Dec. 2 - Accelerating East Coast Geothermal: A Climate Commitment Symposium