More than $2 million awarded to Israeli Climate Tech researchers and startups

Three Israeli climate researchers and seven startups working on climate crisis solutions nabbed over $2 million in grants and cash prizes at the inaugural Climate Solutions Prize on October 26, 2022. The winners are:

• • • *Start-Up Track and Challenges: SolOr, Seevix Material Sciences, Marine Edge, Styletech, Smart Resilin, Red Solar Flower and Copprint
    • *Research Track: Prof. Avner Rothschild, Prof. Itzhak Mizrahi, Prof. Malachi Noked

The Climate Solutions Prize, a joint initiative by JNF Canada, Start-Up Nation Central, and KKL-JNF, culminated in the Climate Solutions Festival, where the challenge winners were announced.

Wednesday, 26 October 2022: The Climate Solutions Prize, a joint initiative by JNF Canada, Start-Up Nation Central, and KKL-JNF, is an annual initiative to incentivize climate innovation, granting over $2 million in prizes to researchers and startups that offer solutions to the global climate crisis. The initiative culminated in today’s Climate Solutions Prize Festival, a gathering of government, business, and non-profit organizations dedicated to driving innovation in the Climate Tech ecosystem.

Nearly 1,000 guests arrived at the festival today, held in Hulda Forest in Israel, and took part in the large-scale global summit and startup expo.

The Climate Solutions Prize, founded earlier this year, is a comprehensive initiative to support research and innovation addressing the climate change crisis. The initiative operates in two distinct tracks. One is the Breakthrough Research Prize, which offers a grant for Israeli scientists and researchers. The other is the Startup Track, which involves a series of challenges that offer investment, cash prizes, and exposure to Israeli tech companies. Each Startup Challenge is led by different industry leaders and philanthropic partners, such as Capital Nature, Temasek Foundation, ESIL, Kornit Digital, SolarEdge, and Merck.

Research Track Winners:

• • • Avner Rothschild, Technion
      Topic – Decoupled water electrolysis for green hydrogen production at scale
      Project Description – Green hydrogen as an alternative energy source produced by water decomposition using electrolysis. Transformative water electrolysis process with high efficiency and no membranes.

   

  • • Itzhak Mizrahi, Ben Gurion University
      Topic – Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and climate change by rational design of ruminants’ microbiome.
      Project Description – Reduce methane emissions and increase feed efficiency of ruminates by identifying microbial components that, in concert, enable and support the life of the host and reduce animal methane emissions to the atmosphere.

   

  • Malachi Noked, Bar Ilan University
    Topic – Development of Sodium Ion batteries
    Project Description – Developing active materials for Sodium-ion batteries for creating fuel cells as a more environmentally friendly energy storage system.

Startup Track Challenge Winners:

Capital Nature $1M Investment Track
Challenge: Early-stage startups in sustainable energy, sustainable mobility, green construction-tech and circularity
Winner: Copprint, which replaces the highly polluting chemical processes for manufacturing electronic circuit boards and antennas with simple printing of copper inks.

Temasek Foundation Livability Innovations Challenge
Challenge: Promoting sustainable living in southeast Asia
Winner: Marine Edge, which reduces fuel consumption for ships, improves propulsive efficiency, and minimizes carbon emissions for marine transportation.

Kornit Sustainable Fashion Tech Revolutionary Challenge:
Challenge: Sustainability in the textile industry
Winner: Styletech.ai, which revolutionizes visual marketing through AI, reducing the carbon footprint of the fashion industry. Its technology eliminates shooting days, decreases return rates, and encourages brands to produce by demand.

Merck Greener Materials Challenge
Challenge: Green chemistry, sustainable materials, energy & wastewater, and supply chain efficiency solutions.
Winner: Smart Resilin which produces resilin, a bio-based alternative to pollutant materials.

SolarEdge EnergyTech Challenge
Challenge: Renewable energy systems, home & EV energy management, and next-generation storage solutions.
Winner: Red Solar Flower, which promotes carbon footprint reduction and improved food security by rapid gigawatt-scale solar panels deployment over agricultural areas.

SustainIL Challenge for Early-Stage Rising Stars Challenge
Challenge: Early-stage solution
Winner: SolOr, which creates a solar paint for buildings’ skin, that allows the possibility to combine electricity generation with other functions of the building materials.

SustainIL Grand Pivot Challenge
Challenge: Mature startup that is adapting its existing technology to meet new climate-related applications.
Winner: Seevix Material Sciences, which produces synthetic spider silk fibers that are identical in their characteristics to the ones found in nature and are more sustainable and biodegradable.

“I could not be more excited to see this dream come to fruition of supercharging the ingenuity of Israel, the Start-up Nation, to help solve the climate crisis”. said Jeff Hart, Executive Chair of the Climate Solutions Prize.” I am so thankful to everyone involved for helping with this critical initiative for our future generations”.

Amnon Ben Ami, CEO of KKL – JNF: “KKL – JNF sees the development of knowledge and technology as an important and necessary basis for the fight against the climate crisis. The award is given after professional thinking and subsequently for exceptional cooperation for an important cause. The grants distributed to the winners will allow Israeli start-ups to develop significant technologies for all of us and there is no doubt that Israel will continue to lead in the field. KKL-JNF, as the largest green organization in Israel, puts the treatment of the climate crisis as a flag and we operate in Israel and help organizations and countries around the world to become greener.”

“Israel is currently home to more than 700 technology companies that are already developing solutions for addressing climate challenges, including sustainable food systems, circular economy, clean energy, efficiency and storage, sustainable mobility, sustainable manufacturing, nature protection, and many more” said Start-Up Nation Central CEO,
Avi Hasson. “As a recognized leader in developing advanced solutions to global challenges, Israel is extremely well-positioned to take a central role in battling climate change and bring solutions to the biggest shared challenge of our times.”

Israel is currently home to more than 700 technology companies that are already developing solutions for addressing climate challenges, including sustainable food systems, circular economy, clean energy, efficiency and storage, sustainable mobility, sustainable manufacturing, nature protection, and many more.