For nearly three decades, the editorial and research teams at MIT Technology Review have scoured the globe to identify the most brilliant, disruptive, and forward-thinking minds of a generation. The publication’s annual "35 Innovators Under 35" list has historically served as a crystal ball for the technology sector, spotting breakthroughs in computing, biotechnology, and communications long before they entered the mainstream consciousness. Among these categories, the climate and energy sector has grown from a niche pursuit into one of the most heavily funded, fiercely contested, and urgently vital arenas of scientific research.
Following a rigorous, months-long evaluation process involving hundreds of nominations, interviews with industry experts, and deep-dive technical reviews, the publication unveiled its newest cohort. Within this year’s elite roster, nine individuals stand out specifically for their work in climate and energy. While each researcher and entrepreneur brings a distinct background and a hyper-focused solution to the table, analyzing their collective endeavors provides a panoramic view of where the global climate technology sector stands today—and, crucially, where it is heading over the next decade.
The prevailing consensus emerging from this year’s list is clear: the green transition is no longer just about swapping coal-fired power plants for wind turbines and electric cars. It is a total systems-level reinvention of global industry, touching everything from data center architecture and mineral extraction to heavy manufacturing, agriculture, and refrigeration.
Artificial Intelligence as a Dual-Edged Sword in Climate Strategy
It is virtually impossible to discuss modern technological innovation without confronting the massive footprint and towering promises of artificial intelligence. In the 2026 cohort, MIT Technology Review categorized innovators across four primary pillars: biotech, climate and energy, computing and robotics, and AI. Yet, a striking observation from the editorial board is that artificial intelligence has bled deeply into virtually every discipline, functioning both as a powerful catalyst for environmental problem-solving and as an unprecedented drain on global energy resources.
This duality is personified by innovators like Jae-Won Chung, whose work sits directly at the intersection of machine learning and power grids. As artificial intelligence models scale in complexity, their insatiable demand for electricity has sparked widespread concern among utility providers and environmental regulators. Recognizing that the industry cannot simply build its way out of the crisis with more generation capacity, Chung engineered specialized software designed to rigorously measure, analyze, and optimize the energy demands of open-source artificial intelligence models. By providing developers with granular data on power consumption, Chung’s work aims to establish accountability and drive efficiency standards across the broader tech sector, mitigating a footprint that major tech companies have struggled to rein in.
Conversely, artificial intelligence is also being deployed as an indispensable instrument to diagnose and model environmental threats that have historically eluded human observation. For instance, researcher Jing Wei has harnessed machine learning algorithms to bridge critical gaps in global pollution tracking. Environmental monitoring has traditionally suffered from fragmented data ecosystems, where satellite telemetry, localized weather stations, and ground-level sensors operate in silos. Wei’s system synthesizes these disparate data streams, creating high-resolution pollution maps that track environmental degradation with unprecedented accuracy.
Similarly, Zhonghua Zheng has taken aim at one of climatology’s most stubborn blind spots: the urban heat island effect and localized city climates. Traditional climate models operate on macro-scales, making them notoriously unreliable when predicting microclimates within dense metropolitan areas where concrete, asphalt, and anthropogenic heat dramatically alter local weather patterns. Zheng’s advanced AI-driven climate models provide city planners with localized forecasting tools, enabling municipalities to design climate-resilient infrastructure tailored to the specific thermal realities of urban landscapes.
The Looming Material Bottleneck: Securing Critical Minerals for the Clean Energy Transition
As global economies accelerate their departure from fossil fuels, a profound structural vulnerability is coming to light: the extreme reliance of clean technologies on a finite suite of critical minerals. The green transition is, at its core, a material transition. Electric vehicles, utility-scale battery storage facilities, wind turbine generators, and transmission grids require staggering volumes of metals, chief among them lithium and copper.
Market analysts and international energy agencies have repeatedly warned that without sweeping innovations in extraction and processing, the world faces severe supply crunches before the end of the current decade. Lithium-ion batteries, which currently anchor both the electric mobility revolution and grid-scale renewable storage, are particularly exposed.
Traditionally, the most cost-effective method for acquiring lithium involves extracting it from underground brine pools through massive evaporation ponds—a process that is notoriously water-intensive, environmentally destructive, and notoriously slow, often taking many months to yield results. To bypass these limitations, Mohammad Alkhadra co-founded and serves as CEO of Lithios, a startup pioneering electrochemical extraction technologies designed to pull lithium from brines rapidly and with a fraction of the environmental footprint.
