Bill Gates: Our best weapon against climate change is ingenuity
It’s a foregone conclusion that the world will not meet the goals for limiting emissions and global warming laid out in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Many people want to blame politicians and corporations for this failure, but there’s an even more fundamental reason: We don’t have all the technological tools we need to do it, and many of the ones we do have are too expensive.
For all the progress the world has made on renewable energy sources, electric vehicles, and electricity storage, we need a lot more innovation on every front—from discovery to deployment—before we can hope to reach our ultimate goal of net-zero emissions.
But I don’t think this is a reason to be pessimistic. I see it as cause for optimism, because humans are very good at inventing things. In fact, we’ve already created many tools that are reducing emissions. In just the past 10 years, energy breakthroughs have lowered the global forecast for emissions in 2040 by 40%. In other words, because of the human capacity to innovate, we are on course to reduce emissions substantially by 2040 even if nothing else changes.
And I am confident that more positive changes are coming. I’ve been learning about global warming and investing in ideas to stop it for the past 20 years. I’ve connected with unbiased scientists and innovators who are committed to preventing a climate disaster. Ten years ago, some of them joined me in creating Breakthrough Energy, an investment group whose sole purpose is to accelerate clean energy innovation. We’ve supported more than 150 companies so far, many of which have blossomed into major businesses such as Fervo Energy and Redwood Materials, two of this year’s Companies to Watch. [Editor’s note: Mr. Gates did not participate in the selection process of this year’s companies and was not aware that two Breakthrough investments had been selected when he agreed to write this essay.]
Yet climate technologies offer more than just a public good. They will remake virtually every aspect of the world’s economy in the coming years, transforming energy markets, manufacturing, transportation, and many types of industry and food production. Some of these efforts will require long-term commitments, but it’s important that we act now. And what’s more, it’s already clear where the opportunities lie.
In the past decade, an ecosystem of thousands of innovators, investors, and industry leaders has emerged to work on every aspect of the problem. This year’s list of 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch shows just a few of the many examples.
Although much of this innovation ecosystem has matured on American shores, it has become a global movement that won’t be stopped by new obstacles in the US. It’s unfortunate that governments in the US and other countries have decided to cut funding for climate innovations and reverse some of the policies that help breakthrough ideas get to scale. In this environment, we need to be more rigorous than ever about spending our time, money, and ingenuity on efforts that will have the biggest impact.
How do we figure out which ones those are? First, by understanding which activities are responsible for the most emissions. I group them into five categories: electricity generation, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, and heating and cooling for buildings.
Of course, the zero-carbon tools we have today aren’t distributed evenly across these sectors. In some sectors, like electricity, we’ve made a great deal of progress. In others, like agriculture and manufacturing, we’ve made much less. To compare progress across the board, I use what I call the Green Premium, which is the difference in cost between the clean way of doing something and the conventional way that produces emissions.
For example, sustainable aviation fuel now costs more than twice as much as conventional jet fuel, so it has a Green Premium of over 100%. Solar and wind power have grown quickly because in many cases they’re cheaper than conventional sources of electricity—that is, they have a negative Green Premium.
The Green Premium isn’t purely financial. To be competitive, clean alternatives also need to be as practical as what they’re replacing. Far more people will buy EVs once you can charge one up as quickly as you can fill your tank with gasoline.
I think the Green Premium is the best way to identify areas of great impact. Where it’s high, as in the case of jet fuel, we need innovators and investors to jump on the problem. Where it’s low or even negative, we need to overcome the barriers that are keeping the technologies from reaching a global scale.
A new technology has to overcome a lot of challenges to beat the incumbents, but being able to compete on cost is absolutely essential. So if I could offer one piece of advice to every company working on zero-carbon technologies, it would be to focus on lowering and eliminating the Green Premium in whatever sector you’ve chosen. Think big. If your technology can be competitive enough to eventually eliminate at least 1% of global emissions per year—that’s 0.5 gigatons—you’re on the right track.
I’d encourage policymakers to bring this sector-by-sector focus on the Green Premium to their work, too. They should also protect funding for clean technologies and the policies that promote them. This is not just a public good: The countries that win the race to develop these breakthroughs will create jobs, hold enormous economic power for decades to come, and become more energy independent.
