Proactive Climate Solutions Using Technology

Climate Week, New York- Day 2: The growth of AI requires energy consumption, and that’s a challenge. But AI can also help us solve for climate and community needs at incredible speed. Is this a dilemma? It depends on how you look at it - and I’m grateful to Ben Gemen from Axios for our thoughtful conversation about the big picture. At Amazon we’re taking a holistic approach to both make sure we support the growth of AI sustainably, and simultaneously harness it to help tackle critical climate challenges. Here’s just a few of the ways we’re using the technology (that may surprise you): 📌 After Hurricane Helene, Amazon’s Disaster Relief team used drones to capture 32,000 images across 28 miles of dangerous rivers and rough terrain. AI analyzed these images in seconds (vs. days for humans) and created detailed maps to prioritize search and rescue areas. The information enhanced safety for first responders and cut down on agonizing wait times for worried families. 🌊 Amazon Web Services (AWS) has partnered with The Ocean Cleanup to create an AI-powered "navigation system" that will help identify, track, and predict where plastic is floating in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. With an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces spanning millions of square miles, this technology will be critical in optimizing cleanup operations. 💧 In Mississippi, we’re collaborating with Arable and MSU on AI-powered sensors to help farmers make smarter irrigation decisions. The sensors analyze real-time soil moisture, weather conditions, and crop water requirements, then AI processes historical patterns to deliver clear, actionable recommendations through a mobile app. This is expected to save 150 million gallons of water annually—enough for 1,600 households! 🍎 Our Amazon Fresh stores in India use machine vision to identify produce with minor imperfections in crates and on shelves, so the items can be redirected for sale at reduced prices rather than going to waste. These are just a few examples of how cutting-edge technology can be used for good! We’re just beginning to scratch the surface, but there’s no doubt AI can be a tool to catalyze meaningful change.

The Climate Tech Unicorns Redefining Our Future 🚀 Four years ago, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink famously made a bold prediction: the next 1,000 unicorns would come from the climate tech sector. BlackRock has since backtracked on many of its net zero commitments, as we all know. But Fink was right about one thing: 👉 Climate change is not just the biggest generational challenge—it is also the biggest generational investment opportunity. And as my mentor, Nobel Peace Laureate Prof. Yunus, always says: “Wherever I see a problem, I see a business opportunity.” So let’s bring on the problem-solving climate unicorns! At Carbon Equity, we invest in the pioneers reshaping entire industries—from energy and materials to transportation and manufacturing. Here are 9 portfolio companies turning climate challenges into billion-dollar opportunities selected by chief climate impact Liza Rubinstein Malamud: 🔋 Form Energy – Cracking the Code on Long-Duration Energy Storage Problem: Renewable energy is intermittent. Solution: Iron-air batteries that store energy for 100+ hours, making renewables reliable. 🌍 KoBold Metals – AI-Powered Critical Mineral Discovery Problem: Mining for key materials is inefficient and environmentally damaging. Solution: AI-driven exploration to find sustainable sources of critical minerals. ♻️ Redwood Materials – Closing the Loop on Battery Supply Chains Problem: Battery waste is piling up, and raw materials are scarce. Solution: High-efficiency battery recycling to create a circular economy. ⚡ Octopus Energy – Powering the Clean Energy Revolution Problem: Affordable, clean energy remains inaccessible for many. Solution: Smart, tech-enabled renewable energy solutions for homes and businesses. 🔗 Stegra – Decarbonizing Steel Production Problem: Steelmaking is one of the most polluting industries. Solution: Green hydrogen-powered steel production to cut emissions. 💧 Electric Hydrogen – Scaling Green Hydrogen Production Problem: Green hydrogen remains too expensive to scale. Solution: Next-gen PEM electrolysis to produce low-cost, high-efficiency hydrogen. 🌿 Twelve – Turning CO₂ into Valuable Products Problem: CO₂ is treated as waste instead of a resource. Solution: Electrocatalysis technology to upcycle CO₂ into fuels and chemicals. 🔋 Group14 Technologies – Supercharging EV Batteries Problem: Lithium-ion batteries are reaching their performance limits. Solution: Silicon-carbon anodes that dramatically enhance battery capacity and efficiency. 🏡 1KOMMA5° – Simplifying Home Energy Independence Problem: Clean energy upgrades for homes are complex and fragmented. Solution: A one-stop shop for solar, storage, and energy management. 💡 Climate Innovation = Economic Opportunity These companies turn climate solutions into tomorrow’s trillion-dollar industries, proving impact drives value. What climate unicorns are your favorite? #ClimateTech #CarbonEquity

