Climate Action
Saving the Earth, One Innovation at a Time: The Earthshot Prize
December 6, 2024
As we head into the final weeks of 2024, it’s a good time to reflect on some of the positive environmental news from this year. One event that stands out and deserves celebrating is the Earthshot Prize, which took place in early November. Established by HRH Prince William, the Prince of Wales, and the Royal Foundation in 2020 with a vision of inspiring global action, the Prize honors innovators dedicated to repairing our planet and achieving measurable impacts by 2030.
Five groundbreaking projects and solutions to some of the planet’s most pressing environmental challenges, each win 1,000,000 (Great British Pounds), around $1.3 Million, to further their work and recognize their extraordinary achievements. A winner is selected for each of the five key categories the award covers: Build a Waste-Free World, Revive Our Oceans, Clean Our Air, Protect and Restore Nature, and Fix Our Climate. These categories not only reflect urgent environmental needs but aim to shine a light on transformative ideas that will go on to inspire collective action.
The 2024 winners truly exemplify the spirit of Earthshot, demonstrating how ingenuity, collaboration, and determination can address global crises and showcase the power of human creativity in solving environmental challenges.
Here’s the rundown of this year’s incredible winners:
Build a Waste-Free World: Keep It Cool (KIC)
This year’s winner of the “Build a Waste-Free World” category is Keep IT Cool (KIC), a start-up company, based in Nairobi, Kenya, which provides sustainable refrigeration services to fishermen and farmers in East Africa. The company is committed to making “cold chain” solutions affordable and accessible by working to reduce food spoilage, aiding farmers and the fishing community by effectively transporting their products directly to customers.
Focusing on fish and poultry value chains, KIC does this by installing solar-powered refrigerators right at the source of harvest and transporting them in refrigerated trucks to supermarkets and small businesses. KIC currently works with eight fishing cooperatives, totaling over 4,000 members. To date, the company has helped members save 25% of their catches that would have otherwise gone to waste, as well as increasing their profits by 15%. In addition, KIC has worked with 1.5 million kilograms of food since 2022 and achieved a 98% reduction in post-harvest losses (PHL) — thereby reducing waste and greenhouse gas emissions.
Revive Our Oceans: High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC)
At a time when rising ocean temperatures threaten marine life around the globe, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are essential in trying to contain harmful human activity in the ocean. As of 2023, MPAs protected over 8% of the ocean, including the preservation of fish populations for human consumption, the protection of coral reefs, and the prevention of water pollution.
Given that our planet currently faces a plastic waste crisis this is a massive task. It is estimated that every year 199 millions of tons of plastic trash is dumped in the oceans, accounting for 80% of all marine pollution. MPAs have never ben more vital nor needed. Reports from 2024 show that 72% of endangered marine species have had some kind of presence in MPAs; but there is much more work to be done, given these species’ median distribution within MPAs is only 7%.
The winner of Earthshots 2024 Revive Our Oceans category is making waves in the global effort to protect marine ecosystems. The High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC), a Costa Rica and French-based coalition, plans to designate 30% of our land and oceans fall within protected zones by 2030. With 120 countries as signatories to this mission already, the HAC is actively fighting to pass protection laws around the world.
It developed the 30×30 Solutions Toolkit to assist government efforts to instate ocean and land protections and supports government initiatives through its 40 global partners. HAC works with more than 200 indigenous groups, defending ancestral lands in Canada, Australia, and Easter Island. Most notably, HAC successfully fought to establish the largest multiple-use MPA in South America. Over the next six years, it will continue aiming for its 2030 goal with an emphasis on government accountability to enforce MPAs.
Clean Our Air: Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO)
Burning fossil fuels releases toxic air pollutants such as particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and ozone into the air. While ozone in the upper atmosphere protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation, ground-level ozone is a major component of smog.
Exposure to this pollution can have detrimental health effects including strokes, heart disease, and lung cancer, and is associated with 7 million premature deaths each year. The Earthshot Clean Our Air prize is awarded to those who have gone above and beyond to address deadly air pollution and realize everyone’s right to clean and healthy air. It recognizes individuals and groups who have worked tirelessly to reduce emissions, expand access to renewable energy, replace fossil fuel-powered transportation with green alternatives, and remove pollution already in the air.
