Highlights from
FY 2025: Annual Report
Message from the Director
For two decades, the Nicholas Institute has accelerated solutions for critical energy and environmental challenges, advancing a more just, resilient, and sustainable world.
In FY 2025, we continued to build on this legacy of impact.
In the rapidly evolving landscape of the past year, we conducted and curated actionable research to inform decisionmaking on topics like electricity demand growth, nature-based solutions, and small-scale fisheries.
Nicholas Institute experts also engaged with policymakers, businesses, and communities in sustained ways to help craft solutions and ensure their workability. Our convenings have brought together decisionmakers from many sectors to develop innovative approaches to challenges like protecting communities against extreme heat, mobilizing private capital for climate finance, and decarbonizing the water sector.
Our team delivered transformative educational experiences to inspire and equip Duke students as leaders, offering a robust slate of courses, hands-on research projects, events, summer experiences, career services, and other opportunities.
I hope you will enjoy exploring these highlights from FY 2025 (July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025). Looking forward to what we accomplish together next!
Brian Murray, Ph.D.
Director, Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability
Explore Our Impact
Nicholas Institute Board of Advisors
Chair William K. Reilly, Former Administrator, US Environmental Protection Agency (1989–1993)
Vice Chair Alison Taylor, Climate Leader in Residence
Ben Abram, CEO, Modern Energy
Lori Bennear (Ex Officio), Stanback Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment
Diana Propper de Callejon, Managing Director, Cranemere
Disque Deane Jr., Chief Investment Officer and Co-Portfolio Manager, Water Asset Management LLC
Andrew Ellenbogen, Managing Director and Global Co-Head of Power & Renewables, EIG Partners
Suedeen G. Kelly, Partner, Jenner & Block
Melinda Kramer, Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director, Women’s Earth Alliance
Elizabeth Littlefield, Senior Counselor, Albright Stonebridge Group
Jerome Lynch (Ex Officio), Vinik Dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Christina Dowding Nicholas
Cornelia Quennet-Thielen, Former Secretary of State, Federal Ministry for Education and Research, Federal Republic of Germany
Carter S. Roberts, President and CEO, World Wildlife Fund – United States
Ben Rogers, Chief Development Officer, Electrada
Serena Rwejuna, Partner, White & Case
Virginia Sall, Co-Founder and Director, Sall Family Foundation
Jim Salzman, Donald Bren Distinguished Professor of Environmental Law UCLA School of Law and Bren School of the Environment at UC–Santa Barbara
Douglas Scott, Chair, Illinois Commerce Commission
Mark Tercek, Advisor, Author, and Speaker; Former President and CEO, The Nature Conservancy
Douglas Wheeler, Partner, Hogan Lovells US LLP
Ana Zacapa, Board Chair, Root Capital