In addition, young scientists and entrepreneurs should think about how they can put their skills toward these challenges. It’s an exciting time—the people who begin a career in clean technology today will have an enormous impact on human welfare. If you need pointers, the Climate Tech Atlas published last month by Breakthrough Energy and other partners is an excellent guide to the technologies that are essential for decarbonizing the economy and helping people adapt to a warmer climate.
Finally, I’d encourage investors to put serious money into companies with technologies that can meaningfully reduce the Green Premium. Consider it an investment in what will be the biggest growth industry of the 21st century. Companies have made dramatic progress on better and cleaner solutions in every sector; what many of them need now is private-sector capital and partnerships to help them reach the scale at which they’ll have a real impact on emissions.
So if I could offer one piece of advice to every company working on zero-carbon technologies, it would be to focus on lowering and eliminating the Green Premium in whatever sector you’ve chosen.
Transforming the entire physical economy is an unprecedented task, and it can only be accomplished through markets—by supporting companies with breakthrough ideas that beat fossil fuels on cost and practicality. It’s going to take investors who are both patient and willing to accept the risk that some companies will fail. Of course, governments and nonprofits have a role in the energy transition too, but ultimately, our success will hinge on climate innovators’ ability to build profitable companies.
If we get this right—and I believe we will—then in the next decade, we’ll see fewer news stories about missed emissions targets and more stories about how emissions are dropping fast because the world invented and deployed breakthrough ideas: clean liquid fuels that power passenger jets and cargo ships; neighborhoods built with zero-emissions steel and cement; fusion plants that generate an inexhaustible supply of clean electricity.
Not only will emissions fall faster than most people expect, but hundreds of millions of people will be able to get affordable, reliable clean energy—with especially dramatic improvements for low-income countries. More people will have access to air-conditioning for extremely hot days. More children will have lights so they can do their homework at night. More health clinics will be able to keep their vaccines cold so they don’t spoil. We’ll have built an economy where everyone can prosper.
Of course, climate change will still present many challenges. But the advances we make in the coming years can ensure that everyone gets a chance to live a healthy and productive life no matter where they’re born, and no matter what kind of climate they’re born into.
Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen, and today he is chair of the Gates Foundation, a nonprofit fighting poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. Bill is the founder of Breakthrough Energy, an organization focused on advancing clean energy innovation, and TerraPower, a company developing groundbreaking nuclear energy and science technologies. He has three children.
2025 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: HiNa Battery Technology and its effort to commercialize salt cells
HiNa Battery Technology is a trailblazer in developing and mass-producing batteries using sodium, a widely available element that can be extracted from sea salt. The startup’s products—already powering small vehicles and energy storage plants in China—provide a valuable alternative to lithium-based batteries, made with materials mined and processed in just a few countries.
Over the next few decades the world will need a lot more batteries to power electric cars and keep grids stable. Today most battery cells are made with lithium, so the mineral is expected to be in hyper demand, leading to supply chain risks: 85% of the global lithium supply will be refined in just three countries in 2030—China, Chile, and Argentina, according to the International Energy Agency.
But a new technology has come on the scene, potentially disrupting the global battery industry. Sodium-ion cells are made with an element 400 times more abundant than lithium. It can be found and extracted pretty much anywhere there is seawater or salt deposits in the ground, and harvesting it is a centuries-old practice. For decades, research of the technology was abandoned due to the huge commercial success of lithium-ion cells. Now, HiNa Battery Technology is working to bring sodium back to the limelight—and to the mass market.
Led by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, HiNa’s goal is to commercialize sodium-ion technology in an industry dominated by lithium. To deliver that, it has built labs to develop its own chemistries and factories to make cells at scale.
HiNa began mass manufacturing last year, bringing two sodium-ion products to market. One is a cube-shaped battery for storing electricity; it’s already powering commercial-scale energy storage stations in China, including one in Hubei Province that began operation in July 2024. The other product is a cylindrical battery already being used in electric mopeds (which are ubiquitous in China) and other small vehicles.
Compared to their lithium counterparts, sodium-ion batteries perform better in cold environments and can charge faster, but they have lower energy density. This means a sodium-ion battery carries less energy than a lithium-ion battery of the same size—a problem for cars, since that means shorter range.
