The event, which brought together over 2,500 people from various sectors interested in sustainability, served as a platform for exploring emerging trends and sharing insights on environmental challenges. 

“Attending GreenBiz was an enriching experience that provided insights into the emerging trends in corporate sustainability and facilitated valuable connections with fellow professionals in the field,” Lucia Castellares Tello ENV ’25 said.

The conference boasted an impressive lineup of attendees, with nearly 50 percent representing companies with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion, according to their website.  

Throughout the event, students had the opportunity to participate in panels, workshops and networking sessions. Lauren Phipps ENV ’24 worked for the GreenBiz Group for over six years, and this year marked her ninth time attending the conference. Phipps moderated a panel discussion titled “Making Progress on Critical Minerals and Materials.” The session provided insights into the intersection of sustainability and resource management, emphasizing the importance of responsible mining practices in achieving clean energy goals and sharing expertise across organizations.

 “If you want to think strategically about making business sustainable, you need to think beyond the walls of your own organization,” Phipps said when discussing the panel.

Speaking with the News about their motivations for attending, several students highlighted the importance of staying connected with their professional community and gaining real-world perspectives beyond academia. They emphasized the need to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical applications, underscoring the value of experiential learning in shaping their career paths. 

“I loved how applied everything was,” Emily Lin ENV ’25 said. “What I learn at Yale can be different from what is currently happening in space, and to understand and engage with the implementation and barriers beyond academia is so informative. This makes me excited to go into the real world after equipping myself with knowledge and tools I get from YSE.” 

Throughout the conference, students engaged in discussions on a wide range of topics, including the role of agriculture in reducing emissions, the challenges of implementing circular economy solutions and the influence of Gen Z on corporate sustainability initiatives. They also had the opportunity to hear from industry leaders, such as Zoe Chance, senior lecturer in management at the Yale School of Management, who shared stories and insights on driving positive change within organizations. 

Daniel González Pena ENV ’24 expressed appreciation for the willingness of conference participants to share their struggles and challenges, highlighting the collaborative spirit that permeated the event – an energy that González said reflects the collective, interdisciplinary action needed to address the climate crisis.

 “As we are dealing with the climate crisis, there is not one solution. The conference highlighted that we are going to need inputs from people in various industries and from all walks of life,” said González. 

The GreenBiz24 Conference took place in JW Marriott Phoenix Desert Ridge Resort & Spa, Phoenix, Arizona.

Correction, Feb. 22: A previous version of this article did not mention Yale School of Management students’ participation in the conference. The article has been updated to reflect the correct information.

The post Yale Graduate Students dive into Sustainability Conversations at GreenBiz24 Conference appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Conducted by scientists from the School of Public Health, the Climate, Health and Environment Nexus, or CHEN, Lab and other international institutions, the research spans 406 cities across 20 countries from 1985 to 2015. Using data from the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Research Network, a global collaboration of environmental and health scientists, the researchers analyzed the acute impacts of short-term, daily exposure to ground-level ozone. 

After establishing this baseline, the researchers modeled future ground-level ozone mortality. They found that deaths will increase from 2010 to 2050 except in the climate scenario consistent with the Paris Agreement, which calls for the global temperature to rise no more than two degrees Celsius by the end of the century. 

“If we are taking actions to address climate change, we are saving lives,” said Kai Chen, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health.

Ground-level, or tropospheric ozone, forms when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds react in sunlight and high temperatures. As global warming increases the number of hot days per year, the production of this hazardous ozone is projected to rise.

The model explored various emissions scenarios outlined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (IPCC AR6). The ozone-related mortality fraction — the excess number of ozone-related deaths divided by the number of total deaths — only decreased in the low-emissions scenario aligned with the Paris Agreement target. Still, the fraction only minimally decreased from 0.17 percent to 0.15 percent.

According to Chen, the researchers used the best available global climate models and accessed daily projections downscaled to the city level to obtain more granular results. For Alexandra Schneider, the deputy director of the Institute of Epidemiology at Helmholtz Zentrum München, it is important to also consider the “heat island” effect in urban areas, where cities generally have higher average temperatures, meaning more tropospheric ozone is produced and there are higher ground-level ozone-related mortality rates. She plans to continue researching the impact of city size on increased temperatures and ozone-related mortality rates in the future. 

The researchers also found that the ozone-related mortality rates continued to rise in big cities in Mexico, China and the United States — even in the climate scenario that meets the Paris Agreement goals.

In future studies, Chen hopes to consider other pollutants and incorporate long-term exposure data. He also seeks to get data from additional locations — including many areas across the developing world that do not have extensive ground air quality monitoring stations networks — by using satellite monitoring models. 

