CELEBRATE EARTH DAY WITH UCLA

This month, on April 22, the world celebrates Earth Day. As humanity urbanizes, the story of how we save the planet will be written by cities like Los Angeles, by multicultural universities like UCLA, and the innovations happening within its many environmental-focused areas, including UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability (IoES), Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, Division of Physical Sciences and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Dedicated UCLA faculty within these areas work each day alongside talented students to help solve our planet’s greatest environmental problems and renew hope for the future.

These individuals are pioneering a unique approach to research and practice by focusing on finding solutions to environmental issues that address aspects of science, health, policy, law, and more. Environmental-specific partnerships throughout the UCLA network are making an impact:

• A recent study led by IoES atmospheric scientist Daniel Swain found that the number of days with high fire risk in California has doubled since the early 1980s and warns that if carbon emissions aren’t curbed in the next few years, autumn wildfires will continue to increase in frequency and intensity. IoES scientists are also leveraging breakthroughs in high-resolution computer modeling to understand how forest management and our electrical grid can be improved in an effort to reduce the impact and severity of wildfire season.

• As part of UCLA’s Sustainable LA Grand Challenge, an inter-disciplinary team of researchers in energy-economic analysis, policy, health, and engineering is working on an ambitious project to overcome one of the greatest hurdles to realizing a clean energy future—long-term energy storage solutions. The team is developing prototype electrochemical processes for energy storage from excess electricity, water, and CO2. The project will result in an energy storage roadmap for L.A. that leads to health benefits for all Angelenos as we phase out the need for fossil fuels with this innovative technology.

• In California, a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings. Energy Atlas is a tool created by researchers in the IoES California Center for Sustainable Communities that hosts the largest set of publicly available energy data in the nation, and is internationally regarded as a best practice by policy makers, nonprofits and governments for understanding building energy use. It will be critical in helping ensure the state of California’s ambitious climate goals are met.

This Earth Day, support one of UCLA's world-leading environmental research programs, areas or initiatives, and help move our planet into a greener, more sustainable tomorrow.

 

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