Nine Young Innovators Are Rethinking Climate Tech's Toughest Problems

Every year, a small group of researchers under 35 quietly reshapes how we think about the climate crisis. Not through grand pronouncements, but through unglamorous, technical work: better furnaces, smarter software, cleaner refrigerants. This year, MIT Technology Review's annual Innovators Under 35 list includes nine people working across climate and energy, drawn from countries around the world. Their projects, taken together, offer a useful snapshot of where climate technology actually stands right now, not where headlines say it stands.

That distinction matters. Public conversation about climate tech tends to swing between two extremes: either salvation is just around the corner, or nothing works and we're doomed. The truth, as usual, is messier and more interesting. These nine innovators are grinding away at real bottlenecks, the kind that don't make for viral tweets but that determine whether clean technology actually scales.

Take artificial intelligence. It's become almost impossible to discuss modern technology without it, and climate work is no exception. Jae-Won Chung built software that measures how much energy open-source AI models actually consume, hoping the industry can better understand and shrink its own footprint. Think of it like a nutrition label for algorithms: before you can cut calories, you need to know what's in the meal. His research connects directly to concerns raised in earlier reporting on AI's ballooning energy demands, a problem that's only grown more urgent as data centers multiply.

But AI cuts both ways here, and that's an important nuance. Jing Wei is using machine learning to stitch together pollution data from satellites and weather stations, the way a skilled editor fills gaps in a rough draft, so scientists get a clearer, more complete picture of air quality where it's needed most. Zhonghua Zheng, meanwhile, built AI climate models specifically tuned for cities, a longstanding weak spot in traditional forecasting. Urban areas have their own heat patterns, their own concrete-and-asphalt quirks, and generic models have historically struggled to capture them.

The Materials Behind the Machines

Underneath every electric vehicle and every grid-scale battery sits a supply chain most people never think about. Lithium is the obvious example. It powers the batteries that make electrification possible, and yet experts warn we could face lithium shortages as soon as this decade. Copper faces similar pressure. These aren't abstract worries. If the materials aren't there, the clean energy transition simply stalls, regardless of how good our technology gets.

Brine is currently the cheapest way to extract lithium, but the process can take months and does real damage to local ecosystems, often in fragile desert regions. Mohammad Alkhadra cofounded Lithios, a startup working to pull lithium from brine faster and with less environmental cost. Hardrock ore is the more common source globally, though it's pricier to process. Benjamin Mowbray cofounded Rock Zero to tackle that side of the equation, developing new extraction methods for ore-based lithium.

These two approaches complement each other rather than compete, which is worth noting. A cleaner, faster lithium supply chain, whether from brine or rock, reduces the odds that battery scarcity becomes the thing that slows down grid storage and EV adoption just as demand is accelerating.

Beyond batteries, though, lie problems that get far less attention but carry outsized consequences. Heavy industry, particularly steel production, accounts for roughly 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. That's a staggering number for a sector most people rarely think about. Laureen Meroueh is working on a new kind of furnace that simplifies the chemistry behind steelmaking, aiming for a process that's both cleaner and cheaper, not a common combination in industrial decarbonization.

Plastics present a similar challenge. Most are made from fossil fuels, which means eliminating them from daily life isn't realistic, but replacing the worst offenders is. Joseph Nguthiru is developing a bioplastic packaging alternative made from an invasive weed, turning an ecological nuisance into a useful material. Diana Orembe is doing something comparable in aquaculture, converting food waste into fish feed. Both projects share a philosophy: don't just build something new, find value in what's already being wasted or wreaking havoc.

Then there's the refrigerant problem, which sounds mundane until you learn the numbers. Many refrigerants used in air conditioners and refrigerators are extraordinarily potent greenhouse gases, sometimes thousands of times more warming than carbon dioxide, pound for pound. Jinyoung Seo is developing solid refrigerants designed to eliminate the leakage that makes conventional systems so damaging. Devices built with these materials could cut energy consumption by 20% compared to standard technology, a meaningful gain given how much cooling demand is projected to grow as the planet warms.

Why It Matters

None of these nine projects will single-handedly solve the climate crisis, and none of these researchers would likely claim otherwise. What they represent instead is something more durable: a generation of scientists and entrepreneurs who understand that decarbonization isn't one big fix but thousands of smaller ones, stacked together. A better furnace here. A smarter algorithm there. A cleaner way to pull lithium from the ground. Each piece matters because the systems we rely on, energy, industry, agriculture, cooling, are enormous and interconnected, and progress in one area often depends on progress in several others happening at the same time.

For the public, this kind of granular innovation can be harder to get excited about than a single sweeping breakthrough. But it's also more trustworthy, precisely because it's grounded in specific, measurable problems rather than sweeping promises. If you want to know where climate tech is really heading, watching what young researchers choose to spend their years solving is as good a signal as any.