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Selection of our climate response challenge PRIZES
We have run a series of challenge prizes over the past decade to support climate response (in addition to the Climate Smart Cities Challenge described in the previous section). For further details on our catalogue of past and current challenges visit challengeworks.org.
Big Green Challenge
The £1 million Big Green Challenge sought to stimulate and support radical new community-led responses to climate change in the UK. The prize was awarded based on evidence of reduced levels of CO2 and community engagement plus potential for further impact. The challenge revealed some notable innovations including new and more effective ways of delivering home energy checks; innovative use of behaviour change tools (such as pledges); entirely new measures to influence energy behaviour (e.g. a voluntary consumption limit); and new legal, financial and governance structures to support community ownership of renewable energy. The ten finalists cut CO2 emissions by at least 1,770 – 2,059 tonnes, and the winners reduced emissions by up to 46%.
Data Driven Farming Prize
The $3M Data Driven Farming Prize, funded by USAID and Feed the Future, challenged innovators to develop tools and approaches that source, analyse and translate data into actionable, timely and context-specific information for smallholder farmers to improve value from agricultural productivity in Nepal. International teams of
The £100,000 Dynamic Demand Challenge Prize, run in partnership with the National Physical Laboratory’s Centre for Carbon Measurement, aimed to stimulate new products, technologies or services using data to achieve reduced carbon emissions by shifting energy demand to off peak times or through excess renewable generation. Five finalists were selected and spent eight months developing their prototypes. The winner was a innovators created technological solutions and engaged in a co-creation process to help farmers in Nepal use data and information more effectively to improve their productivity. Four winners from Nepal, Canada and Germany were announced in September 2017.
smart heating control product that performed scheduled demand shifts, reducing costs for homeowners and allowing electricity suppliers to better manage demand. The product implemented a time-shifting algorithm to subtly alter domestic heating schedules, modulating electricity demand according to the needs of electricity suppliers.
The Homegrown Innovation Challenge – a six-year, $33M (CAD) prize designed by Nesta Challenges and delivered by the Weston Family Foundation – aims to identify teams and support the development of tools and technologies that enable Canadian farmers and producers to sustainably and competitively grow berries out of season. By solving the interconnected challenges that currently prevent out-of-season production at scale, the Homegrown Innovation Challenge will catalyse a range of solutions relevant to a broad array of fruit and vegetable crops in Canada and around the world. The initiative launched in February 2022 and an innovation team that progresses through all three challenge phases (spark, shepherd and scale) and ultimately claims the final awards would receive up to $8 million CAD to develop and scale their innovation.
Mayor's Resilience Fund
The £1M Mayor’s Resilience Fund, run in partnership with the Mayor of London, incentivised innovators to address socially impactful issues facing London and help it to emerge stronger from COVID-19. Thirty-five finalists engaged in an intensive co-creation phase with local government problem-holders, and ultimately 10 organisations were announced as winners to implement solutions to climate resilience and other local challenges. The winner of the Air Quality Challenge created a disruptive and innovative gamechanger providing an intelligent solution for Lambeth and other London Boroughs to model and assess health impacts from air quality interventions. The winner of the Renewable Energy Challenge created a floating solar array in London’s Royal Docks that will provide clean renewable energy directly to London’s City Airport, as well as other local customers.
Ofwat Innovation Fund
Ofwat, the water regulator for England and Wales, has established a £200 million Innovation Fund to grow the water sector’s capacity to innovate and enable it to meet the evolving needs of customers, society and the environment. Delivered by Nesta Challenges, and supported by Arup and Isle Utilities, the Fund is using innovation competitions to support highly collaborative initiatives which address some of the biggest challenges facing the sector – from reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to building resilient infrastructure. In the first three competitions, 41 winners have been awarded more than £63 million, including an initiative to plant and restore seagrass meadows on the Essex and Suffolk coastlines to revitalise natural habitats and capture ‘blue carbon’; a scheme to turn ammonia produced from wastewater into green hydrogen gas; and a project to deliver the world’s first ‘water neutral’ housing developments.
We have explored a number of concepts for potential challenge prizes that could accelerate innovation in mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis. We’ve talked to experts, sketched out possible designs and scenarios, and workshopped many concepts.
In the following pages, we present six of these ideas, which serve as inspiration for what a range of large-scale challenge prizes could look like in response to the climate crisis. We are keen to explore these ideas, variations on them, and other concepts further with the help of other actors in this space. Our ultimate ambition is to launch a series of challenge prizes in the coming year that will spur transformational change, enabling us to rapidly develop, test and scale the innovations that our planet and our communities so urgently need.
