Within months of the Paris climate talks, more than 20 city officials from around the world gathered in Washington, D.C. for a "how-to" on inventorying sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The training – led by Raj Buch, practice lead for the Walton Global Sustainability Solutions Services – helped attendees determine where emissions cuts are most needed.

Twenty-one city officials attended, from countries including Argentina, India, South Africa, Korea, Bolivia, China and Bangladesh. All of them were clients of World Bank, an organization that mainly finances Third World infrastructure projects and is concerned about the effects climate change will have on them.

Bank officials asked the School of Sustainability to design and deliver a curriculum around this topic, as it had done for other topics in the past. The workshop will be produced in an online format, as well.

Environmental humanities is a rapidly growing field focused on the study of human imagination, perception, behaviors and the relationship with their surrounding environments, both social and natural. Arizona State University humanist research is led by sustainability scholar Dr. Joni Adamson. Her research defines how and why, in the face of seemingly non-imminent danger, humans choose to act as they do and what would make them shift direction rapidly.

This approach is being integrated into all climate and energy research at ASU. This work will contribute substantially to the understanding of human behaviors, motivations, and decision-making, both individually and collaboratively. This research aims to catalyze the rapid social transitions needed to address global energy transitions and climate change.

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Green chemicals and biofuels are projected to become major players in the economy. This is incredibly important as CO2 levels rise and fossil fuel use becomes a liability.

Dr. Willem Vermaas, a senior sustainability scientist,  and his team have been researching a novel concept to use photosynthetic microorganisms or cyanobacteria as biocatalysts that use solar energy and carbon dioxide to produce and secrete fatty acids for direct production of biofuels without major production of biomass.

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Andrew Krause is a two-time graduate of the School of Sustainability. He was a member of the first cohort of graduating undergraduates in 2009, and also received a Master of Science in 2012.

Andrew is now the CEO of eecosphere, which he co-founded while at ASU. eecosphere connects responsible brands with conscious consumers online through social advocacy campaigns. The platform helps users adopt new sustainability behaviors into their lives, and gives them tools to scale their daily actions into global revolutions.

Why did you choose to study at ASU’s School of Sustainability?

I’m not your prototypical “tree hugger,” but I’ve always been fascinated by the complexities that make up sustainable change in a system. Originally, I wanted to be in the construction engineering field. However, I quickly became more intrigued by the way sustainability science has the potential to motivate and empower the mainstream to collectively engage with complex global issues.

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Jeffrey Jennings graduated from the School of Sustainability in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts, focusing on Society and Sustainability. He also has a Professional Science Masters in Science and Technology Policy from ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society.

Jennings works as a sustainability project coordinator for Arizona Public Service, where he focuses on corporate social responsibility and how to make APS a more sustainable company. He was named among the 2016 GreenBiz "30 Under 30" for his leadership in the sustainability field.

Why did you choose to study at ASU’s School of Sustainability?

Before choosing ASU, I considered Northern Arizona University and University of Arizona. It was a bit of a journey. I had always been attracted to multiple disciplines but wasn’t sure it would be possible to successfully combine my interests into one major. Initially, I started out in accounting and quickly realized that it wasn’t a good fit. Next, I strongly considered urban planning or supply chain before landing on sustainability.

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Yong Hang Zhang and Zachary Holman

The most efficient solar panels are often too expensive, but the cheaper solar panels are often inefficient. To combat this problem Zhang and Holman  invented an efficient, but cheap solar panel that broke the efficiency record for thin film celled panels.

School of Sustainability student Bridget Harding's love of the Korean language, which she studied throughout high school and her time at ASU, has shaped her path in a few profound ways.

First, it prompted her to study abroad in South Korea, where she became interested in East vs. West perspectives on nature and ecology. It also became a point of intrigue for potential employers, who viewed that the knack for learning such a difficult language as an indicator of other aptitudes – like learning difficult computer programs.

Harding was admitted into the Fulbright Scholarship Program in South Korea, where she will teach English for at least one year. She is one of the 118  uniquely-talented students to graduate from the School of Spring in 2016.

Two ASU biofuel projects are among six nationwide receiving $10 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to explore innovative solutions in bioenergy.

