From Concept to Climate Action
The 2025 Climate Innovation Grants saw 22 teams propose innovative solutions to address climate change. The proposed solutions addressed a broad range of issue areas closely linked to climate, including consumer waste, renewable energy, and sustainable agriculture. After careful review by external judges, CBEY awarded $15,000 in grants to six environmentally focused ventures. The grant provides independent feedback, advising services, and seed funding for these early-stage innovative solutions. From here, ventures will continue to receive support from CBEY to bring their ideas to fruition. Ventures with a for-profit idea can receive additional grant support through the Sobotka Seed Prize for Sustainable Ventures.
About the recipients:
Patrick Laryea (Yale School of the Environment) and Doreen Owusu (Yale School of the Environment) helped found All Agric to amplify youth-driven climate-smart agriculture in Africa through engaging storytelling, educational content, and climate mitigation initiatives. Their unique approach to make sustainable agriculture appealing to younger generations aims to help empower farmers to adopt sustainable practices, improve food security, and strengthen climate resilience across rural and urban communities.
Carbon Wallet Co
Umer Vaqar (Yale School of the Environment) is a founding member of Carbon Wallet Co. This verified climate rewards platform tracks real-world low-carbon actions, like smart energy use or public transit, using connected data sources, and then issues Climate Points to track emissions reductions. These points power user incentives while helping brands and government agencies measure the success of emissions reduction efforts.
Helix
Maya Caine (Yale School of the Environment) is building Helix, a city-led circular fashion marketplace that competed as a finalist for the 2025 Yale Planetary Solutions Prize. Helix’s local marketplace expands garment circulation by offering multiple exchange pathways—buying, selling, and renting—while connecting users with local care services such as tailors, menders, and dry cleaners to extend the life and quality of garments with ease and convenience.
Pingel Solar Farms
Chadwick Pingel (Yale School of Management and Yale School of the Environment) and his father, Bradley Pingel, are on a mission to transition their family farm east of Des Moines, Iowa, from seasonal row cropping into a mixed-use, energy-plus-agriculture solar farm. Through its nonprofit entity, Pingel Solar Farms hopes to serve as a practical, replicable, and scalable model for community-led agrivoltaic development across the Midwest.
Saans
Taesha Aurora (Yale School of Architecture) is confronting the dual challenge of sustainable construction materials and urban air quality through Saans, a low-cost bamboo and jute panel system intended to replace metal sheeting at construction sites. These biodegradable, locally sourced materials have the potential to improve worker health and urban air quality by filtering dust and particulates while enhancing urban aesthetics and reducing the material footprint of construction.
Uroplug
Henry Ritter (Yale School of Management and Yale School of the Environment) has teamed up with David Hesse, M.D. and Barry Nalebuff (Milton Steinbach Professor of Management at Yale School of Management) to found Uroplug, a novel solution to urinary incontinence. Uroplug’s low-cost, effective, and sustainable solution has the potential to avert billions of adult diapers and pads that end up in landfills annually while providing a dignified solution to an issue faced by over 25M people in the U.S. and 425M people globally.
The CBEY team is very grateful for the team of judges who helped to provide feedback:
- Max Nova (BA ‘12) is the Cofounder and CEO of NCX.
- Megan Phelan (BS ‘15) is a Climate Tech Investor at AccelR8 Ventures
- Jesse Lazarus (MBA ‘19) is an Advisor at Greentech Alliance, Reaction VC & Matereal, and Mentor at the Massachusetts Climatetech Studio.
- Sara Harari (MBA/MEM ‘19) is the Director of Innovation at the Connecticut Green Bank.