Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network
The CLEAN collection offers ~1,000 free, peer-reviewed, NGSS-aligned climate and energy teaching resources—easily searchable and ready to use.
The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN) provides the official government climate teaching database through syndication with NOAA Teaching Climate. CLEAN partners with climate scientists and educators to help review educational resources for our collection. CLEAN also provides pedagogical support for teaching climate and energy topics through educator support pages, professional development offerings, and a professional learning community to help educators with many aspects of teaching climate.
CLEAN is led by climate education experts at the Center for Education, Engagement, and Evaluation(CEEE) at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Science Education Resource Center(SERC) at Carleton College. CLEAN was funded as the official content provider for NOAA’s climate.gov/teaching climate webpages.
If you have any questions, please email clean@colorado.edu.
Curriculum
Publications
Boyd, K.J., Gold, A.U., Chandler, P.D., Crim, H.A. (2025): Climate change education in the new landscape of climate literacy. PLOS Clim 4(5): e0000623. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000623
Boyd, K. J., Busch, K. C., Gold, A. U., Ward, E. G., Niepold, F., Poppleton, K., … Morrison, D. L. (2024). Using social network analysis to assess connections within climate and energy education organizations: A case study conducted by the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Environmental Education Research, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2024.2408424
Christensen, A., Welton-Mitchell, C., Gold, A., James, L., & Zeitz, L. (2023, June 27). Beyond Doom and Gloom: Teaching Climate Change to Foster Empowerment. Connected Science Learning, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/24758779.2023.12318633
Gold, A.U., Ledley, T.S., Sullivan, S.B., Kirk, K.B., Grogan, M. (2015): Supporting Energy Education Online: Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Journal of Sustainability Education.
Ledley, T. S., Gold, A.U., Niepold, F., McCaffrey, M. (2014): Moving Toward Collective Impact in Climate Change Literacy – The Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Journal of Geoscience Education, Vol. 62, No. 3, pp. 307-318, https://doi.org/10.5408/13-057.1.
Gold, A.U., Ledley, T.S., Buhr, S.M., Fox, S., McCaffrey, M., Niepold, F., Manduca, C. & Lynds, S. 2012. Peer-review of digital educational resources—A rigorous review process developed by the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Journal of Geoscience Education. 60: 295-308, https://doi.org/10.5408/12-324.1.
Gold, A.U., Ledley, T.S., Buhr, S.M., Fox, S., McCaffrey, M., Niepold, F., Manduca, C. & Lynds, S. 2012. Peer-review of digital educational resources—A rigorous review process developed by the Climate Literacy and Energy Awareness Network (CLEAN). Journal of Geoscience Education. 60: 295-308. https://doi.org/10.5408/12-324.1
