At Climate Week, technology is still a solution to climate change

New York City—C&EN reporters Craig Bettenhausen, Ana Georgescu, and Aayushi Pratap have been on the move across New York City this week for Climate Week NYC, an annual decentralized conference organized by the nonprofit Climate Group that featured more than 1,500 events this year. In some circles, investing in technology to reverse climate change is a lost cause, but not so at Climate Week. Here’s a sample of what our reporters saw and learned.

Monday

Craig: I got into New York City at noon and went straight to Climate Group’s Hub Live event.

It seemed premature to pick out a theme for a week of reporting in the first couple of hours, but resilience and its synonyms came up over and over again from the stage. Speakers from across the private, public, and nonprofit worlds agreed that the efforts worth backing in this time of climate change are those that can deliver risk-reducing benefits such as grid reliability, stable supply chains, and lower costs.

Less consensus was apparent on where that emphasis leaves efforts to actually minimize climate change. Some at the conference relegated it to the role of a secondary benefit, while others treated it as a core motivation in need of a more compelling business case. “We’ve got to change the narrative; we’ve got to be talking about why it makes energy more affordable, more available, and safer,” said Mindy Lubber, CEO of the sustainability nonprofit Ceres.

I stepped out to a nearby coffee shop called the Jolly Goat to meet with Marta Sjögren, co-CEO of the low-carbon cement start-up Paebbl. Coming off a series A funding round in the fall of 2024, the firm has already presold the entire 100,000-metric-ton-per-year output of its first commercial-scale plant before even announcing the site location, she said.

The firm will reach cost parity with conventional cement production around 2030, when European carbon emission limits and taxes are taken into account, Sjögren said, and that region is the firm’s focus for now. In the US, she said, the business conversations she’s having hinge on supply chain stability. Like oil, gas, and chemicals, cement materials have been disrupted by the war in Iran and the other global challenges to shipping in recent years.

Back at the Climate Group event, speakers from governments including Iceland, France, and Mexico brought up the opportunity their nations see to lead on cleantech. The future of manufacturing is energy-efficient technology that avoids reliance on unstable or unfriendly regions, Iceland prime minister Kristrún Frostadóttir said. Her country is well positioned to develop geothermal technology, including emerging versions that drill deeper to tap into superhot rock, she said. Nations that invest in cleantech now, Frostadóttir said, see the first benefits, and their citizens become the experts the world turns to.

Happy hours abound at Climate Week, and I picked two. One was the Carbon Removal Community Reception, where folks talked about removal techniques like direct air capture, reforestation, and biochar. I picked the second because the eye-catching name, “F*ck Doom Hour,” suggested an optimistic streak. After chatting on a rooftop about biological pesticide alternatives and the likelihood of new nuclear technology’s making an impact on the carbon footprint of chemical manufacturing, I hopped on a commuter train to my hotel, which was in Newark, New Jersey, because rooms in New York City proper were $550 or more per night.

Aayushi: It was clear on Monday that fall had officially arrived in New York City. So had delegations from across the world in town for the United Nations General Assembly, which was also happening. Men in black suits and ties, looking like they were straight out of a Federal Bureau of Investigation movie, could be seen guarding cars with tinted windows.

I hopped on the 1 train and headed to an event in the Chelsea neighborhood about climate solutions in Asia. Of the many events that were ongoing that morning, I picked this one for its intriguing description. “Asia is not simply a place where climate solutions need to be deployed. It is increasingly a place where they are being built,” it said.

The folks there discussed their victories as well as the challenges of deploying climate solutions in their countries. Among them was Gaurav Godhwani, cofounder and CEO of an Indian company called CivicDataLab. He discussed how his firm is deploying an artificial intelligence–based platform that uses satellite images to predict the impact of climate disasters.

Tuesday

Craig: I spent the morning at PlanetHAUS, a showcase of sustainable food, home, and personal care goods spread out over several floors of an event space in the Flatiron neighborhood. The place was packed with people and concepts, but one that stood out was a pain au chocolat made with a butter substitute thermochemically synthesized from captured carbon dioxide by the start-up Savor. Tasting it, you would never know it wasn’t conventional dairy.

Next up was the Cool House, a tech showcase and symposium on climate control and related technologies. At least part of the air-conditioning and refrigeration world is preparing to adopt refrigerants including propane and isobutane instead of the fluorochemicals in wide use today. It will be the fourth major chemical shift since the late 1990s in response to concerns first about ozone depletion, then global warming, and now the accumulation of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

From there, I went to a technology showcase put on by the cleantech accelerator Activate Fellowship. It more than filled a literal ballroom with early-stage chemistry entrepreneurs at booths pitching their start-ups to a crowd of investors and early adopters. The conversations showed a marked shift toward critical materials, energy security, and supply chain independence and away from climate change mitigation as an end unto itself.

I closed my day at Art into Action, an exhibit at the nearby Chart gallery that reflected on the climate and public health impacts of industrial methane leaks. The energy transition arts collective Light Hill Collaborative used data from methane-spotting satellites and cameras to name a top US methane-leaking corporation for every month of 2025, and it commissioned an original artwork for each. Small and midsize oil and gas companies led the pack, but the energy majors TotalEnergies and Occidental Petroleum were also represented on the gallery walls.

Aayushi: I spent Tuesday morning huddled in my apartment to listen to speeches by world leaders, including US president Donald J. Trump, at the UN General Assembly, which was happening live across town. Just days after tech leaders had raised the alarm on unchecked progress of AI, Trump dismissed their concerns. “The very same people who said we’ll all be dead in 12 years because of global warming—a name since reborn to climate change because the planet was cooling, not warming—and nobody was dead,” he said.

