2025 Climate Launch Prize – The Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy

$250,000 to Launch your Climate Change Solution!

Closed for Submissions

We are now reviewing all first round submissions for the 2025 Wilkes Climate Launch Prize for the amount of $250,000.
We received over 1,100 Submissions for the 2025 Wilkes Climate Solutions Launch Prize!
The sheer amount of innovation and enthusiasm for climate solutions across the world is truly inspiring. ⁠
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Applicants who advance to round 2 will be notified by the middle of April.
Selected finalists will be invited to pitch their ideas at the Wilkes Climate Summit May 15th.⁠

Where This Year's Prize Submissions Came From

See the Map

Who is Eligible to Apply?

Organizations at all stages, both for-profits and nonprofits, anywhere in the world are eligible to submit ideas to be considered for the Wilkes Climate Launch Prize. This includes seed, pre-seed, venture-funded, publicly traded stage companies, or nonprofits.

The portal is now CLOSED for submissions.

Process & Review Timeline:

Phase I: First round submissions Due February 28, 2025 (all submissions must be submitted by 11:59 PM MST, Friday night)
Phase II: Finalists submit second-round application on May 13th and pitch in-person at Wilkes Climate Summit at the University of Utah, May 15, 2025
Awards: Award ceremony in September 2025

Launch Prize Updates

Let us know if you would like to receive additional email updates about the Wilkes Prize.

Wilkes Climate Launch Prize Selection Committee

The Wilkes Climate Launch Prize submissions will be reviewed and considered by some of the sharpest minds in the scientific and sustainability fields today. The top prize will be awarded to the idea with the most scalable impact, the most feasible concept, and the solution most likely to benefit communities, economies, or ecosystems. All judges serve in their personal capacity as experts in the field and do not represent their institutions in this role.

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Fielding Norton

Climate Scientist & Educator, Re/insurance Executive, Venture Investor/Advisor

Fielding Norton

Climate Scientist & Educator, Re/insurance Executive, Venture Investor/Advisor

Fielding Norton is a climate physicist, award-winning teacher, and seasoned re/insurance executive. He invests and serves as a senior advisor to innovative startups, especially in the Climatech and Insurtech space. Norton began his career teaching high school chemistry and biology in his home state of Kansas, taught environmental education at College of the Atlantic, and won awards as a mathematics and earth sciences instructor while a graduate student at Harvard University. At Harvard, Norton built physical models of the climate system and used them to examine past and future climate scenarios en route to earning an M.S. in Applied Physics and a Ph.D. in Earth & Planetary Sciences. He then pivoted to catastrophe reinsurance, where his teams modeled and managed the financial impact of extreme disasters. Over his 20+ years in the re/insurance industry, Norton’s executive service included Chief Enterprise Risk Officer of Fortune 100 re/insurer XL Group and Co-Founder of FutureProof Technologies, an Insurtech using AI to underwrite and accurately price climate risk. He remains passionate about helping people, businesses, and communities to understand their exposure to climate risk and to improve their resilience to extreme events like wildfires, storms, and floods. Norton lives in Park City, Utah where he enjoys skiing, hiking, and cycling with his family and friends.

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Craig Moore

Entrepreneur

Craig Moore

Entrepreneur

Craig Moore is a seasoned entrepreneur, venture investor and outdoor enthusiast now calling Park City, Utah, home after relocating from Atlanta, Georgia, in 2023. In Atlanta, he owned a diverse portfolio of small businesses, spanning technology, manufacturing, and real estate. He has had multiple successful business sales to private equity. Today, he manages investments for his family office while volunteering on nonprofit boards, including PC Reads, which supports kids with dyslexia. A passionate skier, mountain biker, scuba diver and avid photographer, Craig thrives in the outdoors and is deeply concerned about climate change. He has participated in dozens of angel, seed and Series A round investments with many companies of note, including Spindrift, Stripe and X.AI. He is interested in investing in Climatech and AI companies helping to solve climate change. Craig was proud to serve in an advisory role to Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross on the Trade Finance Advisory Council in 2019.

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Elaine Hungenberg

Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Impact, XPRIZE

Elaine Hungenberg

Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Impact, XPRIZE

Elaine Hungenberg is the Senior Vice President of Partnerships and Impact at XPRIZE, where she leads the organization’s efforts to design and execute large-scale competitions that tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. With deep expertise in evaluating the efficacy of breakthrough innovations and the teams behind them, she has shaped impact frameworks that track not only who wins, but what works—and why. Her work ensures that solutions seeded through competition are validated, scalable, and positioned for long-term success in the real world. Elaine’s career spans two decades of aligning data, strategy, and innovation to solve complex global issues, with leadership roles in economic empowerment and impact evaluation. She is also a champion of catalytic partnerships that accelerate progress and scale transformative ideas. She brings to the Climate Launch Prize a commitment to rigorous, systems-level thinking and a belief in the power of bold ideas to shift the trajectory of our climate future.

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Éliane Ubalijoro

Chief Executive Officer, Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF)

Éliane Ubalijoro

Chief Executive Officer, Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF)

Éliane Ubalijoro, PhD is Chief Executive Officer of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF) and Director General of ICRAF. An accomplished leader with a background in agriculture and molecular genetics, she serves on several boards and has been recognized for outstanding contributions in the areas of innovation, gender equity, and sustainable prosperity creation. Dr Ubalijoro has been a professor of practice for public-private sector partnerships at McGill University since 2008, with research interests focusing on innovation, gender and sustainable development for prosperity creation. From 2021 to March 2023, she was the Executive Director of Sustainability in the Digital Age and the Canada Hub Director for Future Earth. She is a member of Rwanda’s National Science and Technology Council and Presidential Advisory Council, the Impact Advisory Board of the Global Alliance for a Sustainable Planet, the Science for Africa Foundation, the Capitals Coalition Supervisory Board among others. She is a fellow of the International Science Council and a member of the Africa Space Council.

