On April 7, Harvard announced the launch of a new concentration, “Energy, Climate, and the Environment,” set to be offered in the 2026-27 academic year. The decision came after Harvard faculty members overwhelmingly approved the interdisciplinary program in a 215-3 vote. ENCE is Harvard College’s first new field of study since 2018.

The ENCE concentration offers undergraduates the opportunity to tackle complex, evolving climate-related issues, pushing students to examine the environment through the lenses of science, engineering, sociology, economics, and ethics. In a statement from Vice Provost for Climate and Sustainability and Salata Institute Director James Stock, he noted that the concentration’s explicit integrative commitment is what Harvard’s liberal arts mission promises, allowing students to develop their thinking, connect their ideas, and apply their learning to society’s greatest problems. “In 2026, there is no harder problem—and no clearer test of that promise—than climate change and the energy transition,” Stock wrote.

Lene Hau, the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics, coordinated the 41-page ENCE proposal with Robin Kelsey, the Shirley Carter Burden Professor of Photography, and Jason Beckfield, the Robert G. Stone Jr. Professor of Sociology. In an interview with the “Harvard Independent,” Hau attributed the conception of the program to the felt climate anxiety of undergraduates and a lack of opportunity to take action. “They felt they had no agency,” she said.

The approval process for the new concentration, Hau explained, was organically driven and required significant brainstorming, workshopping, and ideation from faculty and undergraduate students across the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences: “It’s been a four-and-a-half-year process … and we have had significant faculty buy-in.”

“We have had so many inputs and interactions with students, like we have held burrito nights in Cambridge and coffee chats with students in the Science and Engineering Complex in Allston,” Hau said.

“We have created a community,” she continued.

Bridging the FAS and the SEAS, the concentration is organized into four tracks: Nature, Ethics, and the Human Imagination (hosted by the Arts & Humanities Division); Science and Engineering for Sustainable Solutions (hosted by SEAS); Markets, Politics, and Societies (hosted by the Division of Social Science); or Climate and Biodiversity (hosted by the Division of Science). “We cannot have siloed disciplines trying to solve [climate issues] individually; it will never work,” Hau expressed, explaining that the complexity of the environment necessitates collaboration across schools and disciplines.

The concentration is set to include a shared introductory course alongside additional core classes within each curricular track. Beyond their primary focus, students will be able to further specialize their track by pursuing different “braids” or customizable pathways. The braid structure enables tracks to remain flexible and dynamically develop over time.

“We are not training students to in any way be experts in everything. They will be experts. They will go deep in a particular field, but then they will develop literacy in the complementary areas,” Hau explained.

This past spring, the College offered what will be the introductory course to pilot the program and its multifaceted approach to the climate problem: “ENCE-10: Gateway to Energy, Climate and Environment.” The course brought faculty from the applied physics, history, and sociology departments to mirror the professional climate of the world that students will enter, including Joyce Chaplin, the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History, in addition to Beckfield and Hau. 

The bookend of the program will require students to complete ENCE-100, a senior capstone project, pushing undergraduates to collaborate on a contemporary climate-related problem. The concentration’s fundamental philosophy, Hau explained, is solutions-focused, with the ultimate goal of preparing undergraduates to play a significant part in driving future solutions after graduation and to understand the value of different stakeholders. 

ENCE builds on Harvard’s current climate offerings, which include an environmental fellowship program, a broad range of course offerings throughout departments, and extensive extracurricular opportunities, including the Harvard Undergraduate Urban Sustainability Lab and the Harvard Undergraduate Clean Energy Group.

The new concentration joins the College’s current environmental concentrations, complementing, rather than competing with, the existing “Environmental Science and Engineering” and “Environmental Science and Public Policy.” 

As Stock notes in his statement, some faculty have expressed concerns that adding this concentration will compete with existing environment-centric majors for enrollment and teaching capacity. “FAS and SEAS explicitly structured ENCE to complement and strengthen existing programs, rather than replace them,” Stock assured. These concerns were a call for careful consideration in the concentration’s design, rather than a call for inaction.

Hau echoed these sentiments, explaining that the proposal was not without its pushback, given the ambitious nature of the concentration’s reach. “It’s unprecedented in scope, which is exciting, but also very complicated,” Hau explained.

Stock concludes his statement, acknowledging that there is no singular shape or form to Harvard’s climate initiatives. Hau expressed a similar notion, noting that what ENCE brings to Harvard’s curriculum is unheard of in higher education globally. “What we are doing is really, truly unique in the world. And I’m seeing the response I’m getting from other institutions, even in other countries.”

“These problems around climate change, they are so big and existential … There’s simply not a single silver bullet solution,” Hau added.

Rania Jones ’27 (rjones@college.harvard.edu) is the Editor-in-Chief of the “Harvard Independent.”