In a new installment of ‘Ones to Watch’, the list in which Bloomberg tracks and selects the people who are influencing a certain industry, The publication decided to bring together 13 varied profiles, including investors, politicians, scientists and activists but those who are connected by environmental work.
Some of them are Tom Chi and Julie Pullen, who invest in environmental startups, or Alex Gagnon and Julian Sachs who work on eliminating dioxide from the atmosphere. But the new generation of environmental activists is also represented with Xiye Bastida and Vanessa Nakate.
Co-founder and CEO of Banyu Carbon. As a chemical oceanographer at the University of Washington, he saw how climate change impacts corals, so he developed, with Julian Sachs (below)a technology to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide that harms marine life. The company seeks to remove millions of tons of CO2 using sunlight and seawater.
Vanessa Nakate
In 2019, when she was a university student in Uganda, she managed to bring Greta Thunberg’s ‘Fridays for Future’ campaign to her country, thanks to her protests outside Parliament. He received the Mandela Washington Scholarship and plans to pursue a master’s degree in public policy. She does activism with the Rise Up Movement and the Tard Foundation, a Christian climate organization.
Bessie Schwarz
She is the co-founder and CEO of Floodbase, the company is a pioneer in using satellites to track and generate flood maps in near real time. But the company not only warns of risk, it provides a dozen insurance products for flood risk that is not traditionally covered. They are in Malawi, Mozambique and the United States.
Caroline Alden
She is co-founder and chief scientist of LongPath Technologies, this company wants to georeference oil and gas wells to detect greenhouse gas leaks at the speed of light. This year it received US$189 million from the US Department of Energy to build infrastructure to monitor methane emissions from oil companies in six states.
Alex Gagnon
Co-founder and CEO of Banyu Carbon. As a chemical oceanographer at the University of Washington, he saw how climate change impacts corals, so he developed, with Julian Sachs (below), a technology to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide that harms marine life. The company seeks to remove millions of tons of CO2 using sunlight and seawater.
Julian Sachs
He is the co-founder and CTO of Banyu Carbon, stating that they do not dump anything into the sea and do not try to change ocean chemistry. “Banyu could help marine life, as decarbonized seawater would be less acidic. The key is a photoacid that transforms the CO2 dissolved in the water into a gas that can be stored and then the decarbonized seawater is returned to the ocean,” he said.
Xiye Bastida
She is 22 years old, an activist, speaker and writer of Mexican origin. In 2020 he co-founded the Re-Earth Initiative of popular activism that already operates in 27 countries. For her graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania, she created the documentary ‘The Path of the Whale’ in which she tells the story of the migration of gray whales from Mexico to the Arctic. She was co-writer and executive producer of the film.
Julie Pullen
She is chief scientist and partner at Propeller, a firm that backs early-stage startups treating the ocean as a solution to global warming. With US$117 million, it builds a network of companies focused on solutions for the ocean. Propeller also runs an Ocean MBA to help scientists take their research into a viable company.
Kate Marvel
He rejoined NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is working on a book, Human Nature, due out next year. Their work has shown that we will never run out of wind, that climate change has intensified rainfall, and that 80% of the 21st century so far has brought historically unusual drought conditions.
Avinash Persaud
He is a special advisor on climate change to the Inter-American Development Bank. It has focused on helping climate-vulnerable countries, one way is to facilitate the application of the pause clause in states’ loan agreements. Now, he is working on implementing a US$5.4 billion foreign exchange guarantee program for the Brazilian government.
Kim van der Weerd
She graduated from the London School of Economics with a master’s degree in human rights to help address abuses in textile supply chains. He launched the podcast Manufactured about sustainability in fashion. In 2022 she joined the Transformers Foundation, as Director of Intelligence, which represents everything from cotton farmers to jeans factories.
Ben Schuler
Founder and CEO of Infinitum, his company prints copper on vehicle circuit boards dramatically reducing the metal needed and the weight of the engine by half, improving efficiency. So much so that Infinitum’s engines have won a number of awards, and the company raised $185 million in its latest fundraising round last year.
Tom Chi
The founding partner of the venture capital firm At One Ventures invests in startups working in four key areas: air, water, soil and biodiversity. Two of the companies that he has financed with his fund of more than US$535 million are battery recycling company Ascend Elements; Dalan Animal Health and Colossal Biosciences.
Ben Eidelson
He is 36 years old and lives in Settle, in June 2023 he launched a guide to climatetech software and the Climate Papa podcast. At the beginning of 2024, it created the Stepchange venture fund with which it intends to back between 30 and 35 startups focused on green technology such as ecological vehicles. The first investment was the startup Bayou Energy.