The 2024 Clean Our Air winner is the Ghana-based Green Africa Youth Organization (GAYO). Recognizing that cities were struggling to effectively manage their waste, GAYO created its community-based Zero Waste Strategy.
Using this model, GAYO has helped cities implement sustainable waste management systems to prevent reusable, recyclable, and organic materials from ending up in landfills, where they are destroyed by open burning that pollutes the surrounding air.
GAYO trains locals as waste collectors and pickers, creating jobs for young people, women, and people with disabilities. Since 2019, GAYO has kept 170 tonnes of waste out of landfills and prevented an estimated 3.6 tonnes of CO2 emissions from open burning. GAYO plans to build on this success by reducing waste emissions and particulate pollution in Ghana by 70% by 2030 and replicating its Zero Waste Strategy in other communities across Africa.
Protect and Restore Nature: Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative
Biodiversity encompasses the vast array of life found in both marine and terrestrial ecosystems. It plays a crucial role in maintaining the health of ecosystems and ultimately benefit human beings.
Biodiversity loss is one of the greatest threats our planet faces in 2024, and scientists have long believed that we may have or will soon be entering a sixth mass extinction. The Restore and Protect Nature category of the Earthshot prize focuses on highlighting initiatives and groups that are actively fighting against biodiversity loss. This category has the goal of ensuring that by 2030, we will be expanding wild spaces rather than shrinking them globally.
This year’s winner – the Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative – has been working tirelessly to ensure just that. Altyn Dala is a threatened grassland in Kazakhstan with wetlands interspersed throughout. The Conservation Initiative began in 2006 when a group of concerned national and international conservation partners decided to band together and work to protect what remains of Altyn Dala, as well as rewild Kazakhstan where they could. Altyn Dala translates to “Golden Steppe” in Kazakh, and their initiative mainly has focused around preserving the Steppe’s beautiful ecosystems and wildlife, like the saiga antelope which, in 2006, was on the brink of extinction.
Over the past 18 years, the Altyn Dala Initiative has made great strides and has had resounding success for the Golden Steppe, including restoring saiga antelopes’ numbers from a low of 20,000 to over 2.8 million; preserving 5 million hectares for nature and rewilding wild asses known as kulan.
Fix Our Climate: Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS)
Addressing the climate crisis is essential to creating a sustainable future for every living thing on Earth. Human activity has increased greenhouse gas emissions in our atmosphere, causing dangerous levels of global warming. This threatens biodiversity, agriculture, and human health, our very survival. The Earthshot Prize’s Fix Our Climate category aims to drive the creation of a carbon-neutral economy by recognizing innovative solutions that reduce emissions.
The winner of the Earthshot Fix Our Climate Prize, Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems ATS, is pioneering a groundbreaking solution to wasted industrial heat energy, which currently accounts for 60% of energy loss worldwide. ATS’s innovative technology converts this wasted heat into usable energy, improving efficiency in industries across the globe.
ATS made a significant breakthrough when their team discovered that their technology, originally designed to capture energy from sunlight, could also capture energy from heat. This revelation led them to pivot their focus toward thermovoltaics—a process that uses semiconductor materials, such as bismuth telluride, to convert heat directly into electricity. By applying principles from solar energy, ATS is revolutionizing industrial energy efficiency and reducing global energy waste.
ATS’s system works like a super sponge for heat. When they tested it in Michigan, it was able to turn 14% of the heat it captured into usable electricity, which was six times better than their competitors. In the U.S., industries use a lot of energy, 32% of the country’s total energy consumption, and much of it is just wasted as heat. ATS helps by taking that wasted heat and turning it into electricity, helping companies reduce their carbon emissions and reach their environmental goals.
The 2024 Earthshot Prize winners remind us that innovation and collaboration can heal our planet. Whether by protecting vulnerable species, improving air quality, or pioneering cleaner energy solutions, these Earthshot winners are all visionaries worthy of their win. Their efforts inspire hope and action, proving that together, we can still make a profound impact in the fight for a healthier Earth. If you want to read a first-hand account of the Earthshot Prize Ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa, check out our diary.
Special thanks to Emma Holm-Olsen, Kim Kraska, Jessica Dalton, Kyla Metchette, and Layne Morsberger for their contributions to this article.
