Largest-ever Cornell delegation to attend Climate Week NYC

Cornell will send its largest-ever delegation to Climate Week NYC 2025, to present on issues including the renewable energy transition, protecting public health from increasing heat waves and addressing the impact of climate change on housing and community planning.

Now in its 16th year, Climate Week NYC is always held alongside the U.N. General Assembly to increase visibility and participation. Cornell researchers will present at 17 events during Climate Week. Registration is now open for events taking place Sept. 21-28 at Cornell's New York City campuses; select events have a livestream option.

The full schedule of Cornell at Climate Week can be found here.

Among the presentations:

Sheila Olmstead, professor in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy, will presenton how clean energy policy has shifted over the last 10 years. Federal legislation such as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021) and the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) invested more in renewable energy than any previous law, while the recent One Big Beautiful Bill Act (2025) eliminated climate-protective policies such as vehicle and greenhouse gas emissions standards, said Olmstead, who is also a Cornell Atkinson Scholar.

While the current administration has abandoned many policies and incentives to reduce emissions and mediate the effects of climate change, there are notable exceptions, including continued support for nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage technology, she said. The 2025 law actually increased incentives for carbon capture - an assortment of technologiesthat remove carbon from point sources such as factory smokestacks, or directly from air.

"The optimistic view of the new policy is that carbon capture plays an important role in mitigating climate impacts from industries that are difficult and expensive to decarbonize, such as cement and steel production," Olmstead said. "The more cynical view is that if you look through the portfolio of which industries will benefit most from this incentive, it rewards the industries that are currently producing and emitting a lot of fossil fuels."

Billie Faircloth, associate professor of architecture and a Cornell Atkinson Scholar, and Linda Shi, associate professor of city and regional planning and a Cornell Atkinson senior faculty fellow, both in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning, will participate in a panelwith municipal and nonprofit partners surveying what practitioners and frontline communities have learned from a decade of climate resilience planning, and how those lessons might benefit others.

Design and planning for higher sea levels, extreme heat, flooding, wildfires or other natural disasters requires consideration of tradeoffs, such as whether to modify infrastructure to protect neighborhoods from heightened climate risks, whether to rebuild after disasters, or whether to abandon some buildings and change land use, Faircloth said.

"To demolish, rebuild, restore or harden - decision makers have brought an equity, heritage and restorative lens to these choices, reshaping the stories we tell about the adaptation projects we implement," Faircloth said. "While the demolition of a building represents a loss, the restoration of an ecosystem can provide natural buffering or protection and new greenspace for a community."

Four Cornellians in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences will presentalongside long-time NGO partners the Nature Conservancy, Clean Air Task Force and Environmental Defense Fund on joint efforts to improve sustainability in the dairy industry.

The partners will also announce awardees of their inaugural call for proposals on dairy sustainability. Dairy farms emit considerable amounts of methane, via manure storage and cows themselves. Methane only persists in the atmosphere for 10-12 years, while carbon dioxide can remain for centuries or millennia; however, atmospheric methane traps 80-86 times more heat than carbon dioxide. Addressing methane emissions quickly is crucial in reducing climate warming impacts while carbon dioxide removal technologies can be implemented.

Cornell and many industry and NGO partners have already achieved considerable success, for example in pushing for swift federal approval of a cattle feed additive that reduces methane emissions by 30%, and in developing a new farm modeling toolthat helps farmers conserve resources and funds while reducing environmental impacts, said Patrick Beary, the Bruce H. Bailey Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships for the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.

As stewards of The 2030 Project: A Cornell Climate Initiative, Cornell Atkinson is hosting 10 events at Climate Week NYC, including a panel co-hosted with the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business on the future of climate finance.

"Cross-sector collaboration is how we turn Cornell research breakthroughs into real-world climate solutions," Beary said. "Whether it's developing new technologies, understanding the economics for farmers or shaping supportive policies, Cornellians are working across the entire pipeline to address the biggest climate challenges."

Krisy Gashler is a writer for the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.