The Forbes Sustainability Leaders List highlights global leaders including entrepreneurs, investors, activists and scientists who are working to combat the climate crisis.
Edited By Elisabeth Brier
Reporting by Marlowe Starling, Eduardo Garcia, Alex Knapp and Alan Ohnsman
Record-shattering heat, billion-dollar storms and rising seas are unfolding as political pushback, misinformation and wavering international agreements threaten to stall climate progress. Yet across sectors and continents, a new climate economy is advancing anyway—fueled by record clean energy investment, China’s green-tech boom and a worldwide surge in renewable power from advanced to emerging economies. In a moment of fading political consensus, but accelerating real-world change, decisive leadership matters more than ever.
Now in its second year, the Forbes Sustainability Leaders list honors 50 people setting the pace for a just, sustainable economy and defining what climate leadership looks like today. From harnessing AI while meeting soaring energy demands to restoring ecosystems and reshaping global finance, they are not simply working to recover what’s been lost; they are charting the next phase of the transition.
Chosen with the guidance of judges — impact investor Laurene Powell Jobs, actor-activist Jane Fonda, investor and climate financier Tom Steyer, clean energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah, social impact founder Charlot Magayi and biotech CEO Ester Baiget —this year’s honorees prove how breakthrough ideas and targeted investment are continuing to deliver measurable progress. As Steyer puts it, “When the sustainable choice is also the smart choice, the future becomes obvious. What’s left is the courage to deliver it.”
The list—presented alphabetically, not ranked—celebrates those whose recent achievements prove that meaningful climate progress is happening now and aims to inspire the cross-sector collaboration it will take to scale it.
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Founder and CEO, Mati Carbon, United States
Many carbon removal startups are struggling to raise funds to commercially deploy their technology due to high costs, but Mati Carbon is bucking the trend. The company, founded by Indian-born entrepreneur Shantanu Agarwal, proposes spreading finely crushed basalt over farmland. When mixed with rainwater, basalt dissolves into chemicals including magnesium, silicon and calcium that react with carbon from the atmosphere to form bicarbonate, which will eventually be washed into the sea through rivers and streams, where it will remain for thousands of years. The idea won the $50-million grand prize of the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition in April 2025, beating 1,300 teams from 88 countries. Judges found that this method is cost-effective, scalable and would provide farmers in the Global South with additional revenue from the sale of carbon credits to companies such as Shopify, Stripe and H&M. (For more, see “This Startup Is Scaling Up A Low-Tech Way To Pull Massive Amounts Of Carbon From The Air.”)
Goldman Environmental Prize
Cofounder and Activist, National PFAS Contamination Coalition, United States
In 2016, Laurene Allen discovered an unsettling truth about her town’s drinking water in Merrimack, New Hampshire: Its levels of PFAS (or “forever chemicals”) far exceeded safe limits. Many of her neighbors developed fatal illnesses and other disorders later linked to the contamination. Driven to action, Allen cofounded a local community organization and the National PFAS Contamination Coalition, a network of grassroots activists fighting industrial PFAS polluters across the country. As the direct result of Allen’s lobbying—testifying at community hearings, providing public comment and providing evidence for a class action lawsuit against Saint-Gobain for its neglect—the Merrimack factory was shut down in May 2024. Under her leadership, the Biden administration established the first federal PFAS drinking water standard in 2024.
Founder and CEO, SkyTruth, United States
John Amos founded SkyTruth in 2001, a conservation technology nonprofit that uses satellite imagery to track global polluters such as the oil, gas, shipping and fishing industries. In 2023, SkyTruth launched Project Cerulean, which relies on AI to automatically scan satellite images to detect oil slicks at sea and identify who’s responsible by comparing vessel movements to oil slick locations. In 2017, the nonprofit launched Global Fishing Watch (GFW), which uses satellite-collected ship tracking data and AI to detect and map all of the commercial fishing activity in the ocean. GFW now has operations in 30 countries with over 120 staff members.
CEO, XPRIZE Foundation, United States
Anousheh Ansari is the CEO of XPRIZE Foundation, a nonprofit that runs competitions with $500 million in prizes designed to spur new ideas on how to tackle environmental challenges. Under her leadership, the Elon Musk-backed foundation awarded the $100 million Carbon Removal prize in April 2025, the largest incentive competition in climate tech history with 1,300 teams across 80 countries. In 2024, she oversaw the launch of the Water Scarcity prize, a $119-million global competition to address the growing threat of water scarcity. Ansari, who lives in Dallas, was the first Iranian to go to space. “Seeing Earth from space forever changed my perspective—our planet appeared fragile, interconnected and profoundly worth protecting. It was a call to action I couldn’t ignore,” she told Forbes.
