Climate and Sustainable Growth Minor
Beginning in Fall 2025, undergraduates at the University of Chicago will have the opportunity to minor in Climate and Sustainable Growth. Using a 360-degree approach, the program provides students with a foundational understanding of the climate and growth challenge. The minor will reside within the Physical Sciences Collegiate Division.
Learn more at: The College Catalog 2025-2026. To receive notice of upcoming information sessions, please sign up for our student newsletter here.
Minor Requirements
The minor in Climate and Sustainable Growth consists of six courses: two mandatory courses and a choice of four other courses drawn from the foundational courses from the major. Students are strongly encouraged to take CCSG 20100: The Science of Climate Change and CCSG 20300: The Economics of Climate Change and Energy as supporting courses but need not if they have covered equivalent content in their major.
Required Courses
CCSG 19000. 100 Units. Fall 2025. Instructor: Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics.
The global energy and climate challenge is perhaps the most important problem society faces. It requires identifying approaches to ensure people have access to the inexpensive and reliable energy critical for human development, without causing disruptive climate change or unduly compromising health and the environment. The course pairs technical and economic analysis to develop an understanding of policy challenges in this area. Lecture topics will include the past, present, and future of energy supply and demand, global climate change, air pollution and its health consequences, selected energy technologies such as solar photovoltaics, nuclear power, unconventional oil and gas, and an analysis of theoretical and practical policy solutions in developed and emerging economies.
This course sets out the basic parameters of the problem and gives students an understanding of how the other required courses of the major fit together. All newly declared climate and energy majors must take this class together.
CCSG 20500. 100 Units. Spring 2026. Instructor: Elisabeth Moyer, Associate Professor in Geophysical Sciences
The use of fossil fuel energy is central to modern economies and is also the central cause of climate change. Stopping climate change requires replacing the fossil fuel system with cleaner sources of energy. At the same time, many people in developing countries need new sources of energy to achieve the living standards of developed countries. This dual problem—replacing existing fossil fuel systems while simultaneously expanding access to energy—is the key reason climate change is such a hard problem.
This course helps students understand this problem, focusing on energy conversion technologies, such as fossils, wind, solar, nuclear, and hydro, and on energy systems, such as transmission, storage, and energy markets. This course may also cover carbon dioxide removal technologies
Choose 4
CCSG 20100. 100 Units. Winter 2026. Instructor: Noboru Nakamura, Professor in Geophysical Sciences, and B. B. Cael, Assistant Professor in Geophysical Sciences
This course covers the basics of the science of climate change, combining the materials covered in the courses Global Warming (PHSC 13400/13410) and Global Biogeochemical Cycles (GEO 23800). The idea behind this course is to give non-science students sufficient background on the science of climate change to be able to think intelligently about climate impacts, policies and so forth. This course may also consider solar radiation management as a tool for controlling some of the effects of climate change.
Students taking the science specialization within this major will have to take either GEOS 13300 The Atmosphere or GEOS 24220 Climate Foundations, and GEOS 23800/ENSC 23800 Global Biogeochemical Cycles. Students in other specializations can also substitute these courses for the new climate foundations course. If students take this course, they cannot take Global Warming for their general education requirement.
CCSG 20300. 100 Units. Winter 2026
This course covers relevant portions of introductory microeconomics and economic issues associated with climate change and energy using the problems of climate change and energy to illustrate basic economic concepts. It also introduces students to tools for mitigating emissions, such as taxes, subsidies, regulation, and quantity controls. As with the climate science course, this course requirement could be satisfied with one or more advanced economics courses.
CCSG 20700. 100 Units. Fall 2025. Instructor: David Weisbach, Walter J. Blum Professor of Law
Climate change raises central issues of justice and morality. Some countries or places have emitted far more carbon dioxide than other countries or places. The most vulnerable places are often poor and have had relatively low emissions. In addition, because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for centuries, decisions today affect people who will be alive in the distant future. This course will address issues of justice and climate change, exploring what obligations of people living in one country or time have to people living in other countries or times. We will ask what the resolution of those issues means for policies to address climate change. Students should be prepared to take all sides of these issues, including positions that they are deeply uncomfortable with.
CCSG 20900. 100 Units. Spring 2026. Instructor: Robert Gulotty, Associate Professor in Political Science
Solving the problem of climate change requires that greenhouse gas emissions be eliminated everywhere—a highly complex challenge. As a result, climate negotiations have been ongoing for more than 30 years, but they have had only limited success. This course addresses theoretical and empirical studies of agreements among nation states on environmental issues and domestic politics (within nation states) of environmental regulation—in other words, the political engineering of effective climate agreements. This course could include a legal component.
CCSG 21100. 100 Units. Instructor: Luís Bettencourt, Professor in Ecology and Evolution
Climate change would not be an important issue but for the impacts. Impacts are not only purely physical or biological, such as changes in weather patterns or sea level rise, but also depend on adaptation. For example, people will adjust their farming practices in response to changes in the climate, partially alleviating the impact. This course would study the impacts of climate change and possible adaptations people will make. The course will be designed around the use and presentation of data on impacts, focusing on the data produced by IPCC Working Group II.
CCSG 25000. 100 Units. September Term.
Climate change is a global problem that will affect people around the world. In addition, many people in developing countries lack access to reliable sources of energy. To understand the problem of climate change, students need to be exposed to how people outside the United States are experiencing the problem.
This course will use the short September term to allow students to travel outside of the United States, such as to existing UChicago centers in Paris or Delhi, or possibly to other areas.
Note that all general education prerequisites from the major will also apply as prerequisites for the minor.
Because courses for the minor may overlap with courses a student is taking for their major, they must have approval from the Director of Undergraduate Studies for the set of courses used for the minor. Students may not take courses for the minor that are in the same area of study as their major (e.g., they may not take CCSG 20300: The Economics of Climate Change and Energy if they are an economics major). In addition, students in the minor may not take CCSG 25000: Climate, Energy, and Development: Global Perspectives in Practice unless they are in their fourth year at the College and have taken at least four of the required courses for their minor.
Courses in the minor must be taken for quality grades and may not be double-counted with the student’s major(s), other minors, or general education requirements.
Students who wish to declare a minor in Climate and Sustainable Growth must reach out to Student Affairs Administrator Trista Trone at ttrone@uchicago.edu to indicate their intention to complete the minor and have their Consent to Complete a Minor Program form signed. Students will need to submit the signed form to their College adviser before the end of the Spring Quarter of their third year.