Prince William announces 15 Finalists for inaugural year of the £50 million Earthshot Prize
17.9.2021 20:01:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
The Earthshot Prize announces today its first-ever shortlist of 15 Finalists, each with a chance of winning £1million to support their innovative environmental solutions to the greatest challenges facing the planet.
Prince William said: "Over half a century ago, President Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’ programme united millions of people around the goal of reaching the moon. Inspired by this, The Earthshot Prize aims to mobilise collective action around our unique ability to innovate, problem solve and repair our planet.
“I am honoured to introduce the 15 innovators, leaders, and visionaries who are the first ever Finalists for The Earthshot Prize. They are working with the urgency required in this decisive decade for life on Earth and will inspire all of us with their optimism in our ability to rise to the greatest challenges in human history.”
Launched by Prince William and The Royal Foundation in October 2020, The Earthshot Prize is the most prestigious global environment prize in history. Like President John F. Kennedy’s ‘Moonshot’ did almost 60 years ago, the Prize aims to unleash an unprecedented wave of innovation and leadership to tackle our greatest environmental challenges. The Earthshot Prize will be awarded every year for the next decade, discovering a total of 50 Winners.
Five of these 15 Finalists will be awarded The Earthshot Prize and will win £1million in Prize funding for the best solutions of the five Earthshot goals: Protect and Restore Nature; Clean our Air; Revive our Oceans; Build a Waste-free World; and Fix our Climate. The Winners will be announced during an awards ceremony on 17th October from London’s Alexandra Palace, broadcast in the UK on BBC One and globally on Discovery+.
The Earthshot Prize Finalists for 2021 are:
Protect and Restore Nature:
- Pole Pole Foundation, Democratic Republic of Congo
An inspiring community-led model of conservation that protects gorillas and local livelihoods.
- The Republic of Costa Rica
A pioneering scheme paying local citizens to restore natural ecosystems that has led to a revival of the rainforest.
- Restor, Switzerland
A ground-breaking online platform connecting and empowering local conservation projects.
Clean our Air:
- The Blue Map App, China
China’s first public environmental database enabling citizens to hold polluters to account.
- Takachar, India
A pioneering technology to create profitable products from agricultural waste and put a stop to the burning of crops.
- Vinisha Umashankar, India
A 14-year-old innovator and activist who has designed a solar-powered ironing cart with the potential to improve air quality across India.
Revive our Oceans:
- Coral Vita, Bahamas
A truly cutting-edge breakthrough in coral farming that can restore our world’s dying coral reefs.
- Living Seawalls, Australia
Innovative and replicable seawall panels bringing marine life back to coastal sea defences.
- Pristine Seas, USA
An unprecedented global conservation programme protecting 6.5 million square km of the world’s ocean.
Build a Waste-Free World:
- The City of Milan Food Waste Hubs, Italy
A city-wide initiative that has dramatically cut waste while tackling hunger.
- Sanergy, Kenya
A circular sanitation solution that converts human waste into safe products for local farmers.
- WOTA BOX, Japan
A tiny water treatment plant that turns 98% of wastewater into clean water.
Fix our Climate:
- AEM Electrolyser, Thailand/Germany/Italy
An ingenious green hydrogen technology developed to transform how we power our homes and buildings.
- Reeddi Capsules, Nigeria
Solar-powered energy capsules making electricity affordable and accessible in energy-poor communities.
- SOLbazaar, Bangladesh
The world’s first peer-to-peer energy exchange network in a country on the front-line of climate change.
All 15 Finalists will receive support from The Earthshot Prize Global Alliance Members, an unprecedented network of global businesses, who will help scale their solutions for even greater impact.
Of these 15 Finalists, the five Winners will be selected by The Earthshot Prize Council, a diverse team of influential individuals which includes: HRH Prince William, Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of Jordan, Sir David Attenborough, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Indra Nooyi, Shakira Mebarak, Christiana Figueres, Luisa Neubauer, Cate Blanchett, Yao Ming, Daniel Alves Da Silva, Ernest Gibson, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, Jack Ma, and Naoko Yamazaki.
In the run-up to the prize-giving ceremony on 17 October, BBC and Discovery will release a 5-part documentary series THE EARTHSHOT PRIZE: REPAIRING OUR PLANET, featuring Earthshot Prize Council Members including Prince William, Shakira Mebarak, Daniel Alves Da Silva and Sir David Attenborough.