Naturalist, Broadcaster, Filmmaker, BBC, United Kingdom
Sir David Attenborough is more than just his charismatic British broadcasting voice. The internationally acclaimed naturalist and filmmaker is best known for his six decades producing wildlife documentaries for the BBC, but at 99 years old, Attenborough has continued to educate millions about climate change and biodiversity through filmmaking. His latest film, Ocean with David Attenborough, was released in May 2025 just before the United Nations Ocean Conference, showcasing the wonder of underwater habitats while exposing how destructive fishing practices are decimating marine life. The film’s groundbreaking footage of bottom-trawling, a harmful industrial fishing practice, has been viewed online more than 20 million times. “This film is a call to wake up,” he says in the documentary. “If we save the sea, we save our world.”
Vice President of Arctic and Northern Waters, Ocean Conservancy
In June 2025, Barbara ‘Wáahlaal Gíidaak Blake co-led a global effort of 1,000 scientists to demand an industrial fishing pause in the Central Arctic Ocean, a 1.1-million-square-mile ecosystem around the North Pole, to protect vital arctic marine resources. Along with her work at the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy, she is a board director of the for-profit Sealaska, which has helped regenerative and Indigenous-led seafood companies prepare more than $500 million of sustainably sourced seafood for markets each year. ‘Wáahlaal Gíidaak, who is of Haida, Tlingit and Ahtna Athabascan descent and belongs to the Káat nay-st/Yahkw Jáanaas (Shark House/Middle Town People) Clan, has integrated ancestral Indigenous perspectives into her work by helping initiate the Indigenous Law of the Sea—a collaborative effort to adjust marine policy to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and values.
Chief Sustainability Officer, FedEx Corporation, United States
Karen Blanks Ellis leads FedEx’s global sustainability strategy to reach carbon-neutral operations by 2040—a challenging task for a $53-billion company that makes 17 million shipments a day across 220 countries. To slash tailpipe emissions, FedEx is piloting electric vehicles on six continents. In 2024, FedEx achieved a 6.1% year-over-year decrease in direct emissions, in part thanks to aircraft upgrades and fuel reduction efforts that have saved the company $400 million in fuel costs. “That kind of reduction—particularly when driven by greater efficiencies in the notoriously challenging-to-decarbonize aviation part of our business—is something I am incredibly proud of,” Ellis told Forbes.
Médiathèque Veolia – Pierre Morel / La Company
CEO, Veolia, France
CEO Estelle Brachlianoff has led environmental-services company Veolia to become a leader in energy, waste and water services across 56 countries with $48 billion in revenue in the year ending in June 2025. This year, the company opened its largest removal plant for PFAS (“forever chemicals”) in Delaware, thanks to a new technology it developed to destroy certain PFAS compounds. The facility now serves 30 million gallons of water to 100,000 people each day. Other recent projects include a solar-powered water desalination facility in the United Arab Emirates, the world’s first large-scale water reclamation facility in Brazil, and cleaning the Seine River before the 2024 Summer Olympics. Before Brachlianoff became CEO in 2022, Veolia’s North America subsidiary faced a number of controversies, including its alleged contributions to the Flint water crisis and its alleged neglect of a former fracking project in West Virginia, and its Colombia subsidiary more recently was accused of toxic contamination of water resources. Veolia told Forbes these cases “reflect the complex and changing nature of our work” and asserted the company “acted properly.”
Head of Global Sustainability, Volvo Cars, Sweden
In the two years since Vanessa Butani became Head of Global Sustainability at Volvo, the company has increased its electric car sales by more than half and decreased operational CO2 emissions per car by a quarter. To achieve a more circular supply chain, Volvo began working with Swedish steelmaker SSAB this year to use recycled steel for manufacturing. Volvo is also piloting bi-directional charging, which lets fully charged electric vehicles feed energy back into the grid. Volvo currently offers six electric models, with four more incoming. The biggest impact the car industry can have on climate, Butani says, is through electrification. (For more, see “Inside Volvo’s Efforts To Build Recycled Cars.”)
Founder and CEO, Mongabay, United States
After Rhett Butler learned that a rainforest he visited with his family in Borneo would be cut down for wood pulp, he was inspired to start the nonprofit environmental news outlet Mongabay in 1999. It has grown to more than 1,000 correspondents across 80 countries, publishing investigations—from wildlife trafficking on land to unregulated fishing on the high seas—across seven languages for an annual readership of 50 million people. Last year, for instance, Mongabay’s Latam team exposed 67 illegal air strips in the Peruvian Amazon that were used to smuggle drugs in and near protected Indigenous forest concessions, prompting government intervention. The investigation, which used AI and satellite imagery, was made possible in part by the newly launched Mongabay Data Studio: a way to leverage scientific and satellite data for reporting, such as tracking deforestation rates.
President and CEO, Rocky Mountain Institute, United States
Since 2022, Jon Creyts has led the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a global nonprofit that works with businesses, policymakers, communities and startups to roll out market-based solutions that support the clean energy transition. Under Creyts’ leadership, RMI has expanded projects in Nigeria and Southeast Asia; launched a collaboration with 20 U.S. states to quadruple heat pumps by 2030; and built a startup accelerator, Third Derivative, which has provided support to 268 climate tech startups. RMI has also helped design an electric rideshare and courier program in Delhi, India that has made over 800 million zero-carbon deliveries in the past three years. “This moment calls for optimism with teeth: scalable solutions that bend markets toward a livable future for everyone. That’s our job,” he told Forbes.
