EDITORS' CORNER
Focus is on achieving ‘net zero emissions’ in 25 years instead
Duke University will no longer spend $4 million a year to achieve “short-term carbon neutrality.”
The private university also will not dedicate extra staff time to figuring out how to offset their carbon emissions, the student newspaper reported.
“Duke first achieved carbon neutrality in 2024, fulfilling a 2007 pledge and becoming one of only 14 U.S. colleges and universities at the time to do so,” The Chronicle reported. “The milestone was made possible by a 31% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2007 levels and purchasing $4 million in carbon offsets to account for the remainder.”
In other words, Duke did not achieve “net-zero emissions,” but paid to offset their pollution by buying credits. The university said its new goal is net-zero by 2050.
“Carbon neutrality is not cheap. Because we’re making the conscious decision not to purchase offsets, we’re now focused on the new beachhead, which is net-zero,” Executive Vice President Daniel Ennis said. “We have an enormous agenda in front of us.”
Climate change and carbon is a major focus of the university. In fact, last year the university announced plans to push climate change into every discipline, as The College Fix reported.
The Duke Climate Commitment promises to “[m]aximize reach to student populations by embedding interdisciplinary, intersectional content across core, first-year and large enrollment courses and programs,” including within its nursing school.
The university’s efforts to reduce carbon or even achieve net-zero received criticism at the time from environmental experts.
H. Sterling Burnett told The Fix in November 2025 that the goals are “costly but ultimately futile efforts to impact climate change[,]” pointing out that “Duke’s carbon footprint is so small even if it went carbon negative, or net zero, it would have no impact on the climate.”
“The Trump administration rightly sees climate change — the global efforts to get Western countries to decarbonize quickly — as a scam that hurts America while boosting our economic and geopolitical competitors,” Burnett, director of climate and environmental policy at the Heartland Institute, said at the time. “Duke should keep this in mind as [its] programs are undergoing scrutiny by the administration.”
Bonner Cohen with the National Center on Public Policy Research shared similar views last November, saying university efforts won’t “have the slightest effect on the climate.”
Meanwhile, sometimes Duke researchers even get into trouble for advocating for so-called clean energy.
Some in the community criticized a professor who wrote a paper advocating for African countries to move away from wood burning stoves. Critics said he ignored America’s own role in carbon pollution, as The Fix reported.
