Challenges
Explore the 5 pillars of our ecosystem, and see what kinds of solutions are currently in high demand.
Built Environment
Where we live
Energy Production
Reducing carbon emissions through clean and renewable energy generation and increased efficiency.
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Energy Transmission and Distribution
Increasing power efficiency and reducing power loss during transmission and distribution, improving power flow and congestion management, enhancing grid flexibility, demand response capabilities and bi and multi-directional smart energy flows in distributed energy resources.
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Energy Storage
Developing energy conversion and stationary storage systems applicable to the utilities, commercial, industrial as well as residential sectors, ranging from fast responsive options for near real-time to long-duration options.
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Water Scarcity
Innovations enhancing water supply, reducing and managing water demand, reducing waste and non-revenue water.
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Energy Efficiency
Energy efficient extraction, purification, distribution, treatment, and reclamation of water resources.
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Wastewater Treatment
Innovations in wastewater treatment to reduce fugitive waste gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, innovations for reuse of wastewater.
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Water Infrastructure Resilience
Resilience of water infrastructure to the impacts of climate change.
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Low Carbon Elements
Developing low carbon primary construction materials in upstream and on-site production.
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Reduced Material Resources
Designing for modularity, durability and less material use. Integration of recyclable materials, nature-based materials, and implementation of closed material flows such as materials with a high recycled content. Revalorizing construction and demolition waste.
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Infrastructure Resilience
Resilience of built infrastructure against the impacts of climate change.
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Operational Systems
Low carbon and improved efficiency technologies for heating, cooling, ventilation, refrigeration, and lighting.
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Optimized Control
Optimization in energy control and management for indoor and outdoor environments.
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Building Performance
Energy-efficient architecture and innovations leading to performance improvement of buildings such as solar gain control, daylight control, night cooling and insulation.
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Electrification
New generation batteries with improved energy density and lifespan, advancing electric propulsion technologies for medium and heavy-duty vehicles and improving braking energy recovery. Facilitation of charging infrastructure.
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Alternative Fuels
Development of low-carbon alternative fuels and design of highly efficient, compatible engines and auxiliary components. Facilitation of refueling infrastructure and fuel distribution.
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Fuel Efficiency
Enhancing fuel efficiency in context of vehicle design, materials and maintenance of road infrastructure.
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Routing Optimization
Efficiencies in traffic flow, connectivity and routes for individuals and fleets.
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Transportation Modality
Technologies and infrastructure that facilitate shifts to low carbon transportation modes and influence individual travel behavior.
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Digital
The digital space
Evaluation, Management and Reporting
Comprehensive footprint analysis, enabling entities to pinpoint primary sources of emissions, carbon offsets tools that facilitate the selection, purchase, and management of carbon offset projects, solutions for the standardized reporting and disclosure of environmental impact.
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Climate Resilience and Risk Management
Models, algorithms and platform to predict climate-related risks and increase climate resilience, assess vulnerabilities and exposure to climate risks across various sectors.
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Climate Positive Investment Platforms
Impact investing platforms, marketplaces for carbon credits and blended finance products for projects with environmental benefits, such as renewable energy development, energy efficiency upgrades, and sustainable infrastructure projects.
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Climate Action
Platforms for widespread educational campaigns that raise awareness about the importance of climate action, planning and behavioral change, strategic decisions regarding infrastructure development, land use planning, investment strategies, etc.
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Energy Efficient Computation
Hardware and software solutions, including advanced processor technologies and chips engineered for high performance with minimal energy use, optimized software algorithms and architectures that require less computational power.
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Power Management
Increase system efficiency in data acquisition, transfer and storage, including compression algorithms and network management practices that reduce the volume of data that needs to be transferred and stored, data storage solutions that offer higher density storage.
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Energy Consumption
Technologies for communication infrastructures and networks that adjust energy usage based on the workload and operational requirements of data centers and network infrastructure, AI and machine learning algorithms to predict and manage the energy use of data handling systems more efficiently.
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Decarbonizing Data Centers
Renewable energy integration, cooling technologies and energy harvesting devices, next generation data storage technologies.
