Some days, the news seems so bad that I want to stop up my ears. Whether I am reading about the trillion-dollar-plus impacts of a slowing AMOC or a dramatic rise in methane emissions from melting permafrost, I just want to crawl back into bed. That is why I was so happy to learn about the Earth Prize—a global competition for high school-age students who have designed and intend to commercialize original climate tech innovations. These exemplary representatives of Gen Z offer hope for a post-climate future for occasionally dejected Gen-Xers like me.
Peter McGarry, an Irish hedge fund option trader living in Geneva, Switzerland, created The Earth Foundation in 2020 after watching a student climate protest inspired by Greta Thunberg. The foundation established The Earth Prize in 2021 and first awarded prize money to recipients in 2022.
The 2025 prize winners—this year there will be seven global winners by region—will be announced in early April. Reading about prior finalists and prizewinners knocked my socks off, so I’m eager to see the winning teams’ projects this year.
FloodGate offers hope for a post-climate future with 3D flood predictions
The 2024 top prize was awarded to a four-person team from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, North Carolina. The founders, who were all 17 or 18 years old when the prize was awarded, developed FloodGate, a program which renders forecasts of extreme rainfall events as 3D models that can help people determine evacuation times and routes.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so the team expected that 3D images representing likely flood paths could assist communities in planning relief operations when disaster strikes, thus becoming more resilient. FloodGate’s origin in North Carolina and its focus on flooding brought to mind my recent article, Do We Need FEMA To Respond To Natural Disasters? which discussed an entrepreneur in North Carolina helping her rural community recover from hurricane Helene. FloodGate’s inventors’ efforts to implement resiliency on the community level with a cost-effective, easy-to-use app gives me hope that we can increase grassroots resiliency in this post-climate world.
Ceres offers hope for a post-climate future with enhanced agricultural methods
The first runner-up in 2024 was Ceres, a five-person team from Türkiye’s Bahçeşehir Koleji Diyarbakir who found that ionizing air to form low-temperature plasma, then exposing both seeds and irrigation water to that plasma, offered profound agricultural benefits.
When Ceres ran seeds through the Platzma, their prototype plasma device, they discovered that it created small cracks in the seeds’ outer layer that allowed them to germinate quicker and develop enhanced resiliency to drought.
When water is run through the Platzma, its molecules become electrically charged, attracting atmospheric nitrogen in a form usable by plants. The increase in available nitrogen in the water reduces the need for synthetic nitrogen fertilizer and alleviates environmental problems caused by fertilizer runoff.
Ceres’s team lead, Beyza Kaya, is commercializing and reportedly finding good market acceptance among growers in her native Turkey, which has suffered recently from damaging droughts.
Delavo offers hope for a post-climate future with a radical water conservation technology
Delavo, an all-female team from Bahçeşehir Koleji High School in Türkiye, won first prize in 2023 with ECaundry, a filtration device that attaches to a laundry machine and recycles the dirty “gray water” discharged by the machine into potable water.
This reduction of polluted water released into sewage systems helps the environment, as does the reduction in the amount of freshwater used in arid regions like southeastern Türkiye, where the team members go to school. The team has applied for a patent for their device and is working with a national washing machine manufacturer to commercialize it.
SensoRy AI offers hope for a post-climate future with AI-powered wildfire prediction technology
2024 finalist Ryan Honary, a 17-year-old from Newport Harbor High School in Newport Beach, California, is the sole member of the SensoRy AI team. After a wildfire broke out near his home a few years ago, he began brainstorming about optimizing the transfer of fire information to firefighters and residents. His solution was a weather station equipped with wind and moisture sensors, an infrared camera to capture hot spots, and an AI component that alerts fire agencies to blazes even a few feet across.
SensoRy AI has received funding from groups such as the Irvine Ranch Conservancy, and Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessey has signed onto the project as an advisor.
After the New Year’s blazes in Los Angeles destroyed many homes and businesses in the Pacific Palisades area—a topic I covered in my article, California Wildfires Are A Wake-Up Call For Climate Change Adaptation—I wouldn’t be surprised if SensoRy AI gains even more attention from local fire agencies.
I agree with Earth Foundation founder Peter McGarry, who said:
“These young people are a perfect example of what The Earth Prize is all about – turning personal experience into real-world impact. It’s incredibly inspiring to see how their ideas are evolving from concepts into tangible solutions that are already making a difference. Their commitment to creating products and services that drive environmental change shows the immense potential this generation has to reshape the future.”
My generation and those that came before me have left a heavy burden on the shoulders of Millennials and Gen-Zs, who will bear the brunt of the increasingly severe effects of climate change. It’s ironic that the Gen-Zs are repaying us with reasons for hope for a post-climate future.