Director of Coral Reefs, Wildlife Conservation Society, Canada
Roughly half of the world’s coral reefs have died since the 1950s due to climate change. After studying dying reefs firsthand in East Africa, the American-born Dr. Emily Darling cofounded data project MERMAID in 2024. The freely available, AI-powered database of the world’s most climate-resilient reefs is used by more than 2,000 scientists across 51 countries. Darling has also helped mobilize more than $60 million to protect roughly 41,100 km² of reef habitat. In June 2025, she launched the first international commitment to protect climate-resilient reefs at the UN Ocean Conference, pledging 11 countries to enforce policies against destructive fishing practices, pollution and development. “Coral reefs are not only ecosystems; they are lifelines for climate resilience,” Darling says. “Their future depends on what we do now.”
Founder and CEO, Aligned Climate Capital, United States
Peter Davidson is CEO of Aligned Climate Capital, an asset manager that invests in companies’ decarbonization and renewable energy projects. As of 2024, Aligned mobilized over $2 billion for companies that are transforming the U.S. energy system, and in May 2025, the company closed its largest solar-focused fund at $240 million. Aligned has backed more than 25 companies and financed over 100 distributed solar projects, avoiding an estimated 1 million metric tons of CO2 emissions to date. Davidson founded Aligned to show the private sector “that investing in climate solutions can generate strong returns while accelerating decarbonization,” he says. Davidson formerly led the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, mobilizing $32 billion towards utility-scale solar and energy storage projects in the U.S.
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CEO, CLASP, United States
Over the past 25 years, Christine Egan has grown CLASP into a global nonprofit that has helped accelerate the adoption of energy-efficient domestic appliances such as air conditioners and televisions in more than 90 countries through policy advice, financing and data. “Our analysis shows that if we supercharge the efficiency of ten key appliances—the Net Zero Heroes—the global community could avoid over 9 gigatons of CO2 by 2050, equivalent to one-fifth of global emissions today,” Egan told Forbes. Through a financing facility launched in 2022 and expanded in 2025 with a $6.1-million injection, CLASP has provided grants, subsidies and technical assistance to 24 suppliers, helping lower the prices of energy-efficient appliances and irrigation equipment in low-income, under-electrified communities in six African countries. Some 16,000 appliances have been sold through the program.
Cofounder and CEO, Sublime Systems, United States
Leah Ellis cofounded Sublime Systems in 2020 with the goal of decarbonizing cement production, which is responsible for roughly 8% of global CO2 emissions. Ellis, who was born in Israel and trained at MIT, codeveloped a manufacturing method that replaces the age-old carbon intensive process of manufacturing cement with an electrochemical technique that uses low-carbon materials and less energy to produce cleaner, durable cement. In May 2025, Sublime signed a deal to supply Microsoft with 623,000 tons of low-carbon cement over six years and is developing its first commercial facility in Holyoke, Massachusetts, which is slated to open in 2028 and produce 30,000 tons per year.
CEO and President, Circular Action Alliance, United States
Nonprofit Circular Action Alliance (CAA) helps companies comply with waste and recycling laws—and shifts the burden of sustainable waste management from consumers to producers (i.e., from the person drinking from a can to the company selling them the drink). It is the first nationwide Producer Responsibility Organization in the U.S., working with 3,500 companies to improve recycling, packaging and composting. In July, CAA launched the nation’s first packaging-focused Extended Producer Responsibility program in Oregon—a new policy approach that financially incentivizes companies to reduce waste and lower their carbon footprint. Over the past two years, CAA has partnered with Colorado, California, Maryland and Minnesota to implement similar waste regulations. This year, Fielkow is launching a recycling education campaign and is promoting a national set of recycling standards for companies.
Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment
Minister for Sustainability and the Environment, Singapore
Grace Fu has served as Singapore’s environmental chief since 2020, allocating nearly $4 billion to coastal resilience projects in the low-lying city-state while leading international negotiations on climate policy. At the United Nations COP29 climate conference, Fu committed $500 million toward decarbonization projects across Asia. As part of the Singapore Green Plan 2030, Fu introduced a nationwide plastic bag charge in 2023 and a beverage-container recycling program that will begin in 2026. Fu has made Singapore the first nation to include alternative proteins in its Paris Agreement pledge to reduce emissions, and is proud to have invested 24 times as much public funding into alternative-protein innovation as the U.S.