One project aims to improve algal biomass growth while reducing evaporation and eliminating the need for cooling. It has the potential to reach five times the current algal production rates, reducing the cost of enclosed algal cultivation systems and boosting total fuel potential.

The other will engineer cyanobacteria for the production of ethyl laurate, which is easily converted to biofuels or bioproducts that are compatible with existing infrastructure. The expected outcome is an economically competitive yield of a biofuel produced directly from CO2 under the influence of sunlight.

These projects will support the work of the Bioenergy Technologies Office to develop renewable and cost-competitive biofuels and develop a more robust bioeconomy. This means more green jobs and innovation, as well as a better environment and national energy security.

by Alex Slaymaker, Master of Sustainability Solutions

Typical events include people who know each other talking about the weather and their to-dos.

But ASU’s School of Sustainability is far from typical. A group of undergraduate and graduate students decided to elevate the conversation to topics that matter during the School of Sustainability’s 10-year anniversary celebration on April 14, 2016.

The all-day celebration included a Rescued Food Feast, featuring food with approaching expiration dates or small bruises that was "rescued" from the landfill by a local grocery store. The event was hosted during lunchtime in the middle of campus, where the School of Sustainability offered the free food to engage students, staff, faculty, alumni and community members in the celebration of sustainability efforts at ASU and beyond.

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According Daniel Sarewitz, advisory board member to the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, the number of scientific publications has been growing exponentially over the last 250 years. With the specific goal to maximize publication numbers, the quality of the publications suffers. Subsequently, when low-quality publications are cited, the reduction of quality is perpetuated.

In a May 2016 article in Huffpost Green, the directorate of the ASU Wrigley Institute examines the question, "Can universities save the planet?"

In the piece, authors Rob Melnick, Gary Dirks and Chris Boone contend that practical solutions to the mega-problems we face are not being implemented quickly enough. They attribute this gap, in part, to the incremental advance of these problems – too difficult to see for many people to take seriously.

Universities – with their vast portfolio of expertise – can be instrumental in closing this gap, say the authors. But only if they move from the current model, where knowledge generation and dissemination is the sole goal, to one where solution implementation is the desired end.

One of the nation’s top experts on algae, ASU sustainability scientist Milton Sommerfeld, has spent half of a century exploring the possibilities of the plant as a super food, fuel, fertilizer and more.

Sommerfeld – co-director of the Arizona Center for Algae Technology and Innovation at ASU's Polytechnic campus – explains that there are roughly 75,000 different types of algae, and that certain strains are more optimal for given uses than others.

According to Sommerfeld, the most immediate impact from algae will be in bioremediation – a waste management technique that uses organisms to remove or neutralize pollutants from a contaminated site. He expects commercial algal biofuels further down the line, as production will require scaling the small cultivation operations of the present to an industrial level.

Mark Henderson, Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Associate Dean of Barrett, the Honors College, School of Sustainability Senior Scientist

Named a President's Professor for his outstanding work in creating the GlobalResolve.

To help address the mounting challenges of Africa's most populous city – Lagos, Nigeria – the Global Sustainability Solutions Services of ASU’s Walton Initiatives hosted a three-day workshop there in April 2016.

The first of its kind in the world, the "Introduction to Ethical Circular Economy" workshop was hosted at Sustainability School Lagos – an institution modeled after ASU's Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability. It encouraged the group of 35 students, city and state officials, and others to imagine an economy where resources are remanufactured, refurbished and recycled – nothing is wasted.

“There is a tremendous amount of potential for a circular economy in rapidly developing countries,” said Senior Sustainability Scientist and Practice Lead Raj Buch. “It’s where the larger opportunity arises because it’s where most of the economic development is going to happen.”

Buch co-led the course with General Manager Dan O’Neill and Olufemi Olarewaju – an Executive Master of Sustainability Leadership graduate and the executive director of the Sustainability School Lagos.

Join us on Monday, May 16, 2016 from 4:00-5:30 p.m. in Wrigley Hall, Room 481 as the Center for Biodiversity Outcomes presents the next installment of the Biodiversity Event Series, Emerging Trends in Conservation.

