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Provided by: Council on Foreign Relations |Published on: December 13, 2025
Lesson Plans
1112AP
Synopsis
In this lesson from the Council on Foreign Relations, students will explore how the United States might transition from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy.
Students will consider electrification, energy storage, grid resiliency, and conservation to understand the complexity of long-term climate and energy policy decisions, demonstrating their understanding by drafting a policy brief to transition the United States to greener energy in the future.
The review game in this lesson is an excellent, low-prep activity that teachers can easily use for other lessons by switching out the keywords.
The provided slide deck clearly sequences the activity, reducing facilitation planning for teachers.
Prerequisites
Students should have prior knowledge of climate change, U.S. government policymaking, and basic economic tradeoffs.
In the slides, there is a slide that says, “Welcome to my time machine.” No speaker notes are included, but teachers may want to introduce here that they are going to travel to the year 2100 to write a policy brief.
This lesson will take at least one hour.
Differentiation & Implementation
Teachers may wish to have students read the background articles in a jigsaw format to reduce the time spent on the readings. If teachers do this, they may want to require that all students read the How Energy Conservation Can Help Fight Climate Change article in addition to their one background reading.
This activity supports connections to climate mitigation and Sustainable Development Goals such as SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG 13 (Climate Action).
High school students may benefit from having additional class time to work on the two-page paper. Alternatively, this may be a good assignment for students to complete over the weekend or during a longer break.
Before students begin writing, teachers may want to show them an example of a policy brief to familiarize them with the general format and tone. Students can use this policy brief as a mentor text.
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About the Partner Provider
CFR Education from the Council on Foreign Relations
CFR Education provides accurate, accessible, authoritative resources that build the knowledge, skills, and perspective high school and higher education students need to understand and engage with today’s most pressing global issues.
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