HiNa says it will continue to increase its products’ energy density through technological innovations, such as by using more-efficient materials for the cathode and anode and improving batteries’ structure. Currently, the energy density of its cube-shaped battery is 165 watt-hours per kilogram—around 80% of that of a lithium iron phosphate battery, the mainstream lithium battery in China.
Key indicators
- Industry: Energy storage
- Founded: 2017
- Headquarters: Beijing, China
- Notable fact: HiNa was founded by Chen Liquan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and three of his students, with support from the academy. Chen is dubbed “the father of Chinese lithium batteries” for leading a team that developed the country’s first such cell three decades ago. At 85, Chen still oversees HiNa’s research and development with one of the students—the company’s chairman, Hu Yongsheng.
Potential for impact
The global sodium-ion market is still in its infancy, and its future is uncertain, but HiNa’s endeavor has provided a potential solution for the world to achieve net-zero carbon emissions without overly relying on a handful of critical minerals, whose production has drawn environmental, humanitarian, and geopolitical concerns.
In the energy storage sector—sodium-ion batteries’ main area of usage—they are expected to grab up to 30% of the global market by 2030. The 50-megawatt energy storage plant in Hubei Province alone is projected to avoid an estimated 13,000 tons of carbon dioxide every year, which is roughly equivalent to removing about 3,000 gas-powered cars from the road.
Caveats
HiNa faces a big question: Can sodium-ion batteries thrive commercially? Lithium-ion cells are projected to remain cheaper and more powerful in the foreseeable future. The unit price of sodium-ion batteries is currently about 60% higher than that of lithium ones, but their theoretical production cost should eventually be around a third lower than that of lithium-ion cells. Industry analysts say HiNa and other sodium-ion battery makers must ensure that customers can get more bang for their bucks in order to create a market.
Chinese lithium-battery behemoths are also making moves into sodium, upping pressure on specialist companies like HiNa. CATL, the world’s largest battery maker, has said it will mass-produce sodium-ion batteries for electric cars by the end of this year. Meanwhile, EV giant BYD is building a massive factory in eastern China dedicated to making sodium-ion cells.
Next steps
HiNa’s plan is to focus on a few submarkets. It says that sectors such as heavy trucks and energy storage represent huge potential because of China’s big domestic market.
The company aims to launch a fast-charging sodium-ion battery that powers heavy trucks this month. The battery can fully charge in just 20 minutes, according to HiNa. The feature is expected to be a draw for truck drivers, who cannot afford long pit stops.
How we picked promising climate tech companies in an especially unsettling year
MIT Technology Review’s reporters and editors faced a dilemma as we began to mull nominees for this year’s list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch.
How do you pick companies poised to succeed in a moment of such deep uncertainty, at a time when the new Trump administration is downplaying the dangers of climate change, unraveling supportive policies for clean technologies, and enacting tariffs that will boost costs and disrupt supply chains for numerous industries?
We as a publication are focused more on identifying companies developing technologies that can address the escalating threats of climate change, than on businesses positioned purely for market success. We don’t fancy ourselves as stock pickers or financial analysts.
But we still don’t want to lead our readers astray by highlighting a startup that winds up filing for bankruptcy six months later, even if its demise is due to a policy whiplash outside of its control.
So we had to shift our thinking some.
As a basic principle, we look for companies with the potential to substantially drive down greenhouse gas emissions or deliver products that could help communities meaningfully reduce the dangers of heatwaves, droughts, or other extreme weather.
We prefer to feature businesses that have established a track record, by raising capital, building plants, or delivering products. We generally exclude companies where the core business involves extracting and combusting fossil fuels, even if they have a side business in renewables, as well as those tied to forced labor or other problematic practices.
Our reporters and contributors add their initial ideas to a spreadsheet. We ask academics, investors, and other sources we trust for more nominees. We research and debate the various contenders, add or subtract from our list, then research and debate them all some more.
Starting with our first climate tech list in 2023, we have strived to produce a final mix of companies that’s geographically diverse. But given the particular challenges for the climate tech space in the US these days, one decision we made early on was to look harder and more widely for companies making strides elsewhere.
Thankfully, numerous other nations continue to believe in the need to confront rising threats and the economic opportunities in doing so.
China, in particular, has seized on the energy transition as a pathway for expanding its economy and global influence, giving rise to some of the world’s largest and most innovative clean tech companies. That includes two on this year’s list: the sodium-ion battery company HiNa and the wind-turbine giant Envision.
Similarly, the European Union’s increasingly strict emissions mandates and cap-and-trade system are accelerating efforts to clean up the energy, heavy-industry, and transportation sectors across that continent. We highlighted two promising companies there, including the German electric truck company Traton and the Swedish clean-cement maker Cemvision.
We also determined that certain businesses could emerge relatively unscathed from the shifting conditions in the US, or perhaps even benefit from them. Notably, the fact that heightened tariffs will boost the cost of importing critical minerals could create an advantage for a company like Redwood Materials, one of the US’s biggest recyclers of battery materials.
Finally, the boom in AI data center development is opening some promising opportunities, as it spawns vast demands for new electricity generation. Several of our picks are well positioned to help meet those needs through carbon-free energy sources, including geothermal company Fervo Energy and next-generation nuclear startup Kairos Power. Plus, Redwood Materials has launched a new microgrid business line to help address those demands as well.
Still, it was especially challenging this year to produce a list we felt confident enough to put out into the world, which is a key reason why we decided to narrow it down from 15 companies to 10.
But we believe we’ve identified a solid slate of firms around the world that are making real strides in cleaning up the way we do business and go about our lives, and which are poised to help us meet the rising climate challenges ahead.
We hope you think so too.
2025 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Pairwise and its climate-adapted crops
Climate change will make it increasingly difficult to grow crops across many parts of the world. Pairwise is leveraging CRISPR gene editing to develop plants that can better withstand adverse conditions.
Pairwise uses cutting-edge gene editing to produce crops that can withstand increasingly harsh climate conditions, helping to feed a growing population even as the world warms.
The seven-year-old startup was cofounded by several gene editing pioneers, including MIT’s Feng Zhang and Harvard’s David Liu, who helped invent and improve the breakthrough CRISPR tool.
Last year, the company delivered the first food to the US market, that was developed with the precise genetic scissors, a less-bitter–tasting mustard green. It’s now working to produce crops with climate-resilient traits, through partnerships with two of the world’s largest plant biotech companies, Bayer and Corteva.
Pairwise says its technology enables the company and its customers to efficiently introduce and fine-tune new plant traits. The toolkit includes a proprietary CRISPR enzyme (the part of the technology that snips off bits of DNA), as well as a base editor, a second-generation CRISPR technology that can alter a single DNA letter. Co-founder Liu first developed it with his research team.
Among its early efforts, the company is developing and field testing shorter, sturdier types of corn, blackberries and other crops that could survive high winds and other extreme weather events amplified by climate change.
The company believes that these dwarf plants can be grown closer together, potentially enabling farmers to produce higher yields with less fertilizer and fewer insecticides. Growing more plants on a given area of land, or shrinking fruit trees closer to bush size, also means it could be more economical to grow their crops in agricultural hoop houses. These temporary, movable greenhouses can be covered with plastic or shade cloth to control growing conditions. That, in turn, could enable more farmers, particularly in poorer parts of the world, to protect their crops from heatwaves and other severe weather.
In addition, Pairwise is working with the Gates Foundation to create new varieties of high-yield yams in Nigeria. It has also licensed its suite of genetic tools to Mars to help the confectionary giant develop cacao plants that would be more resilient to plant diseases and shifting climate conditions. The cacao trees, which farmers predominantly grow in West Africa, are coming under increasing stress from rising temperatures and erratic rainfall patterns.
Key indicators
- Industry: Food and agriculture
- Founded: 2018
- Headquarters: Durham, North Carolina, US
- Notable fact: The company was cofounded by several scientists who were instrumental in inventing and improving CRISPR, including MIT professor Feng Zhang and Harvard professor David Liu, both of whom also have appointments at the Broad Institute.
Potential for impact
As climate change fuels more extreme weather and creates otherwise harsher conditions such as drought, the ability to grow crops with the same or higher yields than are seen today could help sustain farmers and feed communities. Particularly in some of the hottest and poorest parts of the world, climate-adapted crops promise to prevent hunger and starvation.
