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Discover climate course materials and resources.
Search the shared repository of simulations, case descriptions and course syllabi to enhance your own climate-related teaching.
- Course
Most recently taught Fall 2025
This course critically examines the growing opposition to Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks in the United States and globally. Students will explore the historical evolution of sustainability, the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of ESG backlash, and how this impacts ESG integration in business, policy, and investment. The objective is to prepare students to engage productively with critiques of ESG in their professional careers, whether in academia, government, or the private sector.
Through an open-discussion format, case studies, and engagement with perspectives from both ESG proponents and skeptics, students will refine their ability to articulate ESG related arguments, navigate controversy, and develop pragmatic strategies for sustainability leadership in an increasingly polarized landscape.
- Topics on: ESG, Resilence
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This open access book presents peer-reviewed chapters that introduce the subject of climate change within formal and informal sectors of education in Africa, as key to building the capacity of current and future generations to address the most pressing global issue.
An insight into existing practices, perceptions, and prospects for climate change education in Africa can bring to light relevant frameworks that can support a climate-resilient future in the continent.
Among others, the book contends that there is a need to rethink current practices of climate change education in the continent by optimizing Indigenous knowledge systems and context-relevant pedagogies as important strategies.
Governments, civil society, and other stakeholders in Africa can draw on the rich insights captured in this book as they consider feasible approaches to resolve the current climate crisis.
- Topics on: Decarbonization, Energy, Food, Impact, Infrastructure, Policy, Resilence, Science, Supply Chain, Water
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It is widely accepted that climate factors can and do affect human mobility, though the degree of their influence varies depending on local contexts. In the case of population displacement, rapid onset climate extremes have a relatively direct impact on mobility, and for longer-term migration climate factors also have been shown to play a role, generally mediated by more direct drivers. There is a growing recognition that underlying institutional and structural factors (i.e., root causes) shape the way the climate stressors impact local migration decision-making, and that cultural proclivities and inequitable access to resources, markets, and political power structures often set the stage for ensuing migration flows (domestic and international). In many low income settings the donor and development assistance community are grappling with these complex nexus issues as they seek to develop policies and programs that reduce the potential for distress or mass migration. Responses to date generally fall into four categories; 1) those that address the livelihood aspects of climate migration — e.g., by improving the prospects for local adaptation; 2) those that seek to facilitate mobility as an adaptation mechanism; 3) those that resettle people in new locations and offer migrant protections; and 4) those that seek to mitigate the impacts of those movements, including environmental impacts, on receiving communities. In high income settings, responses to current and potentially increased immigration from developing countries tends to fall into two camps: a resurgent nationalism with measures to prevent or deter migration versus more migrant-friendly policies that seek to protect migrant rights while acknowledging responsibility for historic greenhouse gas emissions. In addition, high income countries are facing climate impacts of their own such as sea level rise, riparian flooding and massive fires that have displaced thousands and prompted managed retreat from at-risk areas. All this has brought to the fore questions of equity and climate justice as marginalized populations everywhere are often disproportionately affected and least compensated.
This interdisciplinary course focuses on the social, demographic, economic, political, environmental and climatic factors that shape human mobility, while addressing the legal categories of international mobility (e.g., migrant versus refugee). We explore underlying drivers of the various types of migration – from forced to voluntary and those forms in between – in order to better understand current and future trends. The course brings to the fore equity, climate justice, and human rights considerations, as well as the mental health dimensions of climate displacement and migration.
- Topics on: Adaptation, Impact, Science
- Course
Most recently taught Spring 2026
This advanced course teaches the real-world skills required to finance infrastructure assets, taught from the perspective of industry practitioners. Each week, students will learn how to apply project finance principles to invest in a different infrastructure asset, including utility-scale solar, wind, battery storage, natural gas, and nuclear projects. Classes will feature a mix of lectures, case studies, hands-on modeling, and discussions with industry experts.
Trillions of dollars in investment are needed to build the infrastructure to address climate change and the growing demand for electricity. This course is designed for the students wanting to learn how to make those investments. By the end of the course, students will be prepared to navigate the complexities of infrastructure finance, including the frameworks, tools, and skills to invest in projects driving the global energy transition.
- Topics on: Business, Energy, Finance
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Most recently taught in taught Fall 2024
We need to transition toward a more environmentally-sustainable society given both pollution and its health effects, and the impacts of extreme weather and climate change. The production and consumption of energy is the largest contributor to these concerns, and so the transition to a clean energy economy is essential. The increasing energy needs of the world’s growing population make this an ongoing challenge. At the same time, energy security and affordability, and social and economic inequities, must also be considered. New technologies and effective policies are needed to help drive increased deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency. Finance is also a key lever to drive the implementation of clean energy. The availability and cost of capital is a key determinant in scaling renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.