Cofounder and CEO, Electric Hydrogen, United States
Electric Hydrogen reached a huge milestone in 2023. Just three years after Raffi Garabedian started the company to manufacture electrolyzers—machines that use electricity to produce hydrogen in a clean way for use in heavy industry like steelmaking—the startup was heralded as the world’s first “green hydrogen unicorn.” The Houston-headquartered company has raised $750 million from investors such as HSBC, J.P. Morgan and Breakthrough Energy Ventures to develop and deploy the HYPRPlant: a pre-built modular system that cuts total installed project costs by up to 60%. Electric Hydrogen manufactures the modules at its plant in Massachusetts and ships them to clients who assemble the pieces to build electrolyzers. Over the past two years, the company has signed supply contracts with Uniper, a German renewable energy company, and Infinium, a leading producer of commercial electrofuels.
Vice President and Head of Discovery, Breakthrough Energy, United States
Since 2020, Ashley Grosh has led Breakthrough Energy’s global Fellows program to support scientists and founders developing technologies that can reduce at least 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Collectively, Fellows have raised more than $475 million in follow-on funding, with 98% securing additional investment after the program. The program has supported 168 innovators across 80 projects in 19 countries. To help founders, Ashley built a proprietary resource portal with go-to-market roadmaps, company-building tools and landscape assessments.
Founder and CEO, The Recycling Partnership, United States
Keefe Harrison founded The Recycling Partnership in 2014 to boost recycling rates in the U.S., where two thirds of the solid waste that households discard every year ends up in landfills or incinerators. Since its inception, the nonprofit has provided 2 million recycling bins to households across the U.S., helping collect 1 billion pounds of recyclables. The Recycling Partnership has also successfully advocated for Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) policies, which hold manufacturers financially accountable for the waste they generate and push them to use packaging that is easier to recycle, which have been passed in Colorado, Oregon, California, Maine and Minnesota. The Recycling Partnership has raised $500 million, including $275 million from brands, retailers, packaging manufacturers and other corporate partners seeking to build a better recycling system.
Founder and CEO, Intersect Power, United Stares
In just 10 years, Sheldon Kimber built Intersect Power into a clean energy heavyweight with a portfolio of 2.2 gigawatts (GW) of large-scale solar installations and 2.4 gigawatt-hour per year (GWh/year) of battery storage, representing $4 billion in capital investment. Now, Intersect is developing $9 billion in additional capacity, including 4 GW of solar and 10 GWh of storage. It has also received permit approval for its Darden Project in California, the largest solar and battery project in the U.S., which will feature more than 3.1 million solar panels. Intersect signed a partnership with Google and the TPG Rise Climate fund in 2024 that aims to invest $20 billion by the end of the decade in projects that co-locate data centers with clean power generation.
Founder and CEO, Enpal, Germany
Enpal is a Berlin-based renewable energy company that sells and rents out home solar-power systems with no upfront costs and connects them to a virtual power plant: a network of distributed energy sources that reduces pressure on the grid. Through its solar-power systems, the company said it has provided reliable power to more than 100,000 homeowners across Germany, avoiding some 820,463 tons of CO2 as of early 2025. The company has also installed wall boxes for charging electric vehicles, heat pumps and power storage units. With $600 million raised to date, Mario Kohle helped Enpal become Germany’s first renewable-energy “unicorn,” valued at $2.4 billion as of 2023. Enpal has streamlined the installation process and made it easier for customers to finance their systems through flexible installment loans, making it one of Europe’s leading renewable energy startups.
Cofounder and CEO, Fervo Energy, United States
Under Tim Latimer’s leadership, Fervo Energy built a 3.5-megawatt (MW) enhanced geothermal plant in Nevada that started delivering 24/7 carbon-free power to Google in 2023, pioneering a technology that could allow the U.S. to boost clean energy generation by drilling deep into Earth’s crust to access sources of heat. In May 2025, the U.S. Geological Survey reported that geothermal resources in and around Nevada could produce electricity equivalent to 10% of the current U.S. power supply. Fervo is now leveraging $1 billion from investors such as Breakthrough Energy and Elemental Impact to build a 500-MW geothermal facility in Utah, which is slated to go online in 2026. “We believe geothermal can go far beyond its niche legacy—not just as a climate solution, but as a primary source of reliable, around-the-clock power for the modern grid,” Latimer told Forbes. Latimer is an alumnus of the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
CEO, Clean Energy Finance Corporation, Australia
Ian Learmonth has led the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC), known as Australia’s “green bank,” since 2017. CEFC works with investors, businesses and governments to help decarbonize the electricity sector, which relies heavily on coal power generation. Over the past 12 years, CEFC has invested $17.7 billion in 380 deals to finance utility-scale solar, wind and battery storage projects, attracting over $53 billion in additional capital from co-investors. It has also funded Australia’s largest clean-tech venture capital firm, Virescent Ventures, which has $330 million in assets under management and a portfolio that includes Sunman, a manufacturer of rooftop solar modules; Hysata, which is developing electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen; and Renewable Metals, a battery recycling startup.
