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The Environment and Energy concentration prepares students to evaluate, implement and influence environment and energy policy.
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Careers
You can prepare for a career in environmental and energy law, regulation, policymaking, research, consulting, and advocacy. With electives, you can either develop deep expertise in a sector like climate change mitigation, or gain a broad perspective on contemporary environment and energy topics.
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Focus
This concentration is for those engaged in environmental stewardship or energy development interested in careers in local, state and national governments, including regulatory agencies and legislative offices, environmental non-profits and non-governmental organizations, water and energy utilities, consultancies and research organizations, and private firms.
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Electives
With unparalleled access to elective courses in environment and energy law, policy, politics and economics, you can seize growing career opportunities related to resource conservation, air and water pollution control, climate change mitigation and clean energy innovation.
Students Can
From evaluating policies to conserving natural habitat in the Amazon, promoting diffusion of solar photovoltaics in the U.S., providing clean energy and water technologies in Central and South Asia to delivering renewable energy in Sub-Saharan Africa, Sanford’s many environment and energy policy experts are generating research to inform pressing policy challenges.
Faculty are recognized for their expertise around the world, advising the White House, the U.S Environmental Protection Agency, the World Bank, the InterAmerican Development Bank, state governments, and policymakers. They have contributed to National Academy of Sciences reports, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessments, the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services and the Lancet-Rockefeller Commission on Planetary Health.
Options include Climate Change Economics and Policy; International Environmental Policy; Collective Action; Sustainable Development; Environment & Development; Energy & Development; Global Environmental Health. Students are afforded flexibility in formulating curricula that takes advantage of broad expertise. Duke’s unparalleled campus-wide commitment to solving environmental and energy problems is leveraged by students with diverse interests in these policy domains.
Duke’s Nicholas School is home to experts across 45 environmental sectors, from atmospheric sciences, to forests and urban environment. Enroll in Duke Environment courses, gain knowledge in research laboratories, and immerse yourself in co-curricular activities that take advantage of North Carolina’s vibrant and diverse landscape.
Nicholas Institute experts operate at the intersection of academia and the policy world, informing design of carbon market programs around the world, engaging utilities, regulators, and environmental groups in planning the electric grid of the future, and leading the world in development of ecosystem accounts that more fully reflect the wellbeing and sustainability of our communities. Gain unprecedented insights into environmental policymaking and access to the leaders making environmental policy improvements.
The initiative is dedicated to advancing a safe, affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy future by training tomorrow’s energy leaders and fostering new energy discoveries.
Knowledge and Skills You Can Acquire
- Statistical tools to test hypotheses and to evaluate policies and programs
- Analytic tools to investigate the efficiency and equity implications of environmental programs and energy regulations and conduct welfare analyses
- Decision-making under uncertainty
- Methods to determine the value of non-market environmental resources (like clean air)
- Policy expertise and research experience specific to the research interests of a client in the energy and environment space.
Policy Concentration Advisor
Marc A. Jeuland
Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy
Marc Jeuland is a Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, with a joint appointment in the Duke Global Health Institute. His research interests include nonmarket valuation, water and sanitation, environmental health, energy poverty and transitions, trans-boundary water resource planning and management, and the impacts and economics of climate change.
Jeuland's recent research includes work to understand the economic implications of climate change for water resources projects on transboundary river systems, a range of primary data collection projects related to analysis of adoption of environmental health improving technology, and analysis of the costs and benefits of environmental health interventions in developing countries. He has conducted multiple field experiments on issues such as: the role of water quality information in affecting household water and hygiene behaviors; the demand for, and impacts of cleaner cookstoves on household well-being; the long-term sustainability and effects of rural sanitation and water supply projects. He has also collected data on preferences for a range of environmental health improvements including cholera vaccines, household water treatment technologies and improved cookstoves. In the energy and development domain, he is currently working on several projects with the Energy Access Project at Duke, and is a co-founder of the Sustainable Energy Transitions Initiative (SETI), along with Professor Subhrendu Pattanayak and scholars from Chile, China and Ethiopia. His energy portfolio includes work related to evaluation of cleaner cooking interventions, measuring energy access and reliability, and reviews of the drivers and impacts literature related to energy.
Jeuland has worked in the past with the World Bank, USAID, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, UNICEF, and many field-based NGOs and community-based implementing organizations.
Prior to his graduate studies and work with the World Bank, Jeuland was a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa, where he designed and monitored construction of a pilot wastewater treatment system and trained management personnel at the plant’s managing firm.
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Student Story
Inspired by an ancestral plot of land, Cameron Oglesby MPP‘23 grew up passionate about protecting the environment. After studying environmental science and journalism, Oglesby is pursuing environmental policy in hopes of making the greatest impact. After graduation, Cameron was named National Geographic Young Explorer, 2024 Aspen Institute Future Climate Leader and more. Explore her LinkedIn.