APS is committed to sustainability in all forms, from supporting scientists seeking climate solutions to ensuring quality physics education that advances the next generation's involvement in the field.
APS supports the United Nations's Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the SDG Publisher's Compact. Our Chief Publications Officer Rachel Burley was named an SDG Fellow in 2023, demonstrating our dedication to sustainable practices and disseminating research on sustainability, including:
Recent PRX Energy articles that focus on sustainability include:
Our initiatives further the sustainability of the physics community and the planet in ways that align with the SDG Compact goals of quality education, gender equality, reduced inequalities, affordable and clean energy, and climate action.
Our physics education initiatives advance quality education by supporting physics departments, faculty, and K-12 teachers, as well as public engagement efforts to encourage a passion for physics in students and the general public.
Discover APS education efforts
To support our values of diversity, inclusion, and respect, APS offers an array of programs that aim to rectify historic inequities in physics by advancing the education and careers of women in physics as well as Black, Indigenous, and Latino individuals.
APS Conferences for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWiP) help undergraduate women and those with diverse gender identities further their physics education and careers.
These grants support activities and events that advance women's participation in physics. They may also be used to form a Women in Physics (WiP) group within an institution, expand an existing group, or improve sustainability within a group.
AGL fosters professional development and leadership opportunities for women and gender minorities who are physics graduate students and postdocs
A collaboration between APS, the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Astronomical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the Society of Physics Students, this multimillion-dollar scholarship program provides direct funding and support to African American undergraduate students majoring in physics and astronomy. It is sponsored by the Simons Foundation International.
The NMC provides historically underrepresented undergraduate and graduate students in physics and related majors with career development and resources, the NMC pairs Black/African, Latinx, and Indigenous students with mentors.
APS's mission highlights our charge to advance scientific discovery and research dissemination, as well as to amplify the voice for science and communicate the essential role physics plays in the modern world. This mission includes APS's work advancing affordable, clean energy and climate action through our data-driven reports, statements, initiatives, public policy efforts, and topical groups.
APS's Panel on Public Affairs has compiled reports focused on sustainability and that guide APS's public policy and advocacy efforts.
There is an urgent need to reduce methane emissions to help reduce temperature increases from anthropogenic greenhouse gasses. An essential part of any strategy to mitigate methane emissions is the ability to accurately measure and monitor the amount and location of methane released by various sectors.
If nothing is done to address these price and supply issues, then there will be a lasting negative effect on the scientific enterprise in the US.
APS Statements shape the public policy positions of the organization and our advocacy efforts.
Accelerating the transition to carbon-neutral energy sources
View the statement on carbon neutrality
The American Physical Society has a long-standing interest in the establishment of a technically sound national energy policy.
APS is profoundly concerned about the potential loss of the nation's accumulated helium reserves.
Earth’s climate is changing. This critical issue poses the risk of significant environmental, social, and economic disruptions around the globe.
APS initiatives related to climate change aim to educate the public about the science of climate.
Physicists fill in wikipedia’s gaps on climate science.
This program equips physicists with the skills necessary to address science misinformation.
APS's advances climate science in many other ways by engaging our members.
APS advocates for national calibration standards to monitor methane emissions, which will enable effective industry action and effective data-driven methane reduction policies.
This member-organized APS unit advances knowledge concerning the physics, measurement, and modeling of climate processes.
This member-organized APS unit promotes communication relevant to the physics involved in humankind's safe generation, transmission, storage, and efficient use of energy with as small an impact on the Earth's environment and resources as feasible.
APS publications serve the international physics community with peer-reviewed research journals, news and commentary about the latest research published in the Physical Review journals, news about and for members, information about physics and its place in the world, and blogs covering science policy, as well as fun and educational science news.
APS develops and implements a range of programs and initiatives that improve physics education, impact policy makers, increase diversity, inform the public about the importance of physics, and reach out to physicists around the world.
APS advances and diffuses the knowledge of physics for the benefit of humanity, promote physics, and serve the broader physics community.