This course focuses on the finance and market aspects of the clean energy economy, and integrates technology, policy, and finance to evaluate both the opportunities and challenges. There is a focus on renewable energy generation, as mass electrification using cleaner generation sources is necessary to sustain our energy-dependent lives and economies. The course also looks at energy efficiency, including specific end-uses of energy that are responsible for the majority of emissions (e.g., buildings, electric vehicles). Throughout the course, finance will be analyzed as a barrier to, or enabler of, greater adoption of clean energy.
This is a full semester course. Interactive lectures, and guest speakers where appropriate, will cover these topics in the first twelve classes (the final two remaining classes will be reserved for group presentations). The course can be divided into three sections (class numbers shown in parentheses):
- ● Acquiring a basic understanding of the U.S. electricity market: (1) history of the energy industry and the importance of finance, (2) energy fundamentals and electricity markets today, and (3) clean energy and grid integration.
- ● Applying the tools of finance to clean energy: (4) overview of key financing concepts, (5) financial modeling for energy projects, (6) review of key financing concepts.
- ● Integrating knowledge of the electricity market and finance to explore: (7) opportunities and challenges of clean energy, (8) rate design and the financing of distributed energy resources, (9) financing mechanisms for clean energy, (10) electric vehicles, (11) building energy efficiency, and (12) future of clean energy finance; conclusion.
Course assignments will include financial models, problem sets, case studies, and a final group presentation. The financial modeling will be designed to consider the varying levels of student experience. An important aspect of the course is for students to learn some of the analytical tools used by industry practitioners to make investment decisions. While no specific financial modeling experience is required, students should have basic spreadsheet skills or be prepared to learn them. As the course progresses, students will learn to appreciate the roles of technology, policy, and finance in the transition to a clean energy economy. Upon completion of this class, students should understand the fundamentals of the U.S. electricity sector, the role of clean energy, the opportunities and limitations of finance, and some of the different mechanisms to support clean energy finance.
This is an elective course designed for both students with a limited background in finance but with an interest in building that skill set, and students with prior backgrounds in finance that are seeking to apply those skills to financing the clean energy economy. Space permitting, the course is open to cross-registrants from other Columbia University graduate programs, and students from several schools at Columbia have successfully completed this course (Arts and Sciences, Business, Climate, Engineering and Applied Science, International and Public Affairs, Professional Studies, Public Health, and Social Work). The course is approved for the Certificate in Sustainable Finance requirement.
While this course has been taught in online and HyFlex (hybrid flexible) formats, the expectation is that this course will be taught in-person this semester.
- Topics on: Energy, Finance
- Course
Most recently taught Fall 2025
The Impact Investing course provides students with an overview of the entire spectrum of investing approaches used by impact investors. This is done through a combination of cases and lectures by the professor, and guest presentations by leading impact investors and thought leaders. The substantive areas covered include: (1) how investors and investment managers and advisors select and structure their impact investments; (2) the differing financial return and social impact return expectations of impact investors; and (3) the challenges and methodologies for measuring impact. This course is designed around the different types of impact investments from the perspective of investors, and is composed of four modules:
1. Responsible Investing – socially responsible investing (SRI) is designed to screen public equity investments of companies or sectors believed to be causing social harm.
2. Sustainable Investing – also referred to as ESG investing, is designed to select public or private equity investments using fundamental analysis that incorporates environmental, social, and governance factors.
3. Thematic Investing –private equity and venture capital investments designed to earn a market risk-adjusted return while also addressing a specific social or environmental problem.
4. Impact First Investing – private investments designed primarily to address a social or environmental problem, with no expectation of achieving market returns.
- Topics on: Business, ESG, Finance, Investing
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Most recently taught Spring 2026
This half semester course provides students with the opportunity to perform due diligence on early-stage social ventures (nonprofit and for-profit ventures with a social or environmental mission). This course is designed for MBA students interested in impact investing, social entrepreneurship, or philanthropy. The objective of the course is for students to learn both the theory of investing in early-stage social ventures and the practice of evaluating early-stage social ventures through a due diligence process. This course is not designed for the evaluation of larger, well-established social enterprises.
