Climate Science and Policy

Grant funding provided by California’s Golden State Pathways Program provides the opportunity for public schools across California to implement a new career technical education pathway titled STEM Climate Resilience. This career technical education (CTE) pathway project outlines a structured program of study that integrates academic and technical coursework, industry-aligned curriculum, and career-focused skills. The transition to a green economy demands more experts than we currently have. CTE pathways in climate resilience and similar sectors are attempting to fill that gap by providing high school students with the knowledge and experience required to pursue college education in climate or to join the green workforce in a technical field. In K-12 STEM education, climate resilience is a concept that is relatively new and not yet well defined, resulting in schools and local educational agencies struggling to determine what knowledge and skills students in the pathway need to develop. This is where a micro-credential becomes essential. Rather than providing educators with a curriculum to follow word for word, a climate resilience micro-credential will equip educators with base knowledge of the physical science behind climate change, what mitigation and adaptation strategies are emerging, and what regional career opportunities are most promising in STEM fields related to climate resilience. This project outlines The Foundations Framework, an organizing principle for designing and implementing micro‑credential programs to prepare educators for STEM climate resilience instruction.

The waste culture of the Global North has accelerated the flow of discarded goods to developing countries with limited waste-management infrastructure. Fast fashion has produced a take-make-dispose model in which secondhand clothing is donated, exported, and ultimately accumulated under ambient sunlight at open dumpsites in receiving countries. Royer et al. (2018) demonstrated that plastic polymers from water bottles and plastic bags release methane under ultraviolet (UV) weathering. This study tests whether polyester exhibits similar properties of UV-driven greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This was done by measuring GHGs (CH₄, CO₂, and CO) from textiles under controlled experimental UV exposures in a laboratory at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and in situ from textile waste sitting under the sun in Ghana. As for the laboratory experiment we included different variables to our analysis in order to mimic possible conditions in the field, namely with the type of polymer (polyester, cotton), the color of the textile (yellow, black), the pre-aging of the textiles (experimentally UV weathered for 1, 2, or 3 weeks), and the exposure condition (dry, wet either with water or H₂O₂). Polyester produced significant amounts of all three gases across most conditions tested, with consistently larger fluxes than cotton, establishing synthetic textiles as a measurable greenhouse gas source under environmentally realistic UV exposure. Field measurements at nine sites in Accra, Ghana, including the open-air textile waste dump of Old Fadama detected GHGs substantially above atmospheric background, with CH₄ being up to 28 times greater in some areas. These preliminary findings establish disposal-phase emissions from accumulated textile waste as a possible greenhouse gas emissions pathway that is unaccounted for in climate predictions. Textile waste is an issue that has been aggravated by the fast fashion industry and managing the waste would help address its contribution to GHGs emission. Policies under the Extended Producer Responsibility frameworks have been put in place for this purpose but have shown some serious limitations, notably by excluding countries receiving the textile waste. This study will help close this regulatory gap by demonstrating that the end-of-life of the textile product is key to assessing its carbon footprint, thus pushing for lifecycle assessment traceability through secondhand export.

The state of Maine faces three major challenges with its electric grid: resilience, affordability, and emissions reductions. At the same time, Maine is seeing significant adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs). Left unmanaged, these DERs can pose challenges for Maine’s grid and make managing load more difficult. However, by coordinating DERs with virtual power plants (VPPs), Maine can leverage this capacity to address its three grid challenges. VPPs have the potential to relieve grid stress, reduce reliance on costly and emissions-intensive peaker plants, and delay infrastructure build-out. Two programs in the state are already helping reduce peak load and sending power back to the grid via customer-owned batteries, but Maine has ample room for expansion. This report provides context on Maine’s energy challenges and the current state of VPPs in Maine. It then identifies key elements of successful VPPs that are applicable to Maine’s energy and regulatory systems, investor-owned utilities, and communities using case studies of out-of-state VPPs. Using these key elements, in conjunction with lessons learned from conversations with stakeholders across Maine’s energy space, policy recommendations are presented for Efficiency Maine Trust, Maine’s investor-owned utilities, and third-party aggregators on expanding VPP implementation. VPPs cannot solve all of Maine’s energy woes, but are an impactful tool the state can use to build a stronger energy future.