Turning climate knowledge into action: Yale @ Climate Week NYC

The third annual Yale @ Climate Week summit, held last month at the Yale Club of New York City, convened scholars, students, policymakers, and leaders from across Yale and beyond around a central question: How can universities help convert climate knowledge into action?

Hundreds gathered during the two-day event, which featured more than 20 sessions and nearly 100 speakers from across the university and organizations worldwide. The gathering coincided with Climate Week NYC, the largest climate event of its kind, and the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. 

“At universities across the country, we’re doing vital work to address the many threats to our planet and its people,” Yale Provost Scott Strobel said in remarks during the opening session on Sept. 21. “But knowledge created within universities must be met with action, humility, and shared purpose.” 

The goal of the event Strobel said, is to create partnership models rooted in cooperation and mutual benefit.

“Universities must create durable partnerships,” he said. “We must make sure our work is informed by the needs of those who are closest to implementation. We must ensure we involve those who have the expertise, tools, and skills to shape it, apply it, and deploy it.” 

For the third year, Yale @ Climate Week NYC was hosted by Yale Planetary Solutions (YPS), the university’s campuswide initiative uniting leaders and innovators across disciplines to catalyze solutions to the greatest threats facing people and planet, including climate change, biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, and impacts to human health and well-being.

This year’s conversations explored new approaches to measure societal progress, sustainability, and well-being that go beyond gross domestic product; how cities can become healthier and more resilient to the physical effects of climate change; pathways for strengthening electric grids; and how countries around the world can create effective incentives for reducing carbon emissions, among other topics.

“Meeting these challenges will take all of us,” Julie Zimmerman, Yale’s vice provost for planetary solutions, said during opening remarks at the Yale Club. “It will take science and engineering. It will take policy, law, business, public health, and the social sciences. It will equally take arts and humanities, which help us understand what is at stake, imagine different futures, and connect knowledge to the human experience.

“Progress requires not only us offering what we know, but to listen carefully to what is needed,” Zimmerman added.

The summit opened Sept. 21 with a conversation about how expanding partnerships between universities and the United Nations can close the gap between knowledge and action. The discussion was co-hosted by YPS, the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability, Harvard’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, and the United Nations University Centre for Policy Research.

The opening night also featured performances by students and alumni from the Yale School of Music, including original pieces that examined climate crises through music and visual art.

“When we face a challenge as immense as climate change — scientific in its facts, yet profoundly human in its consequences — the arts have a unique role to play,” said José García-León, the Henry and Lucy Moses Dean at the Yale School of Music. “They can amplify that message and its urgency. They can make the global feel personal and the abstract feel immediate.”

From research to the world

During a series of panel events on Sept. 22, participants showcased projects already underway that are putting research into practice.

Among them was the launch of “Resilient Cities, Reimagining Health,” a toolkit developed by Yale researchers, industry partners, and more than 30 cities worldwide during a multi-year partnership to help address the interconnected challenges of climate change and public health.

Building on “The Case for Action,” a report introduced during last year’s Yale @ Climate Week gathering, one partnership group unveiled a new Climate X Health Impact Dashboard that quantifies the potential climate and health benefits of different interventions, and a Climate X Health Playbook that helps practitioners from cities worldwide integrate health considerations into climate readiness plans.

“Today, we move beyond understanding the challenge to enabling action,” Jeannette Ickovics, the Samuel and Liselotte Herman Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Yale School of Public Health, said during the panel. The initiative has now evolved “from building awareness to supporting implementation and impact,” she said.

Yale’s own efforts to decarbonize its campus offered another example of applying climate innovation from institutional policy to impact. In one panel presentation, “The Ripple Effect: Institutional Decarbonization as Regional Catalyst,” leaders from Yale and the State of Connecticut shared how the Yale’s investments in zero-carbon and geothermal initiatives are creating new opportunities for workforce development, innovation, and economic growth across the region.

Companies can point to Yale’s geothermal use on campus, for instance, as a real-world example of the technology at work, said panelist Mike Richter ’08, president of Brightcore Energy, Yale’s geothermal contractor for the Upper Science Hill Development project, part of a comprehensive re-envisioning of Science Hill and one of the largest capital commitments in university history.

“When you walk into a room and say, ‘We have this great product,’ [clients] say, ‘Well, who the heck uses it?’” Richter said. Being able to provide the answer, “Yale University does,” he said, adds important credibility to a renewable energy that has been available for decades but remains relatively uncommon in North America.

In another panel event, members of the Carbon Containment Lab, a nonprofit founded at Yale in 2020 and spun out in 2024, launched a “Corporate Roadmap for Superpollutant Action,” providing companies with a framework for reducing non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

In other discussions, experts explored what it takes for climate research and solutions to reach people in practice. One session, moderated by representatives from the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture and the Yale Center for Business and the Environment, highlighted how connecting climate solutions to health, agriculture, energy, and other priorities can lead to wider adoption. In another, hosted by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and Potential Energy Coalition, discussed how artificial intelligence changes the way people discover information about climate change.

The summit drew participants from across a wide range of disciplines, including numerous Yale alumni. Among them was Avril Walters, a 2025 Yale graduate who is now working for a health care technology company. The Climate Week gathering, Walters said, “was a perfect space to renew my spark for climate work” — introducing her to new potential areas for climate solutions, such as marketing and AI, and deepening her understanding of others, such as climate adaptation and risk. 

She noted, for instance, the “Ripple Effect” event, in which panelists from Yale, industry, and government highlighted development projects taking place on the Yale campus, including the investment in geothermal systems and job skills training and development, in partnership with Brightcore Energy. 

“All of them used local businesses and leaders from across Connecticut to bring new technologies to the fore,” said Walters. “Each panelist stressed the importance of Yale’s commitment to green projects and noted how it helps to carve a path for others and provides the kind of assurance that will attract further financial backing for ecologically conscious businesses.”

Beyond Climate Week

The experts and partnerships that were part of the summit are now looking beyond Climate Week.

One partner, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, introduced a forthcoming study on public demand for climate adaptation that will inform national adaptation plans for the next year’s UN climate talks (COP32) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Working with intergovernmental organizations and partners in 11 countries, Yale researchers will survey how people perceive climate risks, how they prepare for extreme climate events, and which adaptation policies they support.

For YPS, this focus on what comes next is the main purpose of Climate Week.

“The value of Climate Week is not simply in bringing inspirational people together,” Zimmerman said. “It is in what those connections make possible afterward.”

Andy Bromage contributed to this report.