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Director of Technology, Environmental Policy Innovation Center, Canada
Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, federal databases started to disappear without warning. Alarmed by the implications, Jessie Mahr cofounded the Public Environmental Data Partners (PEDP): an initiative to preserve at-risk federal data by archiving critical environmental datasets and rebuilding lost data tools. Mahr’s team launched a public version of the White House Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool within 72 hours of its removal from government servers; the Environmental Protection Agency’s EJScreen tool within 48 hours of its removal; and critical CDC data within 24 hours. As of September, she says the PEDP team has created public backups of more than 360 critical datasets. At the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), she also created and leads a team that uses data tools to help organizations and agencies with their environmental work. (For more, see “Inside The Effort To Save Hundreds Of Environmental Datasets Purged Under Trump.”)
Managing Director, Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Australia
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest coral reef in the world, spanning an area roughly half the size of Texas. At the nonprofit Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Anna Marsden leads the largest coordinated coral reef protection and restoration effort globally, securing a $287-million grant from the Australian government in 2022 and $456 million in additional private and philanthropic funding. Marsden has overseen the development of coral restoration technologies capable of deploying over 1 million heat-tolerant corals annually—ten times faster than current restoration rates. Her team is also spearheading a nursery project to encourage the survival of 4.6 million more baby turtles on the reef by 2030 and a program to restore 2,500 hectares of damaged seagrass meadows.
Managing Director of Africa and Global Partnerships, World Resources Institute, Kenya
Wanjira Mathai says that her mother, esteemed Kenyan activist and 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai, taught her that environmental justice and human dignity are inseparable. Continuing her legacy, Mathai helps secure sustainable climate financing for the world’s most vulnerable communities with the nonprofit World Resources Institute (WRI). With nearly 3 million hectares of African forests destroyed each year, she saw an opportunity to implement the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100): a landmark project to restore African forests by 2030. Now in its second year, AFR100 has restored 22 million hectares of its 129-million-hectare commitment across 34 countries. She also helped secure $100 million for WRI from TED Conferences’ funding initiative, The Audacious Project, to support local soil and biodiversity restoration on African farmlands, 65% of which are degraded.
Cofounder, Climate TRACE, United States
To produce a worldwide greenhouse gas emissions database that is free and open to the public, Climate TRACE, the nonprofit coalition cofounded by Gavin McCormick, analyzes over 90 trillion bytes of data from more than 300 satellites and 11,000 sensors. Climate TRACE, which is backed by Al Gore, has raised $45 million in philanthropic donations since 2020, and last year began releasing emissions data for every country, state, province and major individual source of emissions going back to January 2021. McCormick, who hails from South Africa, is also the cofounder and executive director of WattTime, a nonprofit tech company that has developed technology to help 1 billion devices, such as smart thermostats and heat pumps, run on surplus clean energy sources like wind and solar.
Executive Director, Beyond Petrochemicals, United States
Heather McTeer Toney leads Beyond Petrochemicals, an initiative funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies that coordinates the work of frontline communities, faith organizations and conservationists to fight the construction of 120 planned petrochemical facilities in three regions disproportionately affected by toxic pollution: Louisiana, Texas and the Ohio River Valley. Beyond Petrochemicals has worked to establish stricter rules for existing petrochemical plants by joining permitting hearings, lobbying decision makers and submitting public comments on proposed rules, including those controlling the emissions of hazardous air pollutants. Since launching in 2022, Beyond Petrochemicals has helped create a coalition of local organizers, lawyers and scientists that has stopped 26 planned plants, preventing over 40 million tons of annual carbon pollution.
Director General, WorldFish, Malaysia
Over the past five decades, WorldFish, the Malaysia-headquartered nonprofit organization led by Dr. Essam Yassin Mohammed, has helped put sustainable sources of protein on the plates of over 1 billion people in the Global South by reintroducing fish species into rivers, lakes and coastal areas, and sponsoring scores of aquaculture projects. Thanks to its support, a science-based aquaculture project in Timor-Leste increased yields of genetically-improved farmed Tilapia from 1 ton to 17 tons per hectare over the past decade, while raising national fish consumption by 50%, a model that is being replicated in multiple countries. WorldFish’s research and advocacy projects led to new legislation to support aquaculture in several countries including India, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Zambia, while helping restore fish species that had low populations. “Aquatic foods are nutrient-rich, sustainable and climate-resilient, yet their potential to end hunger, improve nutrition and restore ecosystems remains gravely underutilized,” Mohammed told Forbes.
