Highlights in the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability

Preserving Natural Capital

Preserving Natural Capital

Ecosystems provide vital services to humans, such as filtering drinking water and protecting coastal communities. Researchers at Stanford’s Natural Capital Project have developed software that factors the value of natural systems into land-use decisions. Their model is already being used in the United States, China, and throughout Central and South America. Launched with an Environmental Venture Fund grant from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, the project has grown into an ongoing partnership with The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and the University of Minnesota.

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“Faux Wood” May Reduce Landfill

Stanford researchers have developed a synthetic wood substitute that may one day save trees, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and shrink landfills. Designed to be stable on site, the new biocomposite material decomposes quickly in a landfill, releasing methane that can be captured for energy or used to make fresh lumber. Piloted with an Environmental Venture Project grant from Stanford, the team’s success has led to additional funding, including a California Environmental Protection Agency grant to develop biodegradable plastics.

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New Focus on Energy

New Focus on Energy

Meeting surging demand for energy poses significant challenges to our planet and humankind. From more efficient photovoltaic cells to global strategies to reduce atmospheric carbon, Stanford is moving to the forefront on these critical issues. The Precourt Institute for Energy and TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy draw expertise from throughout the university to address the world’s most pressing energy problems. The Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, jointly based in the schools of business and law, focuses on regulatory and market obstacles to clean energy technology.

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Training Environmental Leaders

Because environmental problems are increasingly complex, their solutions cut across academic disciplines. Traditional graduate programs tend to confine students to a single discipline. The Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER), hosted by the School of Earth Sciences and engaging faculty from around the university, allows students to combine expertise from the natural and social sciences, engineering, and other fields. In addition to 30 doctoral students, E-IPER serves students pursuing joint master’s degrees in law, medicine, and business.

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Empowering Students to Solve Problems

Coral reefs are essential to healthy oceans. Jamie Fleischfresser, a doctoral student in engineering, studies how nutrients flow through the water column, modeling the way minute changes in current can affect how corals grow. This nontraditional combination of engineering and marine biology is made possible by her Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship—one of 53 new fellowships university wide that empower students to cut across traditional academic boundaries to pursue cutting-edge research on complex problems.

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Nanoscale Technology

Large-Scale Power from Nanoscale Technology

The dream of a lower-carbon energy grid means somehow storing renewable power generated on windy or sunny days until it is needed. Current batteries can’t do it cheaply. In 2011, Stanford researchers announced they had used nanoparticles of a copper compound to develop a battery technology so efficient and inexpensive it could be used for batteries big enough for large-scale energy storage. The material depends on particles a mere 100 atoms wide—an example of how Stanford’s growing strength in nanoscale science and engineering supports environmental problem solving.

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ABOUT THE INITIATIVE

With natural resources stressed as never before by the demands of human activity, Stanford embraced the challenge of ensuring that people can live well on our planet now and in the centuries ahead.

Professors from three different fields joined together to lead the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability: Jeffrey Koseff, the Campbell Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Forman University Fellow in Undergraduate Education; Pamela Matson, the Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences and Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies; and Buzz Thompson, the Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law.

From the outset, the initiative focused teaching and research on five areas: freshwater, land use and conservation, climate and energy, oceans and estuaries, and the sustainable built environment.

With a landmark gift from Ward, ’64, and Priscilla Woods in 2006, the university established the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Professors Koseff and Thompson became the institute’s Perry L. McCarty Co-Directors. Housed in the new Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Environment and Energy Building, the Stanford Woods Institute now brings together students, faculty, and staff to join forces on environmental issues. The institute provides special funding for interdisciplinary research, convenes global leaders, and partners with other institutions, all in order to “create practical solutions for people and the planet.”

The far-reaching issue of energy rapidly attracted a critical mass of faculty and students and gave rise to its own organizations: A historic commitment from Jay Precourt, ’59, MS ’60, led to the creation in 2009 of the Precourt Institute for Energy, which includes the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center. The Precourt Institute supports a growing network of researchers whose goal is the rapid transformation of the world’s energy systems.

In the same year, in another milestone in environmental and energy philanthropy, Thomas Steyer, MBA ’83, and Kat Taylor, JD/MBA ’86, funded the launch of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy to advance technologies that make renewable energy economically competitive and environmentally friendly. In 2010, their further support enabled the law school and business school jointly to establish the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance to push clean energy technology to deployment through a focus on finance and regulation.

The environmental initiative’s focus on oceans also inspired a new enterprise: the Center for Ocean Solutions (COS), established at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment with a significant investment from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, is a partnership among Stanford, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. COS takes the initiative’s hallmark approach of integrating cutting-edge science and technology with economic, social, and political expertise to identify practical approaches to sustainability.

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