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Critical Raw Materials
Reuse and recycling of critical raw materials and hardware components, extended product lifecycles.
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Land Use
How we impact our land
Sensory and Physical Attributes
Advances to improve taste, texture and structure of alternative proteins and functional ingredients.
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Nutritional Profile
Enhancing nutritional profile of alternative proteins, also for animal and aquaculture feeds.
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Crop Resilience
Improve resilience and reduce vulnerability of crops to increasing temperatures, weather variability, shifting agroecosystem boundaries, invasive crops and pests, and more frequent extreme weather events.
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Livestock and Aquaculture
Improving livestock food digestibility and feed conversion ratios, advances in animal health monitoring and illness prevention, advances in sustainable land-based aquaculture.
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Reduce Land Footprint
Reducing land footprint by improving crop yields, increasing nutritional content, and implementing novel farming systems such as vertical, urban and aquaponic farming as well as insect and algae farms.
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Reduce Inputs
Decreasing high GHG farming inputs such as fertilizers via precision farming, nutrient management and increased efficiencies, biological alternatives for disease and pest prevention and treatment and induced crop resistance.
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Food Spoilage
Reducing spoilage across the value chain, from loss due to mold, pests, and inadequate climate control at the post-harvest stage, across processing and transportation until the retail distribution stage.
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Food Waste
Reducing food waste at the consumption stage by, for example, shelf-life extension technologies and food waste analytics, upcycling off-grade products and by products and redistribution of surplus food.
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Value Chain Integration
Enhanced integration along the food value chain and enhanced demand planning.
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Extraction
Extraction process innovations and increased efficiency and purity leading to lower carbon and water footprints, implementation of waste solutions and a circular material cycle.
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Closure and Remediation:
Reclaiming areas of physical disturbance to prevent erosion, stabilizing soils containing metals or chemicals to prevent unwanted metal releases into the environment.
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Soil Fertility
Improving and managing soil fertility and health with respect to microbial communities, nutrient availability, carbon sequestration and water retention.
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Regenerative Practices
Advancing implementation of management practices (crop cover, agroforestry, intercropping, reduced tillage, crop residues) that maximize soil carbon sequestration.
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Materials And Manufacturing
What we make
Transformation
Process innovations for chemical and biological transformation of CO2 into value-added products, e.g. production of bio-oils, specialty chemicals, polymers, fuels and construction material.
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Transportation and Storage
Conditioning, transporting and storing captured CO2 in a secure and cost-effective way, including innovations in monitoring of storage sites and verification of their integrity.
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Product Design
Designing with attributes that support circularity such as longevity, durability, biodegradability, recyclability, modularity and disassembly.
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Waste Management
Innovations in sorting, recycling and recovery processes and infrastructure for optimal conversion and utilization of waste (biomass and inert materials) for the production of new raw materials.
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Resource Transparency
Connecting between economic as well as civic players. Tracer technologies (physical, digital or biological) that allow to identify a product and capture, store, share and analyze data throughout its lifecycle, enabling trading, industrial symbiosis, recycling and in general, exchange of data between stakeholders leading to material valorization.
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Process Innovation
Innovations that reduce the energy intensity of production and conditioning processes such as separation, filtration, drying, chemical and plasma synthesis. Material substitution and additive manufacturing.
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Resource Efficiency
Optimization of operating parameters and implementation of predictive maintenance leading to reduced use of energy, water, fluids and materials, elimination of waste that results from overproduction, overprocessing and defects, product design to increase manufacturing efficiency.
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Resource Recovery
Implementation of advanced recovery and recycling for materials. Recovery of low temperature waste heat and water from cooling towers.
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Biodegradable Materials
Innovations in biodegradability of polymers whilst ensuring high performance of properties vital to applications.
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Low Emission Enablers
Materials that their incorporation into products facilitates lower operational emissions (e.g. lightweight composites and novel catalysts) or material efficiency (i.e. enabling a lesser amount of material to be used whilst retaining the same function, such as a reinforcement material).