On #WorldEnvironmentDay, we’re reminded that environmental and humanitarian challenges are interconnected.     Climate change can intensify pressures that contribute to forced displacement, disrupting livelihoods, straining infrastructure, and making access to essential services more difficult.     As communities respond to these challenges, it is increasingly important to consider solutions that help meet urgent needs while limiting additional pressure on the environment where possible.    That is why environmentally friendly technologies have an important role to play. Clean and resilient energy solutions can help support communities while reducing dependence on more resource-intensive alternatives.    One example is solar energy. Beyond lowering emissions, solar can provide reliable power in areas where infrastructure is limited or disrupted and help reduce reliance on diesel generation.    Recently, our IT team at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, deployed solar kits across Sudan, Ethiopia, Chad, Burundi, and Mali.     In Chad, it helps power operations supporting protection and assistance in a country hosting over 1.5 million forcibly displaced people.    In Sudan, reliable access to power can be especially valuable amid ongoing conflict and outages.     In Burundi, the deployments contributed to reducing dependence on diesel while supporting more resilient and sustainable energy access.    As environmental and infrastructure challenges continue to evolve, practical technologies like these can help strengthen resilience while supporting a more sustainable future.    Photo credit: Aristophane Ngargoune

🌍 AI is accelerating everything—but can it also help us slow down climate change? We talk a lot about AI boosting productivity, cutting costs, and automating workflows. But lately, I’ve been asking myself a bigger question: can AI become a real ally in protecting our planet? Here’s the opportunity 👇 AI can process massive datasets at a scale no human team ever could. And that unlocks powerful climate applications: 🔹 Earlier prediction of extreme weather events Advanced models can detect patterns and signals faster, helping communities prepare and reduce damage. 🔹 Smarter energy grids AI can optimize supply and demand in real time, reducing waste and improving renewable integration. 🔹 Sustainable agriculture Precision farming tools powered by AI can lower water usage, reduce fertilizer waste, and improve crop yields. 🔹 Resource optimization across industries From logistics to manufacturing, AI can cut emissions by improving efficiency and minimizing excess. But here’s the part we can’t ignore: AI itself consumes energy. Data centers, model training, computational power—they all have a carbon footprint. So the real question isn’t: Can AI fight climate change? It’s: Can we design and deploy AI responsibly? From my perspective, AI is neither hero nor villain. It’s leverage. And leverage amplifies intent. If we: prioritize green data centers, invest in energy-efficient models, align AI projects with measurable sustainability KPIs, and integrate ESG metrics into tech strategy…then AI can become one of the most powerful tools in our climate toolkit. Innovation without sustainability is short-sighted. Sustainability without innovation is too slow. The future demands both. So I’m curious: do you see AI as part of the climate problem—or part of the solution? Share your thoughts in the comments, and follow me for more insights.

Digital skills aren’t just powering businesses. They are strengthening climate resilience. In the face of rising temperatures and extreme weather, small holder farmers need better tools to adapt and plan. But many regions still lack the local data needed to inform decisions about planting, harvesting, and protecting crops. That is why I am inspired by the work of Cisco Foundation grantee One Acre Fund, which is using remote sensing technology to support precision agriculture. Their approach includes flood mapping, digital weather advisories, and crop yield monitoring, helping farmers respond to climate risks with better information. In Kenya, more than 10,000 farmers now receive weather updates. Thousands of flood data points have been mapped. And pilots are already underway in four additional countries. When we pair digital tools with community-driven solutions, we unlock powerful potential for impact. #DigitalSkills #ClimateResilience #TechForGood

The uncomfortable truth about climate tech: Most fail because the unit economics don't work. Food waste is a $1 trillion annual problem globally. But it's different from other climate challenges: it's one of the only sustainability issues where solving it actually saves businesses money too. Throughout my career, I've been guided by John Elkington 'triple bottom line' of people, planet and profit. And what I've learned is this: everyone likes to believe they want to save the planet, but ultimately there has to be something tangible in return to drive lasting behavioural change. That's the fundamental problem with most climate tech solutions. They ask businesses to choose between doing good and making money. But food waste is different. And the scale of the business opportunity is massive: • The average commercial kitchen wastes €100,000+ per year (which is equivalent to a 3-5% margin loss, in a <5% margin industry) • There are 10.5 million food service establishments globally • At least €52.5 billion in revenue potential What fascinated me about Orbisk | Zero Food Waste wasn't just the business opportunity, but the leverage. Food waste contributes to carbon emissions while simultaneously being money that literally goes into the bin. This is the rare climate tech solution where customers don't have to choose. They get direct financial gains while making environmental impact. The numbers prove it: • Up to 70% food waste reduction per year per location • 12x ROI • Plus the environmental impact: reducing 10 tons of food waste, preventing 45 tons of CO₂, and saving 70 million litres of water (per location) At Orbisk, we've been very intentional about building a solution that's mutually beneficial. We exist to solve a massive environmental problem, but we do it in a way that strengthens our customers' bottom line. That's the kind of climate tech that scales. Because sustainability must be profitable to create lasting change. 🌱

