Earth Institute News Archive
posted 05/30/06
The Earth Institute at Columbia University Launches Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy
As the world’s population continues on its trajectory towards 9 billion people by 2050, access to reliable energy has become a source of economic and political insecurity. Moreover, with global carbon dioxide emissions currently surpassing 25 billion tons per year, deployment of technologies that supply energy services without raising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to dangerous levels have become a global priority.
To help ensure that developed and developing nations alike are able to meet their energy needs without destabilizing the Earth's climate, The Earth Institute at Columbia University has formed the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy with an initial, $5 million gift from the Lenfest Foundation.
"The mission of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy is defined by two broad challenges facing the world," said Klaus S. Lackner, the Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel Professor of Geophysics at Columbia and the director of the center. "First, an increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, due in large part to human use of fossil fuels, is likely to disrupt global climate systems and have negative consequences on human welfare. Second, a growing and increasingly wealthy human population will create greater demand for limited energy resources. In order to ensure a supply of energy over the next century and beyond, human societies will need to develop new energy sources, technologies and infrastructures."
To meet these challenges, the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy will focus the resources of the University on innovative research programs to develop technical and policy solutions to satisfy humanity’s current and projected energy demands, seeking to ensure a sufficient supply of environmentally sustainable energy for all humanity.
The Center's primary research focus will be the technological and institutional development of the three energy resources most likely to meet world's needs without increasing carbon dioxide emissions: solar, nuclear, and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage. At the same time, the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy will also seek to integrate technological research with analysis of the institutional, economic, and political context within which energy technologies are commercialized and deployed.
"Research and development of sustainable energy options represents a global challenge," said Lackner. "The Center will examine how to best design energy infrastructures, institutions and markets in developed industrial economies, emerging economies, and those economies which remain among the least developed."
About The Earth Institute
The Earth Institute at Columbia University is the world's
leading academic center for the integrated study of Earth, its environment
and society. The Earth Institute builds upon excellence in the core disciplines — earth
sciences, biological sciences, engineering sciences, social sciences and
health sciences — and stresses cross-disciplinary approaches to complex
problems. Through research, training and global partnerships, it mobilizes
science and technology to advance sustainable development, while placing
special emphasis on the needs of the world's poor.