Director of Climate Change and Green Growth, African Development Bank, Ivory Coast
Under Anthony Nyong’s leadership, the African Development Bank has scaled climate-related investments from under $500 million in 2009 to over $5 billion in 2023. In the past two years, he has mobilized an additional $6 billion in investments across 33 countries as part of a $25-billion program that is funding the construction of resilient transportation, water and farming infrastructure. By expanding green bonds, developing carbon markets and encouraging debt-for-climate swaps, he has helped eight African countries secure financing for water, food and climate resilience projects that will benefit millions of people. In recent years, the bank has catalyzed $1 billion in investments for the construction of large-scale solar generation projects in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Michelle Shields (ACDI, UCT)
Researcher, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Geoengineering has become a controversial idea, but Dr. Romaric Odoulami is studying the intricate science behind how it would work. He leads an Africa-wide collaboration of scientists studying the effects of these proposed techniques on the continent’s weather patterns, the largest research effort of its kind in the Global South. Supported by a $1.5-million fund from the Simons Foundation International, Odoulami uses computer models to study how different particles would disperse into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and cool the earth, a method called Solar Radiation Management. But this could also have unintended consequences such as drought, which would harm crop production and food security. In May 2025, Benin-born Odoulami co-launched the African Climate Intervention Research Hub to support climate research across the continent.
CEO and Special Representative, UN Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, United Kingdom
At the United Nations, Damilola Ogunbiyi leads efforts to advance an equitable energy transition that benefits underprivileged communities in the Global South. Through her office’s Energy Compacts initiative, she has helped secure $201 billion in investments to provide affordable clean energy to the 685 million people living without electricity and over 2 billion still cooking with polluting fuels. From 2021 to 2024, the program built infrastructure to provide a reliable electricity supply for 177 million people and 6,000 healthcare facilities. Nigeria-born Ogunbiyi, who is now based in London, is also the co-chair of Mission 300, a joint initiative by the World Bank Group and the African Development Bank to provide electricity to 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030.
Co-Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel, Our Children’s Trust, United States
Protecting children’s right to a livable planet is lawyer Julia Olson’s driving force. She is the co-executive director of Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-headquartered public-interest law firm that represented 16 young people in a successful 2023 lawsuit against the Montana government for promoting fossil fuels and failing to protect kids’ right to a clean environment. As a result of the historic ruling, which was upheld by the state’s supreme court in 2024, Montana officials are now legally required to factor the climate impacts of new energy projects into their environmental reviews and permitting decisions. That’s just one of the legal actions across all 50 states that Our Children’s Trust has launched since Olson founded it in 2010. The nonprofit is also representing young people in active climate cases in Mexico, India, Canada, Pakistan and Uganda. “Children are most harmed by the climate crisis—but have no power at the ballot box. That’s why we go to court,” Olson told Forbes.
José Rafael Pérez Centeno
Puerto Rico Senior Program Director, Solar United Neighbors, Puerto Rico
San Juan-based David Ortiz leads the Puerto Rico division of Solar United Neighbors, a nationwide nonprofit that lobbies for clean-energy policy and offers affordable rooftop solar systems to homeowners through community cooperatives. After Hurricane Maria left the island without power for up to a year in 2017, and with more than 40% of the population in poverty, Ortiz has taught homeowners how they can affordably quit reliance on fossil fuels. Through grassroots lobbying, Ortiz helped pass the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, which provided $1 billion to solar energy projects, including more than 7,000 installations on low-income homes so far. Ortiz is now lobbying to help homeowners earn money from the excess electricity their solar panels feed the grid.
Activist and Elder, Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, United States
When President Donald Trump announced construction of “Alligator Alcatraz” in June 2025, a detention facility in the Florida Everglades, Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida elder Betty Osceola immediately took action. She partnered with Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity to sue the federal government for fast-tracking construction in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act. Although an appeals court reversed a federal judge’s decision to close the facility, the legal battle remains ongoing as of publication. Previously, Osceola led a successful campaign in 2024 to protect Big Cypress National Preserve from a state designation that would have severely limited Tribal access to ancestral sites. Prior to that, she co-led a campaign to protect the endangered Florida panther. When she isn’t organizing protests, she operates Buffalo Tiger Airboat Tours in the Everglades.
Cofounder and CEO, Monarch Tractor, United States
California-based Monarch Tractor manufactures fully electric autonomous tractors that are much more environmentally friendly than old-school diesel fuel tractors. Since Praveen Penmetsa founded it in 2017, the startup has sold over 500 tractors to vineyards, dairies, solar farms, equestrian facilities and small-scale farms across 20 U.S. states and four continents that have abated an estimated 2,700 metric tons of CO2. By mid-2024, Monarch had raised a total of $220 million, and by the end of the year it had opened its first office in Europe. “I am driven to fight the fights that need fighting, not just the ones that can be won, and few are harder than improving land sustainability and food security,” the Indian-born entrepreneur told Forbes.
Cofounder and Executive Director, ABALOBI, South Africa
Roughly 490 million people rely on small-scale fisheries for their livelihoods, yet industrial overfishing and lack of regulation present a global problem for fish stocks, local economies and ocean health. That’s why Serge Raemaekers cofounded ABALOBI in 2015. The hybrid nonprofit runs a digital marketplace via a phone app that allows local fishers to sell their sustainably sourced catch directly to consumers, which helps them raise their prices. ABALOBI also provides financial resources such as cash advances and savings tools to reduce poverty and boost food security. ABALOBI has helped around 7,500 South African fishers—over half of whom are women—boost their earnings by between 50% and 100% while reducing imperiled-species catch from 60% to 10%. Its technology is used to support fisheries in 12 other countries, including Chile, Kenya and Mozambique.
Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany
Dr. Johan Rockström developed the novel concept of “planetary boundaries” at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) as a health check for Earth. As ecosystems around the world increasingly face extreme and sometimes irreversible damage due to human activity, these nine planetary boundaries help define safe limits for the earth, from ozone depletion and air pollution to ocean acidification and climate change. In 2024, Rockström published the inaugural Planetary Boundary Health Check to assess the planet’s health using tipping-point models, Earth observation and AI data analysis, providing science-based guidance for policymakers, scientists and businesses. In 2023, Rockström authored a flagship paper published in Nature, “Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries,” quantifying these tipping points. Rockström is also Chief Scientist at the nonprofit Conservation International.
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Cofounder and CEO, Beewise, United States
Global bee populations are being decimated by pesticides, loss of habitat and climate change, threatening approximately 35% of the global agricultural production that depends on bees and other pollinators. That’s the challenge that Beewise is tackling with the BeeHome, a smart beehive that shields bees from deadly mites using a heating mechanism and by feeding them essential nutrients with a solar-powered robotic arm. According to company estimates, BeeHomes cut bee mortality rates by 70%, which has saved more than 200 million bees since 2019. Beewise, which is headquartered in San Ramon, CA has raised $170 million in funding and has over 150 employees in four countries. “My life’s mission is to protect bees and secure global food supplies against modern threats,” Beewise cofounder and CEO Saar Safra told Forbes.
Rebecca Hale / National Geographic
Founder and Executive Director of Pristine Seas, National Geographic Society, United States
Marine biologist Dr. Enric Sala founded Pristine Seas in 2008, a project of the nonprofit National Geographic Society that prioritizes ocean health through research, filmmaking and policy. This year, Sala’s nonprofit helped create two new Marine Protected Areas in Colombia and the Marshall Islands—the latter’s first marine sanctuary. In 2024, his research paper on bottom trawling was the first to show that the destructive industrial fishing method contributes to atmospheric carbon emissions, influencing Greece to ban the practice in its protected marine areas. Over the past 17 years, Pristine Seas has helped create 30 marine reserves covering nearly 7 million square kilometers. Sala has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers, 30 documentaries and three books. (In 2021, one of Sala’s research papers was retracted.) He is a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence.
Ben Gibbs / Office of Eric and Wendy Schmidt
Cofounder and President, Schmidt Family Foundation and Schmidt Ocean Institute, United States
Wendy Schmidt has helped direct more than $2 billion in philanthropy alongside her husband Eric (former Google CEO), with a focus on ocean exploration, science storytelling and systems-level climate infrastructure. As president of Schmidt Ocean Institute, she has enabled nearly 100 deep-sea expeditions—including a mission off Argentina this summer that uncovered dozens of new species and went viral, drawing over 19 million livestream views. Her broader portfolio spans biodiversity tracking, climate modeling and interdisciplinary research. “We can fund the work. We can show what’s possible,” Schmidt told Forbes. “But we can’t do this alone.” Amid a wave of federal pullbacks, Schmidt’s consistent support has become a vital resource for science communities around the world. (For more, see “Why Billionaire Wendy Schmidt Is ‘Doubling Down’ On Climate Science In The Age Of Trump.”)
Environment and Climate Change Minister, Brazil
Marina Silva says her biggest accomplishment since taking office as Brazil’s environment minister in 2023 has been fighting deforestation. Satellite data for her first year in office shows that deforestation in the Amazon saw a 31% year-on-year decrease, reaching the lowest annual rate in nine years, and 25% in the Cerrado, the country’s second largest biome. The success comes after Silva expanded the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA), the country’s environmental office, which recently secured more helicopters to better monitor the Amazon and combat illegal logging, wildcat mining and forest fires. Under Silva, IBAMA has cracked down on cattle ranchers and poachers by seizing control of illegally deforested land, increasing enforcement operations and boosting remote monitoring.
Founder and CEO, ReNew, India
Since founding ReNew in 2011, Sumant Sinha has turned the renewable energy company into a colossus with a portfolio of 17.4 gigawatts (GW) of green energy projects across more than 150 sites in India that supply roughly 10% of the country’s wind and solar power generation, as well as two solar manufacturing facilities. Its pipeline of projects should allow ReNew to double its renewable energy capacity over the next few years. ReNew said it brought in $1.13 billion in revenue in 2024 and has so far raised over $15 billion in equity and debt. Through its social programs, ReNew has electrified 1,200 rural schools, installed solar streetlights in remote regions and supported over 12,000 women through climate entrepreneurship initiatives.