For more information about the Finalists and The Earthshot Prize, visit: www.earthshotprize.org, email Claire Straw: TEPmedia@freuds.com, download media pack here.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210917005454/en/
Contact information
Claire Straw:
TEPmedia@freuds.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
New Research Reveals the Next Wealth Management Divide: AI Rewards Firms Built to Scale10.6.2026 13:34:00 EEST | Press release
The next competitive divide in banking, wealth and asset management will not be defined by innovation alone, but by firms’ ability to scale it profitably. That is the central finding of new research that Objectway, a global wealthtech partner for banking, wealth and asset management firms, conducted in collaboration with FT Longitude, a specialist provider of thought leadership and research services. The report, Built to Scale, is based on a survey of 300 senior professionals across banks, wealth and asset managers in the UK, continental Europe and Canada. Altough digital transformation and AI adoption are advancing rapidly across the industry, many firms are struggling to translate investment into repeatable, profitable growth. The findings point to a market entering a new phase of competition, where scalable executionis becoming more important thaninnovation capacity alone. Reflecting on this shift, Luigi Marciano, Founder and Group CEO of Objectway, commented: “For years, the indust
From Cutting-Edge Research to Industry: Focused Energy Plans Spin-Off of Sourcelight10.6.2026 12:38:00 EEST | Press release
Following its successful USD 240 million financing round, Focused Energy is continuing to systematically advance the industrialization of laser fusion as its core business. At the same time, the company plans to consolidate its activities in the field of laser-driven radiation sources into an independent entity under the name Sourcelight. With this move, Focused Energy is laying the groundwork for the industrial transfer of selected technological building blocks emerging from its laser fusion development. The spin-off demonstrates how cutting-edge research can give rise to new industry: scientific excellence is translated into industrial applications with strong value creation and growth potential. Sourcelight is intended to bring the LDRS (Laser-Driven Radiation Sources) technology developed by Focused Energy into targeted industrial applications. The technology combines laser-driven high-energy X-rays and neutrons in a single system. This enables not only high-resolution imaging, but
Cosylab and Heron Neutron Medical Corp. Sign Letter of Intent to Advance Global Deployment of Accelerator-Based BNCT Systems10.6.2026 12:30:00 EEST | Press release
Cosylab and Heron Neutron Medical Corp. announced today, 10 June 2026, the signing of a Letter of Intent to establish a strategic framework for joint market development to support the global deployment of Accelerator-Based Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (AB-BNCT) systems. The collaboration aims to accelerate the development and integration of sophisticated software solutions for use with AB-BNCT while strengthening AB-BNCT's international market access and business development. By combining Cosylab's proven expertise in mission-critical software and complex system integration with Heron's end-to-end BNCT platforms, the partnership aims to drive broader global clinical adoption of this highly targeted cancer treatment modality. "AB-BNCT is emerging as one of the most promising approaches for treating difficult-to-treat and recurrent cancers," said Mark Pleško, Chief Executive Officer of Cosylab. "This collaboration reinforces our strategic focus on advancing radiation therapy technologie
GlobalFoundries and Qualinx Demonstrate First European Sovereign Manufacturing Flow for Security‑Critical Semiconductors10.6.2026 12:25:00 EEST | Press release
GlobalFoundries (GF) and Qualinx today announced the successful completion of the first fully European-based, end-to-end semiconductor manufacturing flow at GlobalFoundries’ Dresden fab on its FDX technology. The milestone demonstrates that security-critical chips for aerospace, defence and critical infrastructure can be designed, manufactured and delivered entirely within Europe. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260610196220/en/ In this partnership, Qualinx served as the launch customer with a sophisticated GNSS SoC design for secure Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) applications. The QLX3xx design targets sovereign GNSS-based PNT solutions for aerospace, defence and critical infrastructures—such as resilient timing and synchronization networks and highly integrated, ultra-low-power GNSS receivers at the connected edge. GF and Qualinx Set a Benchmark for GF’s European Sovereign Manufacturing co-funded b
LTM Introduces BlueVerse™ Currency to Enable Outcome-Based Pricing in the Agentic AI Era10.6.2026 11:30:00 EEST | Press release
LTM, the Business Creativity partner to the world’s largest enterprises, today introduced BlueVerse™ Currency, an AI-linked commercial model that prices enterprise work by outcomes rather than effort consumed as enterprises scale agentic AI across core processes. BlueVerse Currency brings together the full BlueVerse stack—People (expertise on demand), Accelerators (reusable assets that speed delivery), Agents (autonomous AI workforce), Platforms (orchestration layer to scale delivery), and Tokens (compute and model usage)—into a single commercial construct. It introduces outcome-linked pricing tied to measurable business results, enabling shared productivity gains so clients can capture AI-driven efficiency value. The model also supports fungible resourcing, enabling reallocation mid-contract to evolving priorities, and faster reinvestment, with savings redirected into innovation. It is underpinned by a hybrid structure with fixed and variable pricing components, supported by use-case–
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom