NY Climate Tech: Dec 2 - 9
Ecosystem happy hours, startup demos, conferences, unconferences, trivia, a Giving Tuesday shoutout to Governor's Island, and more events this month!
Hi all,
Welcome back! The next two weeks are packed with holiday parties and year-end gatherings. NY Climate Tech is running three events this month, come join us:
Tomorrow, Tuesday, get involved in next year’s programming and community at 🗽 NY Climate Tech: Holiday HH and 2025 Chats—we’ll be brainstorming ways to build the ecosystem in 2025.
Next Monday, Dec. 9th, hear from startups at the 🚀 Climate Tech Demo Night - NY Climate Week Edition - AWS, NYU, Streetlife Ventures
Next Tuesday, Dec 10, join us for the ✨ Climate Sparks Unconference! This evening event brings together climate professionals across sectors to share ideas, projects, and build meaningful connections. With our unique unconference format, attendees are the speakers - sharing 15-minute talks followed by group discussions.
Read on for a special edition newsletter on this Giving Tuesday, highlighting the work of one of our favorite non-profits in New York City and brought to you by Laura Fox. Please support Governors Island today by making a tax-deductible gift through the Governors Island website. Whether it’s $5, $50, or $500 – your contribution helps all of us build a resilient, sustainable, and equitable New York City!
And now, the rest!
The big event of December is 🤖 HackSummit Climate X Deep Tech on Thursday, Dec 12 at New Lab—register with CYBERWEEK40 for 40% off.
We covered a few highlights from this week in our last email, so here are our picks for the rest of the month:
Next Tuesday, tune into NYSERDA’s 📈 (Re)Insurance Showcase (online)
Next Wednesday, get hygge with the 🇩🇰 Climate Tech Catalyzer Startup Showcase
Next Thursday, go to Newlab for the 🤖 HackSummit Climate X Deep Tech
Next Saturday, Dec 14, head to the UWS for the ✍️ Climate Writing Club
Monday, Dec 16, celebrate in pride at the 🏳️🌈 Out in Climate - NYC Holiday Party
And as always, scroll down for the full list of events and opportunities this month. Skip over the opportunities? Be sure to check them out: we’ve got $20k for climate screenplays, fellowships, startup funding, and more.
Cheers,
Alec, Sonam, and the Climate Tech Cities team
This Week’s Events
🗽 NY Climate Tech: Holiday HH and 2025 Chats: Mon, Dec 2
⚖️ Sustainability, Justice & DEI: The Future of Business in the Trump 2.0 Era: Tue, Dec 3
🔌 Deploy24: Wed, Dec 4
🎄 MCJ New York: Holiday Happy Hour: Wed, Dec 4
🌦️ The Future of US Climate Adaptation & Resilience Under Trump 2.0: Wed, Dec 4
🥕 FoodHack New York City: The Future of Sustainable Flavor - Consumer Trends & Product Innovation: Wed, Dec 4
🥂 POP SoHo Soirée with Steven Donziger: Wed, Dec 4
⛈️ Fall 2024 Lecture in Climate Data Science: TIM HERMANS: Thu, Dec 5
🎴 Climate Fresk at Eat Offbeat (Chelsea Market): Thu, Dec 5
🔮 FMP Presents: Introduction to Backcasting: Fri, Dec 6
🎁 Sip and Shop: Sustainable Holiday Market: Sun, Dec 8
💸 Impact Investing: How do I actually vote with my dollar?: Sun, Dec 8
🚀 Climate Tech Demo Night - NY Climate Week Edition - AWS, NYU, Streetlife Ventures: Mon, Dec 9
Giving Tuesday: Governor’s Island
Governors Island is many things to many New Yorkers (and visitors alike). With its 120 acres of parkland and more than 3500 trees, it’s a natural green haven and escape from the city (and a biodiversity hub). It hosts generation-defining artists like Charles Gaines, Shantell Martin, and more in public installations that are free for all - and Sam Van Aken’s Open Orchard project can even be eaten by visitors, with its focus on reintroducing native fruit trees to New York City. It immerses hundreds of school groups from across the city on its teaching farm, Billion Oyster Project that’s restoring one billion oysters to New York Harbor, New York Harbour School that provides technical education for maritime trades, and more.
Plus, for those of us fighting the battle on climate, it’s New York City’s best (and most active) asset in that work. The island has set up ongoing climate piloting facilities through its Living Lab work and its inaugural pilot projects, including homegrown startups addressing critical issues in New York Harbor like Vycarb (which measures and mitigates carbon dioxide) and Cycleau (which treats wastewater) and local non-profits like RETI which is restoring local ecologies with floating aquatic gardens. The island has also partnered to build a $700M climate campus which will be a global leader on urban climate action and innovation.
The history of Governors Island is one where individuals have consistently had an outsized impact. If not for a committed group of individuals and urbanists, this urban gem and climate hub might have instead become… a casino, red-light district, Sponge-Bob-themed-hotel, or a prison (among the many wild proposals over the years).
So, I’m asking each of you to contribute this Giving Tuesday to building the future of Governors Island and its integral role for our climate community here in NYC.
Please support Governors Island today by making a tax-deductible gift through the Governors Island website. Whether it’s $5, $50, or $500 – your contribution helps all of us build a resilient, sustainable, and equitable New York City!
Thank you for your support on climate action in our city!
Laura Fox
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, Streetlife Ventures
Board of Directors, Governors Island Foundation
🌎 Climate Tech Cities and Streetlife Ventures Startup and Talent Platforms
Climate Tech Cities and Streetlife Ventures are launching new platforms to support climate founders, funders, and career transitioners! There is no shortage of great companies raising money for their groundbreaking ideas, great investors looking to support with capital, and great talent living the mantra that every job is a climate job. We can’t wait to hear from you!
Community Shoutouts
🤖 HackSummit Climate X Deep Tech: Dec 12
For the premier US edition, we’ll focus on an intimate and curated group of 300 participants to ensure an ideal breakdown across sector, stage, focus and seniority. In the room includes Stealth to Series B Climate Tech Founders, Partners and Principals behind some of the most active Funds, as well as Corporates, Banks and Asset Managers with a keen interest to collaborate with companies in this space.
⚡️ Renewables.org | Build solar where it does the most good.: Dec 15
Renewables.org is offering CTC subscribers $25 free to get started with their Global South solar investing nonprofit. When you back solar projects on Renewables.org, your funds help build the world’s highest carbon impact renewables across India and Africa. The best part is you get repaid to your Renewables.org account where you can choose to withdraw funds, or redeploy them for even more impact.
🌈 Queer Decarb Summit: Feb 18
Queer Decarbonization Summit: on February 18-19, 2025, join LGBTQ+ climate investors, corporate sustainability directors, and startup leaders across renewable energy, building decarbonization, and carbon removal. The program is interactive, including intros, asks/offers, and lightning talks instead of panels.
Opportunities
🚀 Scale For ClimateTech, Cohort 6 Application Survey: Nov 30
✍️ 2025 NRDC Climate Storytelling Fellowship | The Black List: Dec 5
🚀 Scale For ClimateTech, Cohort 6 Application: Nov 30
Scale For ClimateTech provides immersive training on manufacturing for climatetech hardware innovators, along with a team dedicated to making manufacturing easier — from mentors, experts in the field and product and packaging designers, to manufacturers, suppliers, and investors.
⚡️ NextEra Investments | Seed Competition: Dec 1
The 2025 NextEra Energy Investments Seed Competition offers up to $1M in seed capital for cutting-edge solutions in cybersecurity, data & AI, decarbonization, and energy transition.
👩🔬 Breakthrough Energy Fellows: Dec 2
As part of our end-to-end approach to accelerating innovation, BE has established the Breakthrough Energy Fellows (BE Fellows) program to support the world’s best and brightest innovators as they develop technologies to help the world get to a clean energy future.
🏝️ Climate Pilots at Governor's Island: Dec 5
The Trust for Governors Island offers unique opportunities for innovators to test early-stage climate products and services in a real-world environment. Selected piloting projects utilize Governors Island’s built, social, and natural environments to accelerate climate innovation, economic opportunity, and social impact in diverse urban communities.