One thing I have learned after nearly 7 years of living in Manhattan is that one should go to Times Square only if one must. And Tuesday evening I felt I must, so I made my way to a hotel near Times Square to attend a session called “The Hormuz Effect: Climate Action and Energy Security after the Iran War.”

A panel of experts discussed how the war has exposed the vulnerabilities of the global energy supply chain. Zainab Usman, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, said that at least in the short term, the war will lead to diminished clean energy sources. Still unclear is whether the war will force nations to ramp up renewable energy capacity in the long term.

Ana: As the junior reporter at Climate Week, I gave myself a couple of themes to pursue—batteries and critical minerals—rather than attempt to be everywhere at once.

I hit the ground on Tuesday by attending a panel on community rights related to mineral supply security. It was a useful counterpoint to the conversations that took place the rest of the day about how the US can build the supply chains needed for an increasingly electrified economy.

I then headed uptown to the NYC Battery Symposium. The afternoon included a conversation with Audrey Robertson, assistant secretary of energy, leading the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation at the US Department of Energy (DOE), followed by an innovator showcase and a panel on battery energy storage amid growing power demand.

Robertson put the supply chain problem in the context of defense procurement: the US Department of Defense mandated that US war fighters be equipped with US-based supplies, she said, “but it’s hard because we don’t have the supply chain right now.”

She talked enthusiastically about PROSPECT—Providing Opportunities for Specialized Education in Critical Technologies—a new DOE workforce initiative intended to train people across the supply chain for critical minerals.

Robertson also emphasized that building a domestic supply chain doesn’t necessarily mean working only with US companies. She pointed to a recent award to a non-US company building cobalt-processing capacity in the US, which she described as an economic investment in the American system. She could have been referring to Jervois Global, an Australian firm that the DOE is awarding $100 million to help build a cobalt refinery in the US.

Wednesday

Aayushi: A quick breakfast, and I was off to Midtown to attend a panel on India as a new hub for green AI data centers. Indian government officials highlighted that the country has one of the lowest global rates for renewable electricity from the wind and sun, making it a lucrative destination for big tech companies to set up data centers.

But they also acknowledged the challenges, one of which is “What happens when the sun sets?” India has limited capacity to store renewable energy generated during the day, and data centers need energy around the clock. The officials highlighted the need to ramp up investments in batteries for energy storage.

Meanwhile, panelist Eric Gibbs from the Corporate Energy Buyers Association, a trade association that helps companies buy carbon-free energy, reminded the Indian leaders to get “social approval” and engage with the local community before setting up data centers. “India has the opportunity to learn from the mistakes that were made in the US,” he said.

Ana: After catching a couple of panels on sustainability and climate storytelling, I headed to the Swiss ClimateTech Showcase, which brought together eight Swiss start-ups from the Climate Collider program for 3 min pitches in front of US-based experts and investors. They made the case that they are ready for the US market.

Verretex, for example, is turning waste glass fibers from end-of-life composites into recycled textiles and compounds that can replace virgin materials. Separatic is developing porous graphene membranes for gas separation. Neology is working on ammonia-based systems for hydrogen supply and clean power generation.

Verretex ultimately won the jury prize, while Rematter, which develops prefabricated earth-and-timber floor systems as a lower-carbon alternative to concrete, came in second and was voted the audience favorite.

Later, I headed uptown to Columbia University’s Columbia Electrochemical Energy Center for its fall symposium, “Mines and Feedstocks to Grids, Chemicals, and Materials.” Speakers discussed how to make electrochemistry work at scale, from critical-mineral feedstocks through chemicals and materials, all the way to the electric grid.

Craig: Celebrity is overrated, but the chance to see Al Roker interview Al Gore was too good to pass up Wednesday morning. It’s been 20 years since the former vice president released An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary that raised public consciousness of climate change more than any other single piece of media.

Gore said he knew that fossil fuel interests would fight his message just like tobacco companies resisted the evidence that cigarettes cause cancer. “The resistance has been more durable and sustained than I anticipated,” he said. On a positive note, he said, the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ is not as high as his famous hockey-stick graph projected it would be by now.

“I see momentum building all around the world,” Gore said. “We are going to win this. The remaining question is whether we will win it in time to avoid the negative tipping points.”

After a sightseeing break, I went to the Carbontech Summit hosted by Columbia University’s Carbontech Development Initiative and New York University’s Carbon to Value Initiative, two start-up accelerators focused on the use of CO₂ as a feedstock for chemicals and fuels.

Despite political and economic headwinds, some firms in the space are making progress. New York City–based Aircela has sold two of its modular units that make gasoline on-site from atmospheric carbon and electricity using the methanol-to-gas chemical pathway. Meanwhile, Airco, one of C&EN’s 10 Start-Ups to Watch in 2022, is developing field-deployable fuel synthesis units for the US military.

Last up for the day was an investor-entrepreneur networking event at the tech incubator SOSV, which started with a pitch slam that packed 30 start-ups into 12½ min. A few founders were happy to practice their longer pitch on a reporter, but the belles of that ball were the 25 or so venture capital investors wandering around. So I hopped on the train back to New Jersey and watched Spider-Noir in my hotel room to unwind.

Ana Georgescu covers a wide range of topics in Physical Sciences. She is also a frequent contributor to the Business desk and is probably working on a short video project at any given time.