At the same time, hardrock ore represents the largest global reserve of lithium, yet extracting the metal from rock has historically been far more expensive and energy-intensive than processing brine. Recognizing this hurdle, Benjamin Mowbray co-founded Rock Zero, serving as its Chief Technology Officer. Mowbray’s team is developing novel chemical and mechanical processes to extract lithium from hardrock ore more economically, opening up alternative supply chains that can buffer the global market against regional shortages.
Beyond lithium, industry observers emphasize that copper, nickel, and cobalt will require similar technological interventions if supply chains are to keep pace with decarbonization targets set by the Paris Agreement and national mandates.
Rewiring Heavy Industry, Materials, and Supply Chains
Reaching global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century requires more than decarbonizing the electrical grid and passenger transportation sectors. Heavy industries and foundational materials—sectors that are historically difficult to abate—account for a massive share of global emissions. Addressing the climate crisis demands out-of-the-box thinking that extends far beyond conventional clean tech boundaries.
Consider the steel industry, which alone accounts for approximately 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions due to its reliance on carbon-intensive blast furnaces and coking coal. Laureen Meroueh is tackling this monumental challenge by engineering cleaner, more economical methods of steel production. By redesigning the industrial furnace architecture and simplifying the complex chemical reduction processes required to convert iron ore into structural steel, Meroueh’s work points toward a viable pathway for heavy manufacturing to shed its carbon shackles without crippling profitability.
Plastics present another pervasive challenge. Ubiquitous, durable, and almost entirely derived from petrochemicals, traditional plastics are woven into the fabric of modern commerce. Developing sustainable alternatives without sacrificing performance is a holy grail of materials science. Joseph Nguthiru has made significant strides in this domain by developing a novel bioplastic derived from invasive aquatic weeds. By harvesting problematic vegetation that chokes waterways and converting it into biodegradable packaging material, Nguthiru’s innovation solves two distinct environmental problems simultaneously.
In a similar spirit of circular-economy resourcefulness, Diana Orembe is transforming food waste streams into high-value agricultural inputs. Orembe’s enterprise repurposes organic waste to manufacture sustainable aquaculture feed, reducing the environmental pressures traditionally associated with fish farming, such as overfishing wild forage fish stocks and land-use conflicts for crop-based feeds.
Even residential and commercial comfort systems are undergoing a quiet revolution. Traditional heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems rely on synthetic refrigerants—such as hydrofluorocarbons—which possess global warming potentials thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide if leaked into the atmosphere. Jinyoung Seo is addressing this overlooked climate driver by developing advanced solid-state refrigerants. These innovative materials eliminate the risk of gaseous leaks entirely while simultaneously slashing device energy consumption by up to 20% compared to conventional vapor-compression technology.
Chronology and Institutional Context
The trajectory of the MIT Technology Review’s Innovators Under 35 list mirrors the maturation of the climate tech sector itself. In the wake of the 2015 Paris Agreement, early cohorts heavily featured academic researchers attempting to prove the fundamental physics of solar cells, advanced battery chemistries, and early-stage wind mechanics. By 2020, the focus had perceptibly shifted toward commercialization, scaling, and software optimization, driven by venture capital inflows and aggressive corporate net-zero pledges.
By 2026, the mandate has evolved from mere invention to systems integration and industrial hardening. The inclusion of software engineers optimizing AI energy footprints alongside chemical engineers rethinking steel furnaces illustrates an industry maturing past the low-hanging fruit. Policymakers, venture capitalists, and industry incumbents are increasingly realizing that climate technology is not a standalone vertical, but an operational layer that must be woven into every facet of the global economy.
Broader Implications and Outlook
The collective portrait painted by the nine climate and energy innovators on this year’s roster is one of pragmatic urgency coupled with profound ingenuity. The sheer breadth of their research—spanning electrochemical brine processing, AI-driven urban climate forecasting, invasive-weed bioplastics, and solid-state cooling—demonstrates that the next phase of the green transition will be characterized by extreme diversification.
As these technologies transition from laboratory benches to commercial pilot plants and eventually into global markets, their success will depend heavily on supportive regulatory frameworks, sustained venture capital deployment, and the willingness of legacy industries to embrace radical transformation. While the hurdles facing the global climate architecture remain immense, the work of these young researchers offers a compelling blueprint for how human ingenuity continues to adapt to the defining challenge of the modern era.
