Overview
Junjie Zhang is a professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University and Director of the Initiative for Sustainable Investment at Duke Kunshan University. He founded and directed Duke Kunshan's Environmental Research Center and International Master of Environmental Policy Program. Before that, he was an associate professor in the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego. He was also a Volkswagen Visiting Chair in Sustainability in Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University. His recent research focuses on empirical issues in energy transition, climate change, and green finance. He has received funding from various sources, including scientific foundations, multilateral banks, corporations, financial institutions, and philanthropic foundations. He holds a B.S. from the Renmin University of China, a B.S. and an M.S. from Tsinghua University, and a Ph.D. from Duke University.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
Comparing potential biodiversity conflicts from renewable energy expansion in China at different centralization levels.
Journal Article Nature ecology & evolution · June 2026 The rapid deployment of renewable energy creates urgent trade-offs with biodiversity conservation. The uneven distribution of renewable energy potential and biodiversity creates a critical governance challenge: at which administrative level should goal set ... Full text CiteThe impact of weather shocks on rural credit cooperatives
Journal Article Finance Research Letters · April 1, 2025 This paper estimates the impact of weather shocks on the credit and insolvency risks of China's rural credit cooperatives. We find that abnormal temperatures and heavy precipitation deteriorate loan quality. One more day with a temperature below 5 °C incre ... Full text CiteThe population affected by dust in China in the springtime.
Journal Article PloS one · January 2024 Dust events in northern China, particularly in the springtime, affect millions of people in the source and downwind regions. We investigate the population affected by various dust levels in China in the springtime from 2003 to 2020 using satellite retrieva ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
Ocean carbon dioxide removal (CDR) in China
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by ClimateWorks · 2021 - 2023Coastal SEES Collaborative Research: Climate change impacts on the sustainability of key fisheries of the California Current System
ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2016 - 2022View All Grants