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Tina Fawcett

Associate Professor, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Tina Fawcett

Associate Professor, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Tina Fawcett is an Associate Professor at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. Tina’s research concerns energy use by households and organisations and aims to understand current patterns of use, and to identify opportunities and policies for fairly reducing energy use and carbon emissions. She is also the Convenor of the Oxford Energy Network which brings together energy researchers across the university and facilitates knowledge exchange with industry, policy makers and civil society.

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Christopher Lowell

Managing Director, InnSure

Christopher Lowell

Managing Director, InnSure

Christopher Lowell is an insurance innovator focused on bringing new risk management products to market. His experience includes management consulting at Bain & Company, corporate strategy at Liberty Mutual, and building an innovation lab at The Hartford. Currently, he helps to run InnSure, a non-profit innovation hub catalyzing novel insurance solutions that address climate change risk. Chris sits on the Board of Directors of, or is an advisor to, GreenieRE, InnSure, and Insillion. Chris holds a CPCU designation, as well as a BA in Applied Mathematics: Economics from Harvard University, a MS in Finance from Northeastern University, and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.

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Brian O’Hearne

CEO, Hailios

Brian O’Hearne

CEO, Hailios

Brian O’Hearne is currently CEO of Hailios, the world leader in localized hail detection, reporting, and settlement of parametric hail insurance as well as structuring severe convective storm insurance. Hailios is currently active in North America, Europe and Australia/New Zealand with world-wide interest for solar facilities, automotive, buildings, and specialty crops. Mr. O’Hearne has 40 years of experience in weather and commodity trading, parametric risk management and product development, reinsurance, and insurance structuring and relationship management as well as legal, tax, and compliance matters. He is a past President of the Weather Risk Management Association. Previously, Mr. O’Hearne was Global Head of Sales for Arbol Inc, President and CEO of eWeatherRisk, Inc., Managing Director and Head of the Americas for Swiss Re’s Environmental and Commodity Markets, President of Guaranteed Weather and President of various Aquila Energy companies.

Evaluation Criteria

Key considerations for each criteria.

Scalable impact:

How much greenhouse gases (MT CO2-equivalent) could be avoided from emissions or removed from the atmosphere per year in the immediate future (e.g. 2025-2027) and near-term future (e.g. around 2030)?
What are the potentials for scaling up over the 2030-2050 timescale?
How will the Prize lead to a transformative change in this sector?
What is the estimated permanence of these emissions reductions or removals and what is the confidence for these estimates?

Feasibility:

Are there demonstrations of feasibility existing? At what stage? Where?
What is the current cost per MT CO2-equivalent? What are future estimated costs by approximately 2030?
Explain why your team has the relevant expertise and structure to succeed.
What are key barriers and what plans are in place to overcome barriers, constraints, risks, or trade-offs with scaling up the solution?

Co-benefits

Will the proposed solution lead to co-benefits to communities, economies, or ecosystems?
What is the potential for negative consequences (e.g. on communities, economies, or ecosystems) and what are solutions to mitigate them?

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is eligible to apply for the Wilkes Climate Launch Prize?

What format should I use to submit my pitch?

Your pitch should by typed directly into the form on the application portal. Many applicants find it easiest to type their proposal in a word document and copy/past into the form.

Are there restrictions on the use of Prize funds?

Other than a 15% cap on overhead (including indirect or F&A costs), there are no other restrictions on the use of the funds.

Is there one grand prize, or are there also smaller prizes for finalists?

There is only one grand prize to be awarded.

When exactly are First Round applications due?

All First Round submissions are due before midnight on February 28, 2025 (12:00 midnight MST)

When will I hear back about Round 2?

The Wilkes Center will accept applications through the February 28th deadline. Applicants who will move on to round 2 will be notified by the middle of April.

Can we submit multiple project ideas from the same organization?

Yes, you may submit different ideas from the same organization to be considered.

Does our organization need to have an affiliation with the University of Utah or the State of Utah?

No. The Wilkes Climate Launch Prize is open to organizations at all stages, both for-profits and nonprofits – anywhere in the world.

Who should I contact if I have additional questions?

All further questions should be submitted to Kyla Welch via email at Kyla.Welch@utah.edu

About the Wilkes Climate Launch Prize

The Wilkes Climate Launch Prize highlights top global ideas for combating climate change. Each year, by elevating and honoring innovative climate solutions, this University of Utah prize aims to accelerate worldwide progress and encourage technological advances. Our goal is to develop effective climate change solutions quickly for the benefit of people and ecosystems worldwide.

Contribute to the Prize

The Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy

$250,000 to Launch your Climate Change Solution!

Closed for Submissions

Where This Year's Prize Submissions Came From

Who is Eligible to Apply?

Process & Review Timeline:

Launch Prize Updates

Let us know if you would like to receive additional email updates about the Wilkes Prize.

Wilkes Climate Launch Prize Selection Committee

About the Wilkes Climate Launch Prize

Learn about the 2024 Climate Launch Prize

Learn about the inaugural 2023 Wilkes Center Climate Prize

Donate to the Prize