Author: BUIGS Staff Published: 5/2/2025 BU Institute for Global Sustainability
Watch the full interview on LinkedIn.
IGS Director Benjamin Sovacool spoke with BBC News about the major power outage across Spain and Portugal this week, discussing what causes widespread electricity blackouts like this (in one case, a squirrel!) and solutions for creating resilience.
“We often forget that the electricity grid is incredibly complex. In the United States, the National Academies of Engineering had to vote on the most complex technology we’ve ever invented, and they chose the grid.”
Sovacool pointed to three solutions for strengthening the electricity grid, saying energy efficiency and demand management can rapidly reduce grid stress, microgrids and mini-grids offer pockets of grids that are resilient, and decentralizing the energy supply through solar energy and prosuming (both generating and selling energy) can also improve resilience.
Faculty Research Spotlight
Climate Disinformation Research Funding Awarded
Congratulations to Michelle Amazeen and Arunima Krishna, recipients of an inaugural Hugo Shong Misinformation Faculty Research Grant awarded to faculty in BU’s College of Communication studying misinformation. With this funding, they will further their growing body of research on the spread of climate disinformation, specifically focusing on psychophysiological responses to climate disinformation and inoculation messages.
Krishna is part of IGS’s leadership team as an associate director, and Amazeen is a core faculty member. They recently co-authored a study with colleagues in npj Climate Action on strategies for reducing climate misperceptions caused by exposure to native advertising from the fossil fuel industry, research that was jointly funded by IGS.
Top Scientists Issue Urgent Warning on Fossil Fuels
In a recently published state-of-the-science review, BU School of Public Health (SPH) faculty Mary Willis and Jonathan Buonocore joined a team of top researchers in synthesizing the extensive scientific evidence on the damaging effects of fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry—and calling for change. Read more about their findings in SPH News showing considerable harm to humans, wildlife, and the environment.
Last year, Buonocore and Willis led a jointly funded IGS/SPH study to build a first-of-its-kind database of energy infrastructure exposure hotspots in the U.S.
BU Faculty Affiliated with IGS Advance Sustainability Solutions, on Earth Day and Every Day
In celebration of Earth Day, we asked several BU researchers to share the collaborations, technologies, and advances that have defined their fields and spurred progress. Read what they had to say.
- Climate Resilience in the Mystic River Massachusetts Watershed (Jonathan Levy, School of Public Health)
- Reducing Air Pollution from Brick Kilns in Bangladesh (Nina Brooks, School of Public Health)
- Discoveries in Microbial Ecology and Biogeoscience (Jennifer Bhatnagar, College of Arts & Sciences)
Boston Climate Leader Awards
Congratulations to all the climate champions honored at the 2025 Climate Leader Awards, hosted by Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and the City of Boston’s Environment Department. “Our first-ever Climate Leader Award recipients represent the best of Boston’s commitment to environmental justice and community-driven action,” said Mayor Wu.
BU had a strong showing with several finalists and awardees, including:
- Patricia Fabian (School of Public Health and IGS Associate Director), finalist for the Resilient Boston Award in the Individual Category
- Anna Goldman (Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and IGS affiliated faculty), winner of the Boston Bright Future Award in the Individual category
- Dennis Carlberg (Chief Sustainability Officer and IGS affiliated faculty), finalist for the Boston Bright Future Award in the Individual category
- Boston University, winner of the Emerald Skyline Award in the Business and Institution Category
Read more about this year’s inaugural award winners.
Welcome New Board Members
We welcomed two new Advisory Board members at our spring meeting, bringing additional valuable perspective to IGS.
A proud double Terrier, Julia Frayer earned both her MA and BA from BU and is a partner at London Economics International LLC. She is a thought leader on energy-related issues and a well-known industry expert on market design, risk management, and regulatory issues relating to electricity and other infrastructure industries.
Also an accomplished BU alum, Cay Freihofer is a managing partner at Emerald Bridge Capital, a firm she founded to accelerate the development of strategic assets that serve societal utility needs. Freihofer previously worked at Bank of America and JPMorgan, and earned her BS from BU’s Questrom School of Business.
IGS Events
Bestselling Author Talks Environmental Justice, Community Advocacy, and Investigative Reporting
In his book Paradise Falls, New York Times bestselling author Keith O’Brien tells the forgotten story about the women of Love Canal, who faced a toxic waste crisis in their own homes—and fought for change. In this shocking true story, they shaped national policy and defined the American environmental movement.
“With environmental storytelling in particular, we can get lost in the weeds and the science and the numbers and the chemicals, and get distracted from what is the important story—which is the human story.”
Hear more of what O’Brien had to say in our event recap, or watch the full recording.
IGS Visiting Researchers Discuss Industrial Decarbonization, Growing Social Influence of EU Amid Clean Energy Transition
For Visiting Researcher Thomas Kwan, vice president of sustainability research at Schneider Electric, a key question guides his work: “How do we incorporate new energy systems in hard-to-abate sectors?” In his recent presentation on industrial decarbonization, Kwan proposed a compelling idea: By maximizing the economic and operational opportunities that clean energy systems can provide, industries and corporations will be more likely to electrify. Whereas previous arguments for renewable energies focused solely on the environmental benefits, Kwan said, “now, there’s more interest in [clean energy as] an economic driver.”
In his presentation, Visiting Researcher Johan Nordensvard argued that a shared commitment to energy efficiency may enable the European Union (EU) to become more centralized and state-like. Nordensvard, an associate professor at the Royal Institute of Technology KTH and associate professor in political science at Linköping University, shared his findings on how energy policy may lead to broader social policy evolution within the EU.
Read more about their research and view their presentation slides.
2025 Janetos Climate Action Prize Winners
Congratulations to this year’s Anthony Janetos Climate Action Prize winners—a team of students from the College of Engineering (ENG) assessing indoor air quality with the support of Campus Climate Lab (CCL) funding. Using low-cost sensors, their project set out to more quickly and economically identify which BU rooms would benefit from improved heating, cooling, and ventilation systems. The 2025 winners, mentored by Professor Thomas Little (ENG), include:
- Celine Chen (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
- Primah Muwanga (Computing and Data Science)
- Ellen Zheng (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
Read about their award-winning project, and learn more about newly funded CCL research.
The Janetos Prize is awarded annually at the CCL Symposium, held this year on April 23, to students conducting work with significant potential impact on BU’s Climate Action Plan. CCL is led by IGS, in collaboration with BU Sustainability and the Office of Research. Since its launch in 2020, CCL has awarded $410,000 to 49 projects involving more than 230 students, faculty, and staff.
Faculty Research News
Green AI Summit 2025
Co-sponsored by BU’s Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE), this year’s Green AI Summit held at BU and Harvard featured expert insights from across BU, including numerous IGS affiliates:
- Green AI and Data Center Policy and Investment, panelist Benjamin Sovacool (IGS)
- AI and the Grid – Complex Interactions, moderator Ayse Coskun (College of Engineering)
- AI for Global Sustainable Development, moderator Suchi Gopal and panelist Nathan Phillips (College of Arts & Sciences)
- Carbon Meter tool for estimating data center footprints, lightning talk by Can Hankendi (IGS)
Learn more about this event and the speakers.
In April, Professors Ethan Deyle, Suchi Gopal, and Les Kaufman (College of Arts & Sciences) conducted a workshop and delivered a series of lectures on drone mapping at Placencia, Belize to advance conservation efforts.