Conservation is continuing to evolve as new opportunities and threats present themselves, calling for new insights, tools, models and lessons. Leading experts from Conservation International will discuss emerging trends in conservation from a variety of perspectives including oceans, wildlife, protected areas, agriculture, and ecosystem services measurement, valuation and accounting.

An ASU undergraduate project called “Phoenix,” which will design and build a bread loaf-sized satellite, has been awarded $200,000 by the NASA Space Grant Undergraduate Student Instrument Program. The satellite, called a “3U CubeSat,” will use thermal infrared imaging to investigate how human activity and weather create urban heat islands around the Valley.

"Phoenix" follows an interdisciplinary model, made up of students and faculty from the School of Sustainability, among others. Though faculty and a graduate student will be mentors on the project, the team of more than 25 undergraduate students will be designing, promoting, building and running it from beginning to end.

“This project is history in the making,” said School of Earth and Space Exploration associate professor Judd Bowman, the project’s principal investigator. “No undergraduate student group at ASU has run a satellite in space before.”

The Center for Biodiversity Outcomes announces the Central Arizona Conservation Alliance (CAZCA) Biodiversity Fellowship for the 2016-2017 academic year. The award is available to one graduate student in the amount of $12,000. The award recipient will conduct high-priority research topics, which will support the vision of CAZCA to promote the study and restoration of our regional desert mountain preserve system.

The student will collect relevant GIS layers and conduct conductivity analyses while working closely with The Connectivity and Habitat Blocks working group of the CAZCA to help identify key conservation areas outside of the current preserve.

Applications are due by June 15, 2016, and the recipient will be notified no later than July 1, 2016. See application directions here.

It is highly advised to meet with the working group chair Scott Sprague, Arizona Game and Fish Department, and CAZCA’s program lead Stacie Beute to discuss your ideas and ensure that your proposed research aligns with the research priorities of the alliance.

CBO faculty affiliate faculty can be found here.

Chandler, Arizona native Kayla Bellman graduates from the School of Sustainability in Spring 2016 with a Bachelor of Science in the Sustainable Energy, Materials and Technology track. She will also receive a Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies with a Certificate in Human Rights.

What does sustainability mean to you?

To me, sustainability is the action of pursuing a just world. It is an act grander than one person, one community, and one nation. It demands the attention of the global community, immediately.

What was your “aha” moment, when you realized you wanted to study sustainability?

Growing up, I believed the medical field was the only way to “do good” – all my aunts and uncles are in the medical field. The product of two engineers, I was determined to do just about anything other than engineering.

Over the course of my senior year in high school, I came to the conclusion that environmental work could also fulfill my desire to “do good.” I found the School of Sustainability through a Google search, and I realized the best-of-the-best was in my backyard.

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Anna Jean Bettis graduated with a Bachelor of Arts – International Development from the School of Sustainability in 2014. This spring, the Kankakee, Illinois native graduates again - this time with her Masters of Sustainability Solutions.

What was your “aha” moment, when you realized you wanted to study sustainability?

During my senior year in high school in a marine biology course, there was a small section at the end about environmental destruction in the oceans. Up until this point, I was totally unaware of the massive environmental crisis we faced.

I took it upon myself to read more about environmental problems, from mass extinctions to the shifts in availability of water due to climate change. I was shocked and felt an urgency to be part of the solution. I had already planned to go to ASU, so when I learned that the School of Sustainability was a leader – the first in the nation – I was excited to apply!

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In a May 2016 segment of "Is it worth it?" on FOX 10 Arizona Morning, ASU senior sustainability scientist Harvey Bryan answered frequently-asked questions about installing solar panels on a home.

Bryan, a professor in The Design School, explained to hosts Rick D'Amico and Andrea Robinson that there are a variety of rooftop solar options available. They range from crystalline to thin-film, and vary in efficiency and price.

He confirmed that 85% of the rooftop solar market is constituted by power-purchasing agreements, where there are no up-front costs and you are paid for the energy that you generate. There are also leasing agreements, where you pay to lease the panels but get your energy for free, as well as outright purchasing.

In the instance of outright purchasing, an expensive option in the short-term, Bryan estimates owners can expect paybacks in six to eight years. This is because technology is reducing costs by up to 30% a year in some instances.

Bryan advises shopping around and getting at least three quotes prior to making a purchase.