Our Mission & Team
The VCRI is an interdisciplinary effort by faculty and researchers to understand and provide solutions for the future of carbon removal in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
About our work
The Virginia Climate Restoration Initiative’s work seeks to answer fundamental questions:
- Can Virginia get to net zero carbon dioxide emissions?
- What role should carbon dioxide removal (CDR) play in that effort?
- How will implementing CDR impact local communities in the state?
Phase One
The first phase of our work assessed whether different paths for carbon mitigation are economically and technically possible in Virginia. We discovered that a variety of these tools can offer affordable pathways to mitigating carbon emissions and restoring our climate. However, each tool requires resources and entails tradeoffs.
Phase Two
The second phase of our work has been taking a closer look at the feasibility of implementing these different CDR strategies and the impacts these strategies would have on Virginia and its communities. Our hope is that this “ground up” look will help further understanding of broad scale carbon mitigation elsewhere in the United States and the world.
What is climate restoration?
Climate restoration moves beyond reducing emissions to actively removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, with the goal of reestablishing the atmospheric conditions in which humans can thrive long-term. Although the primary focus of mitigating climate change needs to be reducing emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, removing CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering has a role to play. Doing so can offset emissions from sources that are technically difficult and expensive to cut. In the long-term, a combination of emissions reductions and carbon sequestration might even be able to get us at or below net-zero emissions.
The Virginia Climate Restoration Initiative focuses on understanding whether and how carbon removal strategies—including nature and technology-based approaches—can effectively be deployed across the state to offset emissions.
Our Team
Faculty/Principal Investigators
Andrés Clarens
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Leon Szeptycki
Law
Moira O’Neill
Law (Urban and Environmental Planning)
Karen McGlathery
Environmental Science
Lisa Colosi Peterson
Civil and Environmental Engineering
Majid Shafiee-Jood
Engineering (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Larry Band
Environmental Science + Engineering (dual appointment)
Negin Alemazkoor
Engineering (Civil and Environmental Engineering)
Bill Shobe
Weldon Cooper Center
Jeana Ripple
Architecture
Charity Nyelele
Environmental Science
Researchers
Joao Ferreira
Weldon Cooper Center
Students
Parisa Javadi
Student Researcher
Kamiar Khayambashi
Student Researcher
Nafisa Ahmed
Student Researcher
Nafiseh Salehi
Student Researcher
Pinky Sarkar
Student Researcher
About the Environmental Institute
People around the world are experiencing environmental change at a greater rate than any other time in human history. The Environmental Institute translates research discoveries into real-world solutions by integrating perspectives and disciplines needed to solve environmental challenges that communities face in Virginia and beyond.
The work of the Institute supports research and training through:
- Interdisciplinary teams to catalyze new collaborations
- Partnerships with stakeholders to co-create solutions
- Training for the next generation in solutions-oriented research