Research Library

Electronic waste is surging globally, presenting growing threats to the environment and human health. Rachel A. Meidl explains how coordinated action can help us move to a sustainable, circular economy of electronics.

The food environment currently dominated by the industrialized food industry is undermining both brain health and our environment.

In the next year, the EPA could make a final decision on whether to classify PVC as hazardous waste. What would this entail? Fellow Rachel Meidl explores why a hazardous designation for PVC would have costly implications — moving the U.S. further from its goal of achieving a sustainable, circular economy.

Visiting scholar Osamah Alsayegh explores the water and energy challenges of GCC states and offers three key policy recommendations that could help to build the region’s resilience and sustainability.

Gas stoves are a leading source of hazardous indoor air pollution, but they emit only a tiny share of the greenhouse gases that warm the climate. Why, then, have they assumed such a heated role in climate politics?

Why does Texas have its own power grid, and how can its history inform the future of electric power in the state? Nonresident scholar Julie Cohn looks beyond the mythology surrounding the standalone Texas grid and finds that reliability and economics — not politics — were the major factors leading to isolation.

Without urgent action, the impact of China’s water shortages will ripple across the globe and dramatically perturb global markets for food, energy and industrial goods, write fellow Gabriel Collins and co-author Gopal Reddy.

This paper lays out one potential step-by-step path toward decarbonizing Saudi Arabia, imagining a sweeping restructuring of a fossil fuel-driven society and economy.

Political, market and geopolitical headwinds have slowed down Biden’s ambitious climate plans, write energy experts Anna Mikulska and Michael Maher. In this brief, they explore why progress on decarbonization is likely to be more gradual than initially envisioned.