Both Schneider and Chen also plan to assess in more detail how mortality changes over time, accounting for factors like population growth, emissions increase or reduction, life expectancy changes and shifts in medical treatment and food intake. 

“This model is just using mortality, [but] this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Schneider said.

Schneider emphasized the need to understand better the underlying mechanisms behind the interaction between rising temperatures, increasing emissions, changing baseline mortality rates and population size shifts on growing mortality. 

“Now you only see that mortality increases but don’t know how you can treat it except making the environment better,” Schneider said. 

Cate York ENV ’24 is a second-year master’s student at the School of the Environment. From Los Angeles, a metropolis with pollution and poor air quality, York emphasized the importance of spreading awareness about ozone and mortality.

“As an individual, I don’t know what to make of it or what to do about it. I don’t even know what levels I was exposed to in the area where I lived,” York said. “When you are in it, I don’t know if people even realize the extent of the problem. That’s just their baseline.” 

According to the State of Global Air, ground-level ozone contributed to 365,000 deaths worldwide in 2019. 

The post Yale-led study finds ozone-related deaths likely to rise if the world fails to meet the Paris Agreement appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Originally founded in 2017 by multiple seniors at the Sound School, a vocational aquaculture high school, as part of their capstone, the reef currently consists of thirteen “reef balls,” each of which is two feet in diameter and made of a combination of cement, sand, gravel and oyster shell. Beyond its environmental advantages, which includes improving the local water quality by filtering it through oysters, the reef serves as a living laboratory for both the Sound School and Yale students, who can conduct scientific research and gain technical skills. 

“The mission of the school is to help students become stewards of the environment and aquaculture,” said Peter Solomon, the aquaculture coordinator at the Sound School, referring to the reef’s practical and learning value. 

The reef grew in size and scope after James Nikkel, a research scientist in the Yale Physics Department and the director of the Advanced Prototyping Center, located in the Wright Lab, helped the school in 2022 secure a seed grant from Yale Planetary Solutions, a program that aims to raise awareness about climate change and biodiversity.

After receiving initial funding, the reef project sought to secure an environmental permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection and the state Department of Agriculture. 

“You need to go through a bunch of hoops to get permitting to put something into the water,” Nikkel said. 

In collaboration with John Buell, the chair of the New Haven Harbor Foundation, Nikkel worked with an independent engineering firm to develop project-design drawings for the expanded reef. Ultimately, the team hopes for the project to become a self-sustaining reef. While recruitment of species from the wild stocks is high, the current die-off levels exceed the natural birth rates.

According to Nicole Bouve, the environmental and underwater science teacher at the Sound School and the project lead for the reef, they hope to build and install 100 new balls by 2027, when the permit ultimately expires. Importantly, Sound School students are the ones building the new reef balls. 

“The students are really bought into the program because they are the ones doing all of the work,” Bouve said. 

Still, the project faces some time and weather constraints. Due to low water temperatures in the winter, the balls can only be installed in late spring and summer and students have to organize their data collection around the oyster growth cycle, from May through October. Further, given that the seed grant funding was completed in October 2023, the project leaders need to pursue more grants.  

According to Arina Telles, a graduate student who works in the Advanced Prototyping Center and is involved in the project, the reef grows little during the winter, so students don’t dive during that time. Nevertheless, she said she is looking forward to conducting more dives in the spring to study the reef more systematically.

Solomon noted that the team installed a data logger prototype on a reef ball to ensure continuous remote collection of data, such as water pH levels, temperatures and oxygen concentrations. The logger is connected through cables to a battery charged from a buoy-based solar panel. 

The team expressed optimism about the reef’s future. Though he acknowledged that this will take several years, Buell hopes for the development of  “a very extensive oyster reef that will build on itself.”

The reef aims to connect the broader New Haven and other state communities with their history, traditions and the environment. Solomon hopes that the reef will join one of the many service-based aquaculture projects being developed across Connecticut with different educational institutions. According to Buell, there is a growing national interest in similar reefs, such as the Billion Oyster Project in the New York Harbor. 

“It’s a really exciting time, I think we’re headed in a very positive direction as a state,” Solomon said.

The Sound School is located at 60 South Water St. 

Correction, Feb. 5: This article was corrected to reflect that the reef doesn’t grow in the winter and therefore students don’t need to monitor it closely. It has also been corrected to note that the researchers work at the Advanced Prototyping Center, not the Advanced Photocopying Center, within the Wright Lab.

The post New Haven artificial reef continues to grow appeared first on Yale Daily News.