In October 2000, energy company BP and Ford Motor Company announced the formation of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI) at the Princeton Environmental Institute to develop new approaches to the management of carbon emissions, the key culprit in global warming. Recognizing the complexity of the problem and the urgency to find solutions, the companies pledged $20 million to support the effort for 10 years.

Under the leadership of Stephen W. Pacala, the Frederick D. Petrie Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Robert H. Socolow, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Princeton researchers today are tackling the problem of greenhouse emissions. In one critically important paper to emerge from the initiative, Pacala and Socolow showed how existing technologies—from solar energy to the underground storage of carbon dioxide—could stop the escalation of global warming for the next 50 years. And in part because of the work of CMI, BP is testing ways to segregate and store carbon dioxide produced during the burning of fossil fuels.

“For our long-term projects, we look to academic partnerships,” says Gardiner Hill, manager for group environmental technology at BP. The reason? “They offer us ‘out of the box’ thinking and access to some really deep science and technology R&D,” he says.