Rice University’s student-led Rice Wind Energy team soared to new heights this year, clinching second place overall at the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2025 Collegiate Wind Competition (CWC). Hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories at the University of Colorado Boulder campus, the CWC challenges students from across the country to design and build wind turbines, develop wind energy projects and engage in public outreach to promote renewable energy.

Replanting forests can help cool the planet even more than some scientists once believed, especially in the tropics. But even if every tree lost since the mid-19^th century is replanted, the total effect won’t cancel out human-generated warming.

In a paper published in National Science Review, an international team of scientists presents the first global inventory of methane emissions from abandoned oil and gas wells. The study estimates that approximately 4.5 million abandoned wells across 127 countries collectively emitted around 400,000 tonnes of methane in 2022, with over 90% of these emissions originating from unplugged wells. By identifying high-priority wells and accelerating the implementation of targeted well-plugging strategies, global methane emissions from these wells could be reduced by up to 61% by 2050.

UH scientists helped pioneer a new way to breed climate-resilient crops faster by combining plant genebank data with climate and DNA analysis. The method, tested on sorghum, could speed up global efforts to secure food supplies in a changing climate.

In a review in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Stephen Long, a professor of crop sciences and of plant biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, describes research efforts to “future-proof” the crops that are essential to feeding a hungry world in a changing climate. Long, who has spent decades studying the process of photosynthesis and finding ways to improve it, provides an overview of key scientific findings that offer a ray of hope.

Forest-based agroforestry can restore forests, promote livelihoods, and combat climate change, but emerging agroforestry initiatives focusing only on tree planting is leading to missed opportunities to support  beneficial outcomes of forest management, a Yale-led team of scientists found.

A new study shows how using drones with advanced cameras, ones that detect both heat and light, can help scientists better measure how field-grown wheat plants cope with climate change. By flying these drones over hundreds of wheat varieties, researchers could estimate key traits like how efficiently the plants breathe through their leaves, how leafy they are, and how much chlorophyll they have. They then matched these traits to specific genes in the wheat, identifying genetic markers linked to better performance under normal and dry conditions. This approach makes it easier to find and develop wheat varieties that are more resilient to climate challenges, helping to secure future food security.