Students are placed in teams to evaluate social entrepreneurs from the Columbia University community who have applied for funding from the Tamer Fund for Social Ventures. The course is a combination of in-class lectures and discussion, and practical application of class lessons outside of the classroom. Major topics covered include: the due diligence process, assessing venture pitches and teams, due diligence in emerging markets, due diligence of mission-first for-profit and nonprofit startups, impact measurement and management, and valuation and deal structure.
During the course, each student team completes detailed due diligence on their assigned social venture, including diligence on applicants, the social venture and the sector. The course concludes with student teams submitting a written due diligence report and a recommendation for funding to the Investment Board of the Tamer Fund for Social Ventures.
- Topics on: ESG, Finance, Investing
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Energy Economics and Policy (EEP) is: about energy markets and policies applied to them. lt is designed to give class participants practical experience in making connections between economic concepts and real-world regulatory policy questions in a set of extremely important, interrelated market — energy market. Drawing on the tools of economics, this course will study the efficiency and public policy issues raised in energy markets, and in the environmental markets to which they are closely tied.
How do energy markets work? When and how should the government regulate energy markets? How should firms respond to these regulations? How should we think about carbon dioxide emissions and other environmental externalities? What is the role for energy efficiency, innovation, and incentives?
- Topics on: Energy, Finance, Policy
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“This subject addresses the relationship between the legal system and the development and utilization of science and technology. It also explores the ways in which law, economics, and technological change shape public policy, and compares law and economics as alternative paradigms for encouraging sustainability, growth, and employment.
The subject examines some of the essential literature on the interface between technology and law, and it focuses on a series of specific topics in this area that have been (or are likely to be) both important and controversial. These include: environmental/public health risks generally; genetic engineering; telecommunications and the Internet; pharmaceuticals; nanotechnology; industrial automation; the impacts of intellectual property law on innovation and equity; the role of health, safety and environmental regulation and its effect on innovation; and the uses, limitations, and alternatives to cost-benefit analysis as a tool for guiding public policy.
- Topics on: Energy, Finance, Policy, Technology
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This course provides an in-depth study of batteries, focusing on their chemistry, modeling, monitoring, estimation, and management. The course covers fundamental electrochemical principles, and different modeling approaches, including equivalent circuit models, electrochemical models, and data-driven techniques. Topics such as state-of-charge (SOC) and state-of-health (SOH) estimation, observer-based estimation techniques, and battery management systems (BMS) are also explored. The course is designed for graduate students in Electrical Engineering.
- Topics on: Energy, Engineering
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This class teaches modern tools and methods for product design and development. The cornerstone is a project in which teams of management, engineering, and industrial design students conceive, design, and prototype a new product or service. The class is primarily intended for Sloan MBA students (particularly the Entrepreneurship and Innovation track and the Leaders for Global Operations program) and for MIT engineering graduate students (particularly mechanical engineering and manufacturing master’s programs). The course is jointly taught with Rhode Island School of Design for industrial design students as a senior studio.
- Topics on: Energy, Finance, Impact
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Integrative experience that explores the complex set of circumstances and choices leaders must face in light of uncertain environmental and social consequences. Drawing on academic and practical experiences, students engage in a semester-long project focused on a host organization’s sustainability challenge.
Peer-to-peer learning accompanies in-class cases, simulations, and role-playing to provide students with practical skills for application in projects and for careers beyond. A shared deep dive into a systemic challenge provides a chance for students across programs to reflect and engage in dialogue about the ethical landscape of business. Through personal reflection and career visioning, students clarify their own personal commitments to leadership and change.
- Topics on: Economics, Energy, Finance, Impact, Technology
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5.S05 explores Building Sector Energy and Climate Innovations; such as technologies and services that strategically enhance building efficiency and electrification; incorporate site solar, battery storage, and electric vehicles; and are enabled to integrate with today’s increasingly renewable electric grids. Such innovations provide a foundation for a New Era for Energy Management: technology and business innovations supported by climate-centric public policies as well as a robust Green Capital market. These enable the energy management industry (over $200 billion worldwide) to rapidly grow due to: • Strong economics: with technology and price trends which are positive and dramatic. • Needed for Climate: Large scale energy management is a substantial and essential component of world carbon balance, and with no net cost (positive NPV).
Strong Demand for energy that is Digitized, Decarbonized, and Democratized: especially when market innovations make it costless (up front), riskless, effortless, and for some, a choice as to how and where their energy is produced (Prosumers). With enabling support from the instructors, materials, and assignments, class members examine and reflect on emerging technology, analytic, business, and policy innovations that help achieve today’s imperatives for a sustainable and equitable future. We then consider together strategies that may further advance Energy Management’s impact and benefits
- Topics on: Economics, Energy, Justice, Technology
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The EDGE Seminar gives students a unique opportunity to learn about today’s most important energy and environment industry issues from senior executives. In this for-credit curricular offering, Fuqua students have a chance to engage in candid conversations in a small-group setting with influential leaders who have deep industry experience and knowledge.
