Whether you’re looking to build new skills or expand your knowledge, several universities and online learning platforms are offering online courses for free for the next few months. Below we’ve gathered some of the available courses related to climate change or sustainability that you can complete from the safety of your own home!

Online courses:

1. CLEO: CLEO Speaker’s Network
   Start date: On website
   • Purpose: to build individuals’ speaking capacity to simplify climate science, its seriousness and solutions for the general public. 
   • Goal: to equip participants with tools to carry the climate crisis message into their communities and beyond.
   • If you scroll down, the description for how it works is towards the bottom of the page! 
2. Harvard University: Energy Within Environmental Constraint
   Start date: On website
   • A quantitative introduction to the energy system and its environmental impacts.
   • You’ll learn:
     • The basic engineering, environmental science, and economics of our energy system.
     • A working understanding of energy technologies.
     • Environmental impacts of the energy system, focusing on air pollution, climate change, and land use.
     • Techniques for estimating monetary costs and carbon impacts.
3. University of Illinois: Introduction to Sustainability
   Start date: On website
   • This course introduces the academic approach of Sustainability and explores how today’s human societies can endure in the face of global change, ecosystem degradation and resource limitations. The course focuses on key knowledge areas of sustainability theory and practice, including population, ecosystems, global change, energy, agriculture, water, environmental economics and policy, ethics, and cultural history.
4. University of Cape Town: Climate Change Mitigation in Developing Countries
   Start Date: May 11^th
   • This course will cover topics such as facilitation process techniques, energy modeling, scenario building, innovation and policy making. You will have the opportunity to respond to these topics with ideas and reflection from your own context. Whether you are a climate change practitioner, work in development or are simply curious about how climate mitigation is understood, this course will give you insights into the complexity of how countries from the South pursue development goals while addressing climate mitigation.
5. Municipal Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries
   Start date: On website
   • This course provides you with an overview of the municipal solid waste management situation in low- and middle-income countries. It covers key elements of the waste management system, such as its technical, environmental, social, financial and institutional aspects. Besides understanding the challenges, you will be introduced to appropriate and already applied solutions through selected case studies.
6. Environmental Security and Sustaining Peace
   Start date: On website
   • This 8-week course on Environmental Security and Sustaining Peace provides an in-depth introduction to the multiple roles that natural resources and the environment play in the onset, escalation, and resolution of, and recovery from, violent conflicts. Many of the considerations and approaches in this course are also relevant to understanding and addressing social conflicts around natural resources and the environment.
7. The Health Effects of Climate Change
   Start Date: April 6
   • Learn how global warming impacts human health, and the ways we can diminish those impacts. Created with support from the Harvard Global Health Institute, this course will explain how climate change impacts people around the globe, but also how it directly affects you and your life. Though your risk rises with the rising global temperatures, climate change is a solvable problem, and there are things you can do to mitigate that risk.

Ready for more?

Consider registering for a sustainability-related or sustainability-focused course for UF Fall semester. Browse our most recent course recommendations for undergraduate and graduate-level courses at UF.

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Note: The Office of Sustainability does not specifically endorse nor benefit from any links to external parties/websites.