2025 Keeling Curve Prize Winners Announced

Ten organizations from around the globe are scaling their climate innovations as winners of the 2025 Keeling Curve Prize (KCP). The Global Warming Mitigation Project (GWMP) announced this year’s winners on the TED Countdown Summit main stage in Nairobi, Kenya, awarding $50,000 to each project to help expand their impact in the fight against climate change.

Now in its eighth year, the Keeling Curve Prize has become a launchpad for pioneering climate solutions. The prize supports organizations developing practical, scalable answers to the climate crisis — solutions that are already delivering measurable results for people and the planet.

“If you're wondering where to invest or how to take action on climate solutions, this prize is the place,” said Jacquelyn Francis, Founder and Executive Director of GWMP. “We see applications from around the globe—solutions both big and small, nature-based and high-tech—that, if scaled, can not only help mitigate climate change but also lead to economic growth.”

Since its inception, the KCP has received over 2,500 applications and awarded $2.75 million to 80 winning organizations. Collectively, those winners have gone on to secure more than $2.75 billion in additional funding.

A Global Cohort Tackling a Shared Crisis

The 2025 cohort, selected from 20 finalists, reflects the extraordinary diversity of today’s climate innovators. From AI-driven zero-waste fashion to profitable native forest restoration, these projects show how creativity, technology, and determination can converge to address one of humanity’s greatest challenges.

“The work of the Keeling Curve Prize is more urgent now than ever,” said Ruth Metzer, Director of Prizes at GWMP. “2024 was the first year the world began overshooting the 1.5°C warming target set by the Paris Agreement. This prize uplifts and funds ideas across a spectrum of solutions and geographies to rapidly reduce emissions and store carbon.”

Five Categories, Ten Game-Changing Winners

Two winners were selected from each of the prize’s five categories:

Carbon Sinks

Projects accelerating carbon capture through nature-based and engineered solutions.

• Carbon Upcycling Technologies, Inc. (Calgary, Canada): Carbon Upcycling's CUT CO2 System strengthens construction supply chains by localizing critical material manufacturing. The technology transforms CO2 and industrial byproducts into an abundant and local source of cement materials with a lower carbon footprint.

• Octavia Carbon (Nairobi, Kenya): Octavia Carbon is the first Direct Air Capture (DAC) company in the Global South. Their DAC technology removes CO₂ from the air for safe storage or conversion into climate-neutral carbon products. Using Kenya’s renewable energy, geology, and talent, they aim to lower DAC costs and advance global decarbonization.

Energy

Projects advancing clean, affordable, and scalable energy systems.

• Gham Power Nepal (Kathmandu, Nepal): Founded during Nepal’s energy crisis, Gham Power began with solar solutions for load shedding. Now with 4,000+ projects, they combine solar tech and innovative financing to deliver clean, reliable energy—empowering rural communities, reducing emissions, and supporting sustainable development.

• Kraftblock (Sulzbach, Germany): Kraftblock’s high-temp thermal storage captures surplus clean energy when high renewable output strains the grid, helping decarbonize industry and power systems. Made from upcycled materials, their system is long-lasting, affordable, and scales fast — cutting costs and unlocking over twice the renewable energy per MW stored.

Finance

Projects mobilizing financial innovation to drive climate action.

• Terraformation (Waimea, HI, USA): Terraformation restores native forests through a model that supports profit, people, and the planet. By channeling carbon finance to underserved tropical communities, they help make biodiverse reforestation profitable — leveraging local knowledge to regenerate degraded forests across Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

• Topo Finance (New York, NY, USA): Topo Finance taps into treasury management to drive climate action. As a leader in climate-aligned finance, they help shift trillions toward decarbonization. In 2024, they worked with organizations managing over $500 billion, guiding them to align cash stewardship with long-term planetary impact.

Social & Cultural Pathways

Projects shifting behaviors, values, and policies to support a post-fossil fuel future.

• AgriTech Analytics Ltd. (Nairobi, Kenya): Agritech Analytics helps smallholder farmers monitor crops and soils using AI-driven sensors that detect pests, diseases, and perform on-site soil diagnostics. Results are sent via SMS or their Farmpulse App — enabling timely, informed decisions that improve yields, raise incomes, and support sustainable farming.

• SXD (Allston, MA, USA): SXD transforms fashion brands’ leftover textiles into stylish zero-waste clothing using patent-pending AI. Their system eliminates material waste and creates efficient designs—achieving up to 69% material savings, ~80% lower carbon emissions, and up to 55% cost savings across the fashion production process.

Transport & Mobility

Projects transforming transportation by shifting away from the internal combustion engine.

• Carma Technology Corporation (Austin, TX, USA): Carma Technology’s GoCarma app currently rewards 90,000 Dallas-Fort Worth commuters with incentives for low-emission travel. It verifies trips automatically and incentivizes HOV use, off-peak travel, using transit, and route shifts. As the first to link road pricing with verified behavior, it proves emissions cuts can drive revenue.

• ElectricFish Energy Inc. (San Carlos, CA, USA): ElectricFish builds microgrids that quickly enable fast EV charging and emergency backup for fleets in grid-constrained areas — in days, not years. Their award-winning hardware and software deliver industry-leading time and cost savings in infrastructure, peak demand, and grid services.

“The Keeling Curve Prize is one of the most effective ways I’ve seen to cut through bureaucracy and get funding to those driving real change,” Ruth Metzer added. “We urgently need to accelerate climate action—and KCP is leading that charge. My favorite part of working with the Keeling Curve Prize is the immense hope and positive energy I get from learning how people around the world are moving past ‘business-as-usual’ to build a better future,” she said.