Jubilee Post News & Views
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Milan and Costa Rica are in the winners list for the Earthshot Prize, an environmental award created by Britain’s Prince William.
Costa Rica, an Indian organization creates fuel from agricultural waste and a coral farming group in the Bahamas. Earthshot Prize is a new global prize for the environment, designed to incentivise change and help to repair our planet over the next ten years.
The prize, a Nobel-like award founded by the Duke of Cambridge and renowned British naturalist David Attenborough, aims to inspire innovative solutions to the most pressing environmental challenges.
Each of the five winners walks away with £1 million and the promise of professional and technical support to scale up their innovations.
Costa Rica won for its scheme to pay local citizens to protect and restore rainforests and local eco-systems, a system that the prize committee credits for having already reversed decades of deforestation.
Indian organization Takachar’s innovation was a technology that attaches to tractors and reduces smoke emissions by up to 98% while converting the residue into new products. Coral Vita in the Bahamas won for its method of accelerating coral regrowth by growing it first on land and then replanting on depleted underwater reefs.
The entire city of Milan was recognized for Food Hubs approach to reducing food waste and distributing to the needy food that would be otherwise be wasted by restaurants and supermarkets. And a Thai, German and Italian group won for its AEM Electrolyser, a “plug and play” module that turns water into emissions-free green hydrogen.
Green hydrogen technology — which is powered by renewable sources — already exists, but this module is compact, allowing for as few as one electrolyzer unit or as many as 70 to be fitted within it. That makes it versatile and more accessible to lower-income countries and small businesses.
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The winners were announced at a glittering awards ceremony at London’s Alexandra Palace. “We are alive in the most consequential time in human history — the actions we choose or choose not to take in the next 10 years will determine the fate of the planet for the next thousand,” William said in a short film recorded in the London Eye for the awards ceremony.
Earlier this week, Prince William criticized the billionaire space race, arguing that the world’s greatest minds should be more focused on trying to repair the planet rather than traveling to space.
