Welcome

The mission of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy is to develop technologies and institutions to ensure a sufficient supply of environmentally sustainable energy for all humanity. To meet this goal, the Center supports research programs in energy science, engineering and policy across Columbia University to develop technical and policy solutions that will satisfy the world’s future energy needs without threatening to destabilize the Earth's natural systems.

This mission is shaped by two global challenges. First, an increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, due in large part to human use of fossil fuels, if unchecked is likely to disrupt global climate systems and impose negative consequences for human welfare. Second, a larger and increasingly wealthy world population will create greater demand for limited energy resources. To meet these two challenges, human societies must move beyond existing energy systems to develop new sources, technologies and infrastructures.

The Center focuses primarily on the technological and institutional development of the three energy resources sufficient to support the world’s projected population in 2100 without increased carbon emissions: solar, nuclear, and fossil fuels combined with carbon capture and storage. Although each of these options can, in theory, be developed on a scale to satisfy global demand, they each face a combination of technological and institutional obstacles that demand research and development before they can be deployed.

The Center’s main activities are based within the range of natural science and engineering disciplines. At the same time, the Center integrates technological research with analysis of the institutional, economic and political context within which energy technologies are commercialized and deployed.