Aspen-based nonprofit Climate Curve, with the help of Late Night Host Seth Meyers, announced the winners of its annual Keeling Curve Prize on July 1, recognizing ten projects addressing climate change.
The event at the Paul JAS Center awarded promising startups across five categories: carbon sinks, energy, finance, social and cultural pathways, and transport and mobility. Some of the winning projects use microalgae to capture carbon while others train women as remote solar engineers.
One of the prize winners is working to make cleaner fuel for both private and commercial planes.
Lanzajet claims to have the most scalable system available for making sustainable aviation fuel. The company’s “alcohol-to-jet” technology turns sources like solid waste or crops into ethanol, which can be used in existing airline fuel infrastructure.
The other winner in the transport and mobility category was LinQ Powr, which is refurbishing old EV batteries in East Africa to provide backup power for electric motorcycles.
The ten prize winners each receive $50,000, but Climate Curve also promotes the projects to help the winners secure additional investments.
Dr. Etosha Cave was a Keeling Curve Prize winner in 2019. She co-founded Twelve, named after the atomic weight of carbon, with the idea of turning carbon dioxide into things like sunglasses, laundry detergent and jet fuel.
She said winning helped make that happen.
“It brought credibility,” Cave said. “We could go talk to investors that were mission aligned, and they knew that we had been vetted.”
The billion-dollar startup opened a commercial plant in Washington state last month, where it produces both carbon-based fuel and product materials.
“This plant is the world's first E-Jet facility, where we're making jet fuel from CO2, water and electricity from clean hydropower,” Cave said.
The company has partnered with Microsoft and Alaska Airlines, which has committed to using Twelve’s fuel for regular, domestic flights.
Since 2018, Climate Curve has awarded $2.75 million to 80 innovators, which have gone on to raise $2.87 billion in investments.
Climate Curve also announced 16 finalists of its new methane prize, which it sees as a high-impact means of lowering short-term global warming. The eight winners of that award are scheduled to be announced in September.
