The Nicholas Institute is one of six core academic institutions that have pooled their expertise to study the far-ranging, but still poorly understood, potential effects nanotechnology may have on our environment. Research at the newly founded Center for Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology will focus on elucidating the relationship between a vast array of nanomaterials - from natural, to manufactured, to those produced incidentally by human activities - and their potential environmental exposure, biological effects, and ecological consequences. Experts from the Nicholas Institute will contribute expertise on risk assessment and modeling. Other core academics partners in the new center are Duke's Pratt School of Engineering; the Nicholas School of the Environment; Carnegie Mellon University, Howard University and Virginia Tech. To learn more about the new initiative, go to www.ceint.duke.edu/welcome_to_CEINT.

The Nicholas Institute's D.C. office is assisting with the rollout of a major new study of potential green-collar job growth in the United States. The study, "Manufacturing Climate Solutions," www.cggc.duke.edu/environment/climatesolutions, evaluates linkages between low-carbon technologies and job growth in five key industries: LED lighting, high-performance windows, auxiliary power units for long-haul trucks, concentrating solar power, and Super Soil Systems (a new method for treating hog wastes). Associate director Nicole St. Clair Knobloch is working with Duke's Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness to disseminate the study to policymakers, industry leaders and other key stakeholders and decision makers nationwide. 

In a guest editorial published November 17 in the Charlotte Observer, Institute director Tim Profeta and Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy, urged President-Elect Barack Obama and the 111th Congress to make passage of a Clean Economy Act a priority in 2009. "Action to address climate change is at hand, through regional carbon markets that have been created in the absence of federal action, and through the prospect of EPA regulation under the Clean Air Act. But Congress can do the job better, by setting up a fair cap-and-trade system," Profeta and Rogers write. "Placing a federal limit on carbon emissions is good business. It sends a clear signal to the markets that we need to find new ways to power our cars, manufacture our goods, heat and cool our homes and generate and transmit electricity." You can read the entire op-ed at www.charlotteobserver.com/406/story/357943.html.

The Nicholas Institute will host a panel discussion on "U.S. Government Engagement on Climate Change and Forests," at Forest Day 2, an international climate science and policy meeting on Dec. 6 at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. The Institute event is being held in conjunction with U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change meetings taking place in Poznan. Lydia Olander, senior associate director for ecosystem services, and Brian Murray, director for economic analysis, will moderate the discussion, which will examine how U.S. government action on federal climate policy could move forward rapidly under the leadership of a new President and administration. Panelists will include William Hohenstein, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Global Change Program, Anthony Brunello, assistant secretary for climate and energy at the California Resources Agency, and Misty McGovern, legislative aide for U.S. Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho. For more information, contact Olander at (919) 613-8709 or lydia.olander@duke.edu. 

Persistent drought, rapid population growth and aging infrastructure have taxed North Carolina's water supply to the brink in recent years. A yearlong study by Bill Holman, director of state policy at the Nicholas Institute, and Richard Whisnant, professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Government, identifies nine key financial, regulatory, technological, educational and legal options to modernize the state's water allocation policies and improve water efficiency. Holman and Whisnant presented the draft findings of their study to the N.C. General Assembly's Environmental Review Commission on November 25. The study is online at http://water.unc.edu. 

A new report funded by the Nicholas Institute and Duke University's Office of Sustainability examines the role carbon offsets could play in helping Duke and other North Carolina universities meet commitments to become carbon neutral in compliance with a mandatory federal climate policy. The report assesses Duke's potential need for offsets and identifies the types of standards and policies the university will need to adopt to transparently and credibly use these offsets to achieve carbon neutrality. It also examines the supply and costs of offsets from within North Carolina, the international and national market context, and potential institutional models for engagement in offsets. Graduate students from the Nicholas School, the Fuqua School of Business and the Duke Law School conducted the analysis for the 95-page report. Eben Polk, former research associate at the Nicholas Institute, and Andres Potes, a second-year Master of Environmental Management student at the Nicholas School, were its primary authors. You can read the report here.