Founder and CEO, The Ocean Cleanup, Netherlands
Boyan Slat founded The Ocean Cleanup in 2013 with the goal of removing 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040. Since then, the Netherlands-based nonprofit has collected over 30 million kilograms of trash from aquatic ecosystems worldwide, including 11.5 million kilograms in 2024, a record year. The Ocean Cleanup has mostly focused on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gigantic collection of plastic pollution in the North Pacific Ocean, where it has deployed U-shaped floating barriers that span several kilometers to collect microplastics and abandoned fishing gear. In June 2025, The Ocean Cleanup launched a program to intercept ocean-bound plastic waste polluting rivers across 30 key cities in Asia and the Americas, including Panama City, Mumbai and Manila. The initiative aims to cut the amount of plastic waste that enters the oceans through rivers by one-third before the end of the decade. Slat is an alum of the 2016 Forbes 30 under 30 Europe list.
CEO, Rondo Energy, Spain
Eric Trusiewicz leads Rondo Energy, a startup that has developed thermal batteries that use renewable electricity to heat a brick-like material to temperatures of up to 1500°C. The batteries can convert the heat into steam or power for customers seeking to decarbonize their operations, such as textile makers and beverage producers. Rondo operates the world’s highest-temperature, highest-efficiency commercial energy storage system at Calgren Renewable Fuels in Pixley, California, which has a capacity of 2 megawatt hours. The company is expanding its heat battery manufacturing capacity at a Siam Cement Group (SCG) facility in Thailand from 2 gigawatt-hours per year (GWh/year) to 90 GWh/year. Last year, Rondo secured $88 million in funding for three battery projects that will provide clean power to heavy industries in Europe. “At Rondo, we’ve proven it can be done by delivering continuous, high-temperature heat that’s not only zero-carbon but cheaper than burning fossil fuels. That’s the future we’re building,” Trusiewicz told Forbes.
Founder and Executive Editor, The Outlaw Ocean Project, United States
The Outlaw Ocean Project is an investigative journalism nonprofit exposing environmental and human rights abuses on the high seas. Led by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina, its reporters have uncovered illegal fishing, oil dumping and forced labor aboard international fleets. For example, exposés on China’s global fishing fleet, published in 2023 and 2024, led to sanctions against seven companies; termination of contracts with seafood plants linked to forced labor; and, in January 2025, inspired the U.S. to launch a novel policy roadmap to address unregulated fishing in supply chains. The project co-publishes with more than 100 media outlets in dozens of languages.
President, European Commission, Belgium
Since Ursula von der Leyen took office in 2019, the EU has approved a comprehensive policy framework to advance the clean energy transition and reduce natural gas imports from Russia, including the European Green Deal (2019), the REPowerEU Plan (2022) and the Revised Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) (2023). In February 2025, she launched the Clean Industrial Deal to decarbonize the industrial sector and boost the clean energy supply chain by mobilizing $117 billion in investment. These policies have sparked a clean energy boom in the EU. Renewables generated almost half of the bloc’s electricity in 2024, up from 34% in 2019. By 2023, the EU had reduced its emissions by 37% from 1990 levels, putting its goal of reducing emissions by 55% by 2030 within reach. Von der Leyen ranked No. 1 on Forbes’ 2024 World’s Most Powerful Women list.
Founder and Design Principal, Turenscape, China
Dr. Kongjian Yu grew up in a rural farming village in southern China where monsoon rains were a blessing. But when he moved to Beijing, he saw how urbanization had buried wetlands and farmland in concrete, contributing to deadly floods. So, the landscape architect developed the Sponge City and Sponge Planet concepts, which advocate for cities to use permeable surfaces, landscaping and green spaces to absorb and filter water. Yu has implemented more than 1,000 Sponge City projects in 250 cities globally through the architecture firm he founded in 1999, Turenscape. The private firm, which Yu says had $20 million in revenue in 2024, provides consulting, supervises construction and drafts designs for urban landscapes around the world. In 2023, Yu led an award-winning project in Bangkok’s Benjakitti Forest Park to transform a 52-hectare hazardous site into a sponge system that soaks up 500,000 m³ of stormwater while lowering the air temperature and protecting local species. “I want this to become a model that can be amplified and applied by everyone,” Yu told Forbes. (For more, see “Meet The Landscape Architect Behind China’s Sponge Cities.”)
Chairman, LONGi Green Energy Technology, China
Baoshen Zhong heads LONGi, the world’s largest manufacturer of solar wafers, a key component of solar panels, with factories in three countries. It has manufactured 414 gigawatts (GW) of PV panels since its founding in 2000, representing 27% of all the solar capacity installed worldwide. After rapid growth in recent years, LONGi’s revenue hit $11.6 billion in 2024. LONGi has invested heavily in R&D to make solar cells more efficient, contributing to a 90% decrease in panel costs since the early 2010s. LONGi estimates it reduced manufacturing and energy emissions by 37% in 2024, sourcing nearly half of its electricity from clean sources through power purchase agreements and its own solar facilities, and supply chain emissions by 26%.
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