MONTREAL, Canada — At a time when the world is searching for pathways to turn climate ambition into tangible results, the Climate Solutions Prize (CSP) is proving that one of the greatest opportunities may lie in identifying and scaling the innovators already building solutions.
During the 2026 Climate Solutions Prize Festival in Montréal, more than $1 million in awards was distributed to researchers and startups developing technologies across energy systems, biotechnology, nature-based solutions, resource efficiency, and industrial decarbonization. The event brought together approximately 1,500 participants from more than 20 countries and saw a 30 percent increase in applications over the previous year, underscoring growing momentum behind climate innovation and entrepreneurship.
Since its launch in 2020, the Climate Solutions Prize has distributed more than $12 million to innovators and has helped unlock more than $120 million in follow-on investment for prize recipients—a remarkable multiplier effect that demonstrates how catalytic capital can accelerate climate solutions.
Building the Ecosystem Climate Innovation Needs
Behind the rapid growth of the Climate Solutions Prize is the leadership of Galith Levy, who has positioned CSP as far more than an annual competition.
Under Levy’s leadership, the organization has evolved into a platform that intentionally connects researchers, entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, philanthropists, and industry leaders around a shared mission: moving climate solutions from laboratories and pilot projects into real-world deployment.
“The Climate Solutions Prize is more than a competition; it is a catalyst for the ecosystem we need to build to survive and thrive,” Levy said when announcing the expansion of the festival into seven innovation tracks.
That philosophy has increasingly defined the organization’s success.
While many climate technologies struggle to navigate the so-called “valley of death” between proof-of-concept and commercialization, CSP has built an ecosystem specifically designed to bridge that gap—providing not only financial support but also access to the relationships and credibility necessary for scaling transformative solutions.
Climate Leadership Beyond Invention
The Climate Solutions Prize reflects a broader realization emerging across governments and investment communities: the world does not merely need more climate ideas—it needs better systems for scaling the solutions that already exist.
Increasingly, climate technologies are being viewed not solely as environmental interventions but as engines of economic competitiveness, industrial transformation, and national resilience.
By expanding into new sectors including Nature and Biotechnologies, Resource Technologies, and Energy and Power, CSP is signaling that climate action will require innovation across every segment of the economy.
The model pioneered by CSP offers an important lesson for policymakers worldwide. Accelerating climate progress requires more than setting targets. It requires building ecosystems that can identify promising ideas early, surround them with capital and strategic partnerships, and create pathways toward commercialization and deployment.
A Blueprint for Turning Innovation into Action
As governments prepare for the next phase of implementing climate and biodiversity commitments, initiatives like the Climate Solutions Prize demonstrate that innovation ecosystems can become powerful engines for systemic change.
Under Galith Levy’s leadership, the Climate Solutions Prize has become a convening platform where scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, and decision-makers gather not simply to discuss the future, but to actively build it.
In a world often overwhelmed by the scale of the climate crisis, Montréal’s Climate Solutions Prize Festival offered a different narrative: one of optimism, collaboration, and solutions already in motion.
The challenge ahead is not whether the world possesses the ingenuity to address climate change.
The challenge is whether it can create enough platforms like the Climate Solutions Prize to help those solutions reach the scale the planet now demands.
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