Seminars cover topics ranging from global energy market economics and finance to value chain sustainability, carbon markets, and energy transition. The Fall section of this seminar focuses more on energy issues, while the Spring section focuses more on environmental sustainability and ESG topics. Climate is a prominent discussion topic in both the Fall and Spring. Students can take the EDGE Seminar twice while at Fuqua (with different speakers each time).
- Topics on: Energy
- Course
Over the last several decades, energy markets have become some of the most dynamic markets of the world economy. Traditional fossil fuel and electricity markets have seen a partial shift from heavy regulation to market-driven incentives, while rising environmental concerns have led to a wide array of new regulations and “environmental markets”. The growth of renewable energy is another source of rapid change, but brings with it a whole new set of technological and policy challenges.
This changing energy landscape requires quick adaptation from energy companies, but also offers opportunities to turn regulations into new business. The objective of this course is to provide the economist’s perspective on a broad range of topics that professionals in the energy industry will encounter. Topics include the effect of competition, market power and scarcity on energy prices, extraction and pricing of oil and gas, geopolitical uncertainty and risk in hydrocarbon investments, the environmental policies related to the energy sector and their effectiveness, cap-and-trade markets, and transportation policies. There is special emphasis on the economics and finance of renewable energy, including an introduction to energy storage.
- Topics on: Energy, Policy
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The world is engaged in a transition to clean and sustainable (“green”) energy. The ensuing disruption creates opportunities for innovation on many fronts, including new social arrangements, new business models, and entrepreneurial activities of many kinds. OIDD 5250 is a business analytics 1 class that addresses these matters by surveying and introducing the main kinds of models and modeling techniques being used in the green transition.
These include: (non-financial) accounting models (e.g., for calculating carbon footprints, for ESG investing, for life-cycle analysis), constrained optimization models (resource allocation using mathematical programming or AI methods in the form of metaheuristics), and system performance models (typically as simulations and often using AI methods such as agent-based modeling). There will be special emphasis on decision theoretic models and multi-criteria decision making (MCDM). These models are used to support decision making based on data and model outputs from multiple sources and domains. The problem of overcoming low data quality with proper use of modeling is a major theme in the course.
- Topics on: Energy, Operations
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The course will offer analytical tools and concepts to analyze the strategic environment for climate innovation and apply these to a variety of cases. A climate innovation here refers to a low-carbon/net-negative technology and/or business model.
- Topics on: Energy, Impact
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This course is about the economics of energy and environmental markets. Topics include the drivers of supply and demand, organized spot and futures markets, market power and regulation, energy transportation and storage, environmental policy, climate change, innovation, and the energy transition.
- Topics on: Energy, Finance
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Most recently taught Fall 2025
This course aims at familiarizing students with major issues surrounding global economic governance, exploring both the issues that have been or are now subject to current debates, as well as the institutional questions involved. “Global economic governance” is understood in a broad sense, and thus includes not only global but also regional frameworks, and both formal institutions as well as informal groupings of countries (such as the G7/8 and the G20) and rules of international transactions that have been left to bilateral agreements or are under the domain of national sovereignty but do have global implications. “Economics” is also understood in a broad sense, to include social and environmental issues.
It will start with three general lectures that will place the debates on global governance in relation to those on globalization, and will give a first look at the objectives of international cooperation, the historical evolution of the current governance and typologies of the different rules, organization and governance structures that have been created at varied times. It will then deal in detail with major issues that international cooperation: the role of the UN system, development cooperation, global monetary and financial management, trade and investment, international tax cooperation, and climate change. It will end with discussion of the governance of the system, and a recapitulation of governance issues and reform proposals in light of the global economic developments in the 2008-2019, during COVID-19, and during the current crisis that mixes geopolitical issues with an economic crisis.
- Topics on: Economics, Policy
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Most recently taught Fall 2025
This course will provide students with a framework for historical and current debates on development. It will offer students a basic understanding of what constitutes “development” (ends) and how to promote it (means). The initial lecture presents the broad issue of development trends and the multidisciplinary approach, as seen today through the Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015. The subsequent classes then look at classical and contemporary theories of economic development. They will be followed by a critical comparative analysis of development experiences. A series of lectures will then concentrate on institutional issues, social development and environmental sustainability (climate change).
- Topics on: Economics