Teaching Climate

This visualization is an interactive Energy System Map, which includes short write-ups introducing students to fundamental energy system topics, paired with animated videos and deep dive resources.

Students research electricity, its sources, how energy grids function, how to make grids most efficient, and how to bring different types of energy generation together to diversify grids. Students debate the costs and benefits of moving to a modernized Smart Grid.

This is an activity that uses basic algebra to assess the costs and savings of electric vehicles. It uses math to measure the trade-offs of buying electric versus gas-powered car models.

This interactive visualization provides information in text, graphic, and video format about renewable energy technologies. Resource in the Student's Guide to Global Climate Change, part of EPA Climate Change Division.

This is the ninth and final lesson in a series of lessons about climate change. This lesson focuses on the various activities that humans can do to mitigate the effects of climate change. This includes information on current and predicted CO2 emission scenarios across the globe, alternative energy sources, and how people are currently responding to climate change. Importantly, this lesson is motivating in showing students that they can make a difference.

This activity leads students through a sequence of learning steps that highlight the embedded energy that is necessary to produce various types of food. Students start by thinking through the components of a basic meal and are later asked to review the necessary energy to produce different types of protein.

In this video clip from Earth: The Operators' Manual, host Richard Alley discusses China's efforts to develop clean energy technologies and to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere, by building coal plants using CO2 sequestration technology. (scroll down page for video)

This video segment examines ethanol, a cleaner-burning fuel alternative to gasoline, and the efforts to produce it more efficiently.

This interactive provides a scenario for students to look at issues related to energy and climate change from the perspective of a monarch.

This animation describes how hybrid-electric vehicles (HEVs) combine the benefits of gasoline engines and electric motors and can be configured to obtain different objectives, such as improved fuel economy, increased power, or additional auxiliary power for electronic devices and power tools.