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Technology Enablers
Novel materials that are imperative to a climate-tech breakthrough that enable its implementation. e.g. novel conductors that lower the working temperature of a fuel cell or phase change materials for thermal storage.
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Novel Refrigerants
Next generation non-hazardous refrigerants with low greenhouse warming potential.
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Biomaterials
Materials generated from a renewable and sustainable bio-based source (including low or carbon negative plant, fungi and algae sources and by-products) as well as waste streams (such as urban and agricultural biowaste and waste-water sludge) and via microbial and enzymatic processes.
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Traceability
Traceability with respect to, amongst other materials, metals, plastic, and materials connected to deforestation and changes in land use and for attribution of GHG emissions to material flow across supply chain networks.
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Supply Chain Optimization
Tools for real-time, predictive intelligence into supply chain activity such as supply and demand planning in order to reduce overproduction, material flow analysis to reduce material resources and waste.
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Logistics & Distribution
Facilitating collaborative shipping and synchromodality, effective reverse logistics, low carbon warehouse and logistics management.
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Nature
How we preserve and revive
Habitat and Species Monitoring
Non-invasive detection and tracking of species and monitoring of habitats and vulnerable ecosystems, tools and platforms to analyze, organize and share observations, developing alert systems for failing food webs, invasive species, stressors etc. Relates to both terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
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Habitat and Species Conservation
Technology deployment to address and scale solutions to conservation challenges such as maintaining and managing protected areas, ensuring wildlife corridors, migration assistance for species threatened by habitat loss, pollinations challenges, conservation of seed and genetic diversity and management of biological invasions. Relates to both terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
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Monitoring of Natural Systems
Monitoring of the physical environment such as forest change, ice loss, climate and ocean parameters, weather phenomena, natural resources (e.g. water and soil), and impacts of human land and water use.
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Wildlife Observations
Observation platforms that provide knowledge on species, habitat connectivity, population changes and answer critical questions about animal behavior, interactions, reproduction, ecology, genetics and migration patterns.
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Carbon and GHG Monitoring
Granular monitoring of CO2 surface sources and sinks, the exchange of greenhouse gases between the land, atmosphere and oceans, and the associated changes in carbon stocks.
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Prediction, Risk Assessment and Monitoring
Tools with high spatial and temporal resolution for event prediction and risk assessment, including now-casting for short-term forecasts, warnings and real-time alert and monitoring systems.
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Disaster Management and Aid Mobilization
Tools to improve quality and speed of event management, information sharing, cooperation between stakeholders, response measures, rescue operations and safety of emergency responders.
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Infrastructure and Community Resilience
Minimize damage from extreme weather events to construction, water, sanitation (and related health risks), telecommunications, power and additional essential services as well as to local communities. Can include both endurance to extreme phenomena as well as measures that reduce the intensity of an event.
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Preservation and Monitoring of Natural Carbon Stocks
Technologies that facilitate halting of deforestation and forest degradation, e.g. early detection of threatened areas, empowering farmers and smallholders to protect and regenerate their environment, protection of old and natural forests, forest inventories to broaden access to carbon offsets, measurements of carbon stock.
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Forest Restoration
Afforestation and reforestation planting technologies that can be applied over vast and remote areas, innovations to support growth of young saplings, scaling ways to harness trees potential to sequester carbon, smart applications in urban forest management, measurement of carbon stock changes.
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Sustainable Forestry
Technology to support sustainable governance of forest ecosystems used for goods and services, technology for traceability of trees - even following transformation (e.g. – paper).
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Carbon Sequestration
Nature based interventions to protect and restore mangroves, seagrass, salt marshes, seaweeds and wetlands, as a mechanism for carbon mitigation.
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Ocean Conservation
Engineered and natural based solutions for coastal conservation to enhance biodiversity and increase resilience to storms, erosion and human induced degradation. Reef conservation and restoration, seafloor and open ocean protection and marine life regeneration.
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Low Carbon and Sustainable Blue Economy
Utilization of the ocean and its resources for sustainable, low carbon renewable energy, transport, food and marine bioprospecting as well as carbon removal.
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