Is it smarter to build massive new carbon capture facilities from scratch, or to retrofit the ones we already have? Every day, the world produces over 100 million tonnes of desalination brine. Usually, it’s waste. Today, we’re proving it can be a climate asset. I’m proud to spread the news that Google has signed a carbon removal offtake agreement with Ebb Carbon. What I find most compelling here is the industrial ecology of it all. Ebb isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel; they are making it turn greener ;) Essentially they intercept the salty brine waste from desalination plants BEFORE it hits the ocean and run it through an electrochemical process to increase its alkalinity. I know, Science talk 🤓 This essentially supercharges the water’s natural ability to pull CO₂ out of the air and lock it away as stable bicarbonate for thousands of years. It’s a brilliant way to turn a waste stream into a climate solution without the massive capital cost of building standalone facilities. Here's a few notes about today's deal: 🟢 We are kicking things off by pre-purchasing 3,500 tonnes of carbon removal, a pilot volume that signals our long-term confidence in ocean-based solutions. 🟢 This builds on the momentum of 2024, where we signed ~16 deals worth over $100 million to help jumpstart the high-quality removal market. 🟢 The scalability here is incredible --> if deployed across the Saudi Water Authority’s facilities alone, this tech has a potential capacity of 85 million tonnes per year. 🟢 This tech leverages the ocean, which already holds 50x more carbon than the atmosphere, along the line of thought that working with nature is key to reaching net zero. For us at Google, this is about signaling that technologies integrating into existing industrial systems are the fastest route to gigaton-scale removal. The convergence of water security and climate action is the space to watch. Read more here - https://lnkd.in/epW_5XuG #Sustainability #CarbonRemoval #CircularEconomy #Google #NetZero #ClimateTech #CleanTech #IndustrialEcology

Wider markets have long considered quantum technology as speculative sci-fi tech, but it's already solving big problems in the climate solutions space. Innosphere recently partnered with the Partnership for Strategic Futures to better understand how these two domains connect. We looked more closely at six major verticals where the connection is already active: environmental monitoring, energy innovation, disaster response, agriculture, carbon management, and water systems. Across each one, we found quantum LiDAR, gravity sensors, spectroscopy, and smart grid tech already in  Use. We also saw the climate/quantum overlap happening right here in Colorado: 🔬 LongPath Technologies, Inc. is using quantum-frequency lasers to detect methane leaks with high sensitivity. 🌍 AOSense, Inc is developing quantum sensors for climate monitoring and Earth observation. ⚡Infleqtion is building quantum-enhanced grid systems to strengthen energy resilience. Beyond use cases, these sectors share common structural needs. Both rely on technical founders. Both require federal and R&D funding to gain traction. Both depend on specialized capital and long commercialization timelines, and both need support systems that can help translate science into deployable solutions. There’s a real opportunity here for leaders across climate and quantum to work more closely. By coordinating around shared infrastructure and commercialization strategy, we can help both ecosystems grow faster and solve more complex problems in the process.

Can physical innovation scale fast enough to meet our 2040 climate goals? This edition of the Hardware to Save a Planet Newsletter, features conversations with 11 climate hardware founders who are turning bold ideas into real-world impact, right now in 2025. From Allan Adams at Aquatic Labs making ocean carbon removal measurable, to Scott Mercer at Focused Energy bringing fusion down to earth, to Luke Iseman at Make Sunsets cooling the planet from the stratosphere. These aren't future promises. They're deploying solutions today. We explore how Curtis VanWalleghem at Hydrostor evolved underground energy storage from pilot to commercial scale, how Cole Ashman at Pila Energy democratizes home battery systems, and how Greg Williams at Sublime Systems is reinventing cement to be both cleaner and stronger. Jason Chua at Range Energy electrifies trailers instead of replacing entire truck fleets, while Nehali Jain at Antora Energy stores renewable electricity as glowing hot carbon blocks. Randol Aikin, PhD at Remedy Scientific Inc. standardizes land decontamination, Ross Bonner at Transaera, Inc. simplifies building cooling systems, and Johanna Wolfson at Azolla Ventures provides the catalytic capital that makes it all possible. The Hardware to Save a Planet newsletter is where we dive deep into the climate hardware solutions shaping our energy future, straight from the innovators who are turning bold ideas into reality. 🔗 Subscribe below to join the conversation on real-world climate solutions! 👇

What if the future of clean air doesn’t only come from planting trees… but also from engineering them? Mushroom World Group has helped bring that idea to life with the installation of an “Algae Tree” in Bhopal under the Smart City initiative. Built using living microalgae technology, this smart climate-tech structure is designed to absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen while operating partially on solar energy. Reports suggest a single unit can absorb nearly 1.5 tonnes of CO₂ annually, comparable to the impact of around 20-25 mature trees in dense urban environments. And honestly, this matters more than many realize. Cities today are running out of open green spaces while pollution, traffic emissions and rising urban heat continue increasing rapidly. Traditional solutions alone may not be enough anymore. We need innovation that combines: ✓ Sustainability ✓ Science ✓ Smart Infrastructure ✓ Renewable Energy ✓ Climate Conscious Urban Design What makes this even more inspiring is that the project reportedly involved nearly 2 years of R&D with a team of 50+ researchers, engineers and specialists. This is the kind of innovation India needs more of. Not just digital transformation rather Environmental transformation. Technology should not only make businesses smarter. It should make cities healthier and human lives better. The future belongs to nations that can scale both growth and sustainability together. #Repost if you believe climate tech innovation deserves more attention in India. 📍 Follow Onkar Bhadra for insights on AI, cloud, emerging technology & innovation driven transformation. #Climate #Tech #India #SmartCity