Monday, September 22
Day 1, Reflection 1: Chenwei Hu
The first day of NYC Climate Week built on my experience at COP29 in Azerbaijan (also sponsored by the Institute), where I witnessed firsthand the challenges of negotiating climate finance across countries. At the panel ‘Funding Mechanisms and Innovative Financial Instruments to Accelerate Sustainable Transitions,’ philanthropy leaders and public equity managers discussed, with both concern and cautious optimism, the role of blended finance in climate initiatives leading up to COP30. Bruno Laskowsky, Portfolio Manager at Yvy Capital, introduced the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), using wildfire management in Brazil as an example: sovereign loans from emerging economies pool private capital into a blended finance vehicle, which invests in a diversified bond portfolio. Sovereign investors receive annual returns equal to their borrowing costs, while excess proceeds fund conservation. This aligned closely with my prior work at The Nature Conservancy, where I gained exposure to techniques for improving the financial feasibility of the 2030 SDGs.
Beyond finance and international development, the panels broached diverse topics. I learned how organizations like Instituto Equilíbrio are advancing low-carbon agriculture to bolster food security in South America, with climate security as a co-benefit. I also discovered ZeroWaste’s efforts to integrate human capital, such as waste pickers, into carbon credit methodologies for waste management. Between sessions, I enjoyed New York bagels on the NYU Wagner campus and connected with a fellow student delegate from UNC Chapel Hill, who is developing a data analytics project on corporate ESG initiatives at the Ackerman Center for Excellence in Sustainability. I’m grateful for both the insights and the connections.
Day 1, Reflection 2: Pari Shah
Walking into NYU, grabbing my badge, and taking a seat with the Climate Week fellows, I felt the excitement as professionals in a variety of climate related fields walked into the room and energy from panel members in front of us. The session was set up where 6 sets of panelists would speak about different topics within the climate crisis: Smallholder farmers and food systems, financial mechanisms, tropical countries with regenerative agriculture, decarbonization through waste management, and climate and nature solutions. We heard about their advocacy work and the relationship between state and civil society in Brazil.
We also got a sneak peek into COP30 by learning that there is a pre- COP discussion where small organizations and community leaders can speak to policymakers prior to the decision-making between the global leaders. I learned about the TFFF (Tropical Forest Finance Facility) mechanism that will be introduced at COP that encourages forest conservation with a performance based system. Terms like blended finance, derisking approaches, and transparency were thrown around a lot during the financial management panel. We heard about novel agro-technologies and Brazil’s civil society mechanism of making up for the research that the government refuses to conduct in order to push for policy changes.
We heard from Aline Sousa de Silva who is a young leader in the waste management advocacy business and works to provide better sorting of solid waste and drew connections between carbon credit and waste sorting in hopes to introduce the idea of “humanizing carbon credit.” One piece of advice a panelist offered to the room that stood with me was “everyone wants to create a new technology, instead we need people to slightly alter our existing ones and apply them differently, which is easier to pass in legislature.”
After the session ended, we joined [UChicago alum] Eva Burgos for dinner at the White Oak Tavern to hear about her climate consulting experience. It was a really informative day and a great start to Climate Week.
Tuesday, September 23
Day 2, Reflection 1: Maya Martinez
Day 2 of NYC climate week for the UChicago student delegation group started at Victoria Pisini’s Climate Salon. Climate Salon offered an opportunity for 10 different climate-focused businesses, startups, investors, and corporations to pitch their idea to the audience and ask one burning question that they are searching for in order to advance their company. Afterwards, the audience divided up into groups with the representatives from each company and talked through their problems in hopes of brainstorming a solution.