✍️ 2025 NRDC Climate Storytelling Fellowship | The Black List: Dec 5
The Black List is thrilled to announce that it has partnered with NRDC’s (Natural Resources Defense Council) Rewrite the Future program, The Redford Center, The CAA Foundation, and NBCUniversal to launch the fourth annual NRDC Climate Storytelling Fellowship. The Fellowship will grant $20,000 each to three writers (or writing teams) to support revision of a feature screenplay or pilot that engages with climate change in a compelling way through events, actions, character, emotions, plot, and/or setting.
🚀 Newlab Founder Fellowship: Dec 6
Fellows will gain access to practical resources through hands-on workshops, connections to industry leaders, and personalized mentoring to help address their specific challenges. Each founder will also benefit from a year-long membership at Newlab Brooklyn and key connections to investors for fundraising support.
Upcoming Events
🍏 Green Apple Trivia: Tue, Dec 10
✨ Climate Sparks Unconference - December 2024: Tue, Dec 10
🥂 WRISE NYC Holiday Networking Happy Hour: Tue, Dec 10
🌳 Shape Your Climate Future: 2tonnes Workshop: Tue, Dec 10
📈 (Re)Insurance Showcase: Tue, Dec 10
🍻 Climate Pints Winter Gathering: Wed, Dec 11
🇩🇰 Climate Tech Catalyzer Startup Showcase: Wed, Dec 11
👩💻 Cocktail Reception for Sustainable Software: GreenIT, GenAI, and Governance: Wed, Dec 11
🍻 4WARD Global Climate & Sustainability Networking Meetups NYC: Thu, Dec 12
🤖 HackSummit Climate X Deep Tech: Thu, Dec 12
💨 2024 Windward Innovation Celebration: Thu, Dec 12
❄️ Snowless or Snowy Winters?: Unwrapping Climate Change: Fri, Dec 13
✍️ Climate Writing Club: Sat, Dec 14
🎨 Inner and Outer Transformations: The Climate Crisis By Olive Toran: Sun, Dec 15
🏳️🌈 Out in Climate - NYC Holiday Party: Mon, Dec 16
This Week in Depth
🗽 NY Climate Tech: Holiday HH and 2025 Chats
When: Tuesday, December 3 from 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Where: DLA Piper
We'll be hosting a casual holiday happy hour for the NY Climate Tech community to come together and discuss plans and programming for 2025. If you're interested in running an event, helping out, or getting more involved, this is for you! If you want to come see friends in the Climate community and have some thoughts on what to do next year—this is also for you!
⚖️ Sustainability, Justice & DEI: The Future of Business in the Trump 2.0 Era
When: Tuesday, December 3 · 1 - 2:30pm EST
Where: Online
As we look toward the second Donald Trump presidency, business leaders are strategizing on how — and if — they can advance sustainability efforts and continue to center justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Join Bard’s Graduate Programs in Sustainability for an honest conversation with leading experts from BSR, a global nonprofit organization dedicated to building a just and sustainable world.
🔌 Deploy24
When: December 4 & 5, 2024
Where: Washington, DC
Hosted by DOE, Deploy24 builds this private-public dialogue through a range of unique formats, from keynote addresses to rigorous, off-the-record workshops organized by scalable technology, all with an urgent focus on the immediate opportunities and challenges to accelerating our domestic energy transformation.
🎄 MCJ New York: Holiday Happy Hour
When: Little Rebel, New York, NY
Where: Wednesday, December 4 from 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM
It's hard to believe but we're almost through 2024. We're hosting one last gathering before the end of the year to come together as a community, reflect on our year of climate wins, and re-energize for the fight ahead. Come through, reconnect with old friends, make some new ones, and let's send off 2024 the only way we know how - together.
🌦️ The Future of US Climate Adaptation & Resilience Under Trump 2.0
When: Wednesday, December 4 from 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Where: Kobrick Coffee, New York, NY
Climate-related disasters will not go away just because the federal government refuses to accept their root causes. There is, and will continue to be, a need for policies, finance, and innovation to address climate impacts to communities and businesses, and to adapt to higher temperatures and more frequent weather extremes. Our panel of experts will address all these questions and more at this exclusive salon-style event at Kobrick Coffee.
