This five-month fellowship begins with a one-week, in-person orientation program at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, from April 7-11, 2025. 

Fellows will engage in a series of interactive sessions with prominent Yale faculty and practitioners to set the terms of the global climate change debate. 

Fellows will explore the wide range of climate change initiatives housed at Yale and delve into cutting-edge scholarship on a broad range of clean energy and climate issues.  

Among the centers and institutions which may be featured in the orientation program are the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture, the Yale Open Lab, the Yale Center for Business and the Environment, the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, and the Yale Office of Sustainability, which manages the University’s net zero goal.     

From May through July 2025, Climate Fellows will organize and carry out a series of interactive remote sessions with top international experts on the full range of policy issues associated with climate change and the clean energy transition. Sessions are spirited journeys allowing for development of communities of practice in specialties and extensive mentoring opportunities.

Possible topics include:

• strengthening global climate change governance, including the UN process
• exploring decarbonization pathways, including the IEA Net Zero 2050 scenario
• accelerating renewable electricity growth and addressing challenges of system integration
• strengthening innovation and uptake of promising clean energy technologies
• promoting energy efficiency and behavioral change
• investigating the challenges of a people-centered clean energy transition
• developing and deepening financial vehicles to advance the clean energy transition
• exploring market-based climate policy tools, including carbon pricing
• exploring regulatory policy tools to support uptake of clean energy solutions
• improving climate change communication
• closing energy access gaps with clean energy technologies
• developing cost effective negative emissions technologies, including direct air capture
• exploring the role of nature-based climate solutions
• broadening and deepening corporate and investor initiatives on climate change
• tackling energy security issues, including the role of fossil fuels in the energy transition
• exploring supply chain and related geopolitical challenges of the clean energy transition
• analyzing challenges of reducing methane emissions in emerging and developing countries

The fellowship concludes with an in-person week in Paris, from September 15–19, 2025.

Fellows will meet with top international climate change analysts; share perspectives gleaned throughout the program; and consolidate professional and personal contacts developed through peer learning and exchanges of views.

Fellows will have networking opportunities with staff members from the International Energy Agency and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), French central government and municipal officials, and representatives of civil society organizations, think tanks, academia, and the private sector.

Fellows will also present policy recommendations on specific clean energy and climate-related challenges to a global advisory board, publish those findings, and maintain contacts through an alumni network.