I was able to join Becky Gallager’s discussion regarding Sublime Systems, which is a manufacturer of an efficient low-waste and low-cost cement. As VP of Project Management, she is seeking a location in the US to expand manufacturing, and through this discussion, I learned how federal policies, local regulations, market demand, natural resources, social concerns, and environmental impacts all factor into site selection. Before this session, I had little exposure to business development or project management in clean technology, so it was eye-opening to see the barriers companies face in scaling their innovations today. A recurring challenge for these businesses has been attracting investors and customers, since many industries operate “reactively” which opposes the “proactive” nature of climate technologies. This problematic ideology mirrors the broader public’s reluctance to adopt sustainable practices since many people don’t consider climate technologies until their problems become unavoidable, but I am interested to learn more about how this disconnect can be limited in industrial, social and political settings.
In the afternoon, I attended Rystad Energy’s Clean Energy Forum, which explored grid expansion and current challenges in the energy transition. During the last panel, Andy Shafe, Chief Customer Marketing and Brand Officer of Gevo, ended the discussion with a great analogy regarding the energy transition. He compared the transition from candles and gas lamps to the light bulb to be similar to the fight we are facing today. He said that 100 years ago, light bulbs were expensive, fragile, and inconvenient to use, but that once systems were built to support them, they revolutionized the world. He then argued that we are at a similar turning point with clean energy development. The demand for energy is only increasing due to population growth, data center expansion, and the electrification of society, and we must adapt the grid to meet these needs sustainably rather than resist change. This message was very powerful, especially after learning about how much resistance clean technologies are currently facing from the previous session I attended, and I am interested to stay involved with the energy transition in the near future.
Overall, today gave me valuable insight into the social, political, and financial complexities that sustainable technology companies are facing. As a student delegate, I’m grateful to be part of these conversations early in my career and look forward to learning about more clean technologies at tomorrow’s sessions.
Day 2, Reflection 2: Alethea Oakley
On our second day of Climate Week, we started with facilitated discussions on climate innovation with a focus on urban innovations. This session, hosted by Climate Salon, brought together entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers, and students like us for conversations on how to innovate, scale, and finance climate solutions. We talked to companies like Helix Earth, Greentown Labs, and Atalanta, learning about their struggles and opportunities for innovation. This session helped me discover the capital investment necessary to scale new climate technology and bring it to potential customers. Additionally, discussions included the variations in capital stack and incentives, climate resilience, and the necessity of green infrastructure. This session helped frame my thinking throughout the remainder of day two, showcasing the great work that has been done and providing avenues to continue scaling and implementing climate technology.
In the afternoon, my focus shifted to regenerative systems and their importance in the climate solution. I attended panel discussions hosted by Why Regenerative, an organization whose mission is to increase the discussion around regenerative farming and systems through panels and networking. This session hosted four panels: Navigating Complex Standards and Dynamic Agricultural Supply Chains, Expanding the Aperture-Carbon and Cobenefits, Leveraging Finance for Regenerative Solutions, and Unlocking Carbon Finance to Scale Food Rescue Systems. Each of these panels dug into the struggles of working in regenerative systems with a focus on carbon and carbon markets. At this event, I gained a more in-depth perspective on regenerative farming, understanding the complexities of working with farmers on a small and large scale. As well as cobenefits and how carbon markets can be leveraged to provide funding to farms and organizations.
The last panel on carbon finance as a way to finance food rescue systems was inspiring with speakers from The Farmlink Project, HelloFresh, and Feeding America. They shared challenges with preventing food from going to waste and shared exciting news on how they are developing a methodology to provide carbon credits from food rescue efforts. At this event, I had the opportunity to speak to people who worked in farm co-ops, soil carbon measurements, and agroforestry. These connections help me increase my understanding of the food systems, especially from a regenerative approach, and soil carbon levels. Additionally, I spoke to the leaders of Why Regenerative, who were both recent NYU graduates, on innovation and involvement as an undergraduate student. This discussion left me inspired to become more involved in the regenerative farming movement and continue my personal research into new potential carbon and measurable impact markets.
My second day at Climate Week provided an opportunity for me to become more involved in the discussion of the climate and solutions. As well as increasing my understanding of systems like capital raising for climate technology, scalability of solutions, food distribution systems, and regenerative agriculture.