🥕 FoodHack New York City: The Future of Sustainable Flavor - Consumer Trends & Product Innovation
When: Wednesday, December 4 from 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
Where: MOFAD, Brooklyn, NY
Join our meetup for entrepreneurs, professionals, investors and food enthusiasts to network and hear from food industry speakers. Whether you're just starting your food business, looking to connect with startups to invest in or want to network with other like-minded professionals - this event is for you. Additionally, you'll get free admission to the Museum of Food & Drink's FLAVOR exhibit!
🥂 POP SoHo Soirée with Steven Donziger
When: Wednesday, December 4 · 7 - 10:30pm EST
Where: SoHo, NYC
Join Planet Over Profit for a lovely evening of music, snacks, drinks, and words of inspiration from none other than movement titan Steven Donziger in SoHo. Location shared with ticket purchase and RSVP. The climate crisis is here. POP is fighting back. And it's working. But we need resources to do it.
⛈️ Fall 2024 Lecture in Climate Data Science: TIM HERMANS
When: Thursday, December 5 · 12pm EST
Where: Columbia Innovation Hub - Tang Family Hall, 2276 12th Avenue Room 202, New York, NY 10027
Projections of atmospherically driven changes in extreme storm surges are often based on small ensembles of climate model simulations because they are computed with computationally expensive hydrodynamic models. We investigated how well neural networks can reconstruct extreme storm surges when addressing the imbalance in the training data using the cost-sensitive learning approach in which samples with a lower density contribute to the training loss more.
🎴 Climate Fresk at Eat Offbeat (Chelsea Market)
When: Thursday, December 5 · 6:15 - 9:30pm EST
Where: Chelsea Market, 75 9th Avenue, New York, NY 10011
Want to help tackle climate change but don’t have the time to become a climate scientist? Join us for this fun Game + Appetizers night that has already been played by >1.5 M people worldwide! In just 3 hours, the collaborative Climate Fresk workshop will teach you the fundamental science behind climate change, empower you to take action and allow you to meet cool people! The workshop will take place at Eat Offbeat and includes appetizers home-cooked with love by refugee chefs living in NYC.
🔮 FMP Presents: Introduction to Backcasting
When: Friday, December 6 from 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Where: Impact Hub, NYC
Backcasting is a strategic planning framework that flips the traditional forecasting method around. Rather than projecting future patterns based on current or past data, backcasting begins in the desired future and asks what must be true in order to arrive.
🔋 Climate Hackathon for Battery Fire Safety
When: Saturday, December 7 from 12:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Where: Newlab, Brooklyn, NY
Fires caused by e-bike batteries are a challenge that needs bold thinkers and creative solutions. With lithium ion batteries revolutionizing urban transportation, fire safety issues threaten to derail a promising climate-friendly technology. That's why we need you!
🎁 Sip and Shop: Sustainable Holiday Market
When: Sunday, December 8 · 12 - 5pm EST
Where: The Greats of Craft LIC, 10-15 43rd Avenue, Queens, NY 11101
Join us on **Sunday, December 8th, 2024** on the enclosed rooftop of **The Greats of Craft LIC** for a day of shopping, sipping, and supporting local artisans and sustainable businesses. Browse through a curated selection of eco-friendly products, handmade crafts, and unique gifts perfect for the holiday season. Enjoy a relaxing shopping experience while sipping on delicious beverages and supporting a more sustainable way of shopping.
💸 Impact Investing: How do I actually vote with my dollar?
When: Sunday, December 8 · 12 - 12:30pm EST
Where: The Greats of Craft LIC, 10-15 43rd Avenue, Queens, NY 11101
Join us for an exclusive fireside chat exploring the powerful role of impact investing in supporting sustainable businesses and creating a positive impact on the world. This engaging conversation will delve into how individuals and organizations can use their financial resources to drive meaningful social, environmental, and economic change, and help drive positive outcomes for our planet and its people while seeking competitive financial returns.
🚀 Climate Tech Demo Night - NY Climate Week Edition - AWS, NYU, Streetlife Ventures
When: Register to See Address, New York, New York
Where: Monday, December 9 from 6:00 PM - 8:30 PM
Come see the freshest climate tech demos at NY Climate Week. This holiday edition of the quarterly Climate Tech Demo Night series will feature demos from startups building solutions at the intersection of cities x climate.
Thank you for the excellent summary as always! I noticed that the NYSERDA (Re)Insurance Showcase links don't work, and I was unable to find it online. Has this event moved?