Wednesday, September 24
Day 3, Reflection 1: Carolina Santos
By the third day of Climate Week, the program focused on technologies challenging incumbent systems. The morning panel on “Black sheep technologies” gathered three ventures in different arenas grappling with replacing entrenched infrastructure. Pasture Biosciences CEO Matt Zehnder presented a methane-reducing vaccine for cattle that alters the microbial ecology of the rumen. Health vaccines have progressively integrated animal husbandry, and this one helps cattle gain weight more efficiently. Farmers would stand to earn higher returns while reducing methane emissions, making climate mitigation a co-benefit. Zehnder contrasted the vaccine with chemical feed additives, which is the current market alternative, and must be added continuously to rations and handled in high concentrations that raise safety and regulatory concerns.
Deep Fission‘s CEO Elizabeth Muller spoke about nuclear energy, and the constraints confronting the sector as political. Waste disposal was noted as an engineering challenge with researchable solutions, and that among the technology’s existential risks figures the slow timeline of regulatory approval. Her company’s pilot reactor has progressed unusually quickly because the U.S. government has classified artificial intelligence as a national-security priority, creating demand for large amounts of stable, carbon-free electricity to power AI data-center growth.
Shely Aronov with InnerPlant described genetically modified soybeans engineered for higher yields. What interested me most was her perspective in refusing to treat climate as a self-contained industry, instead using it as a lens to redesign industries such as agriculture. One of her company’s strategies is to create demonstration plots so that conservative commodity markets can observe results.
In the afternoon, the Carbontech Summit shifted attention to presentations from NYSERDA and the Gadikota Lab exploring carbon capture and mineralization, including efforts to lock CO₂ into ultramafic rock and to produce carbon-sequestering building materials. Across these projects, speakers repeatedly addressed the imperative to become policy-proof, designing models resilient enough to withstand the ebb of subsidies and the volatility of political attention. It was deeply revealing to reach a discussion common theme that scientific feasibility is not necessarily the limiting factor, and the challenge lies in lowering regulatory risk and convincing cautious markets by building strong economic cases.
Day 3, Reflection 2: Zoe Springsteen
I was listening to The Economist this morning, and I caught a report that the Secret Service had actually dismantled a hidden telecom network in NYC with hundreds of servers that foreign actors supposedly meant to jam mobile towers and emergency calls. It then started to make more sense to me why, the day before, I’d seen white-embroidered-bulletproof-vest-donning agents lining every other block in Manhattan. I really felt in the middle of it all!
That’s why it’s so great to be in New York this week. I’m in the center of the most detailed, comprehensive overview of climate and energy ideas I could have asked for. The first session of today was about the “Black Sheep” of climate tech—panelists in agriculture and nuclear that proposed relatively controversial technologies such as injections given to cows to lower their methane emissions or nuclear 1 mile underground. A trend I started to notice, continuing from the days before, is that speakers in climate tech were often mentioning how their solutions needed to bring increased profitability or productivity to the customer. The founder with the cattle methane solution, for example, coupled his shots with other substances that would make the cow grow larger faster. The theme re-emerged later at our second session of the day, the CarbonTech Summit, with an NYISO exec stressing the need for a climate technology to drive revenues if it hoped to succeed.
Also a surprisingly relevant theme from the day was my home state of Alaska. One exec from a hydrogen-tech firm discussed a partnership project of his, 20 miles above Ketchikan—I connected with him during the networking break; pretty exciting to hear about a hydrogen project taking off when I’ve been talking about it since I was 16, interning with an energy consultancy in Anchorage! Another great conversation was about community stakes, and one investor brought up the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act as an example of ensuring indigenous communities play a strong role in industry and retain ownership of their land. I’d studied the issue in depth for my IB Extended Essay, so it was a familiar reference point.
In my eyes, it’s a good marker that I heard plenty of differing opinions from climate and energy speakers this week—it means that the clean energy and climate space is strong and diverse enough to have opposing views that still work toward the same end. I’m incredibly thankful for the opportunity to attend, and having other great students and administrators in the group made all the difference!