Caveats
To date, Pairwise hasn’t delivered any climate-adapted foods to the market. So it remains to be seen how big of a difference such plants will make in the fields and on store shelves.
There’s a general, if untested, hope that consumers and regulators will be more accepting of CRISPR-edited crops, which involve editing the plant’s own DNA, than many have been of transgenic crops, which are created by swapping in genes from another species.
Next steps
Pairwise representatives say the company, which has raised $155 million to date, is evaluating short-stature blackberries in field trials now. If those tests go well, it intends to work on squatter fruit trees as well, such as cherry or peach.
On its website, the company says it has successfully demonstrated edits in 14 crops, and completed field trials for at least two more: unspecified varieties of corn and soy.
Pairwise hasn’t announced any specific timelines, but the company says it expects to deliver a variety of “climate-adapted, delicious and consumer-loved crops” in the coming years.
2025 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Cemvision and its low-emissions cement
Cement is one of the most used materials on the planet, and the industry emits billions of tons of greenhouse gasses annually. Cemvision wants to use waste materials and alternative fuels to help reduce climate pollution from cement production.
Today, making cement requires crushing limestone and heating it to super high temperatures, usually by burning fossil fuels. The chemical reactions also release carbon dioxide pollution.
Swedish startup Cemvision made a few key production changes to reduce both emissions and the need to mine new materials. First, the company is moving away from Portland cement, the most common form of the material used currently.
Making Portland cement requires reaching ultra-high temperatures, over 1,450 °C (2,650 °F). Instead, Cemvision makes a material that requires lower temperatures (roughly 1,200 °C, or 2,200 °F), which reduces the amount of energy required.
The company also uses alternative sources for heating. Rather than fossil fuels, Cemvision can use a combination of plasma, hydrogen, and electricity. The startup tested its process in a demonstration-scale kiln, which can make up to 12 tons per day. The material has a high strength under compression and doesn’t heat up much when it’s mixed with water, both desirable qualities for builders.
Cemvision also has a strong focus on building a circular economy. The company’s cement incorporates waste materials like mine tailings and slag, a by-product of iron and steel manufacturing. And it recently published results showing that it can use steel slag from electric arc furnaces and basic oxygen furnaces. These materials reduce the need for newly-mined limestone and other virgin materials, cutting down on the carbon dioxide emitted from that material in chemical reactions taking place in the kiln.
Key indicators
- Industry: Cement
- Founded: 2019
- Headquarters: Stockholm, Sweden
- Notable fact: Cemvision was a member of the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program and the Norrsken accelerator program, started by Klarna cofounder Niklas Adalberth.
Potential for impact
The cement industry today accounts for about 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Cemvision’s process can reduce emissions by between 80% and 95% compared to traditional cement-making by using waste materials and alternative fuels.
The company has partnerships with builders and industrial customers, including in construction and mining.
Caveats
Cemvision’s material will be more expensive than conventional cement, so it’ll require either policy support or customers who are willing to pay more. The European Union has a policy system that charges for pollution, and that should help make Cemvision’s cement competitive. The company says its product will be less expensive than one of the leading methods of cleaning up cement, carbon capture and sequestration.
The cement industry is quite conservative, and there’s often resistance to new technologies, including adopting materials other than Portland cement. Cemvision’s cement will need to gain wide acceptance to make progress on emissions.
Next steps
Cemvision has a site selected and is currently raising money to finance a full-scale plant in Northern Europe. That facility will have a capacity of 500,000 metric tons annually, and the company says it should open by 2028.
2025 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Traton and its electric trucks
As Europe gradually phases out heavy-duty diesel trucks, Traton is gearing up production of its electric models. The company is also helping to install hundreds of public chargers to aid the growth of electric freight transport across Europe.
Every day, trucks carry many millions of tons of cargo down roads and highways around the world. Nearly all run on diesel and make up one of the largest commercial sources of carbon emissions. Traton is producing a wide variety of zero-emission trucks that could help clean up this sector while also investing in a Europe-wide advanced charging network so other manufacturers can more easily follow suit.
In Europe especially, the next decade could see tremendous growth in electric truck adoption. New CO2 emission standards require new diesel trucks to essentially be phased out of production by 2040. And given that trucks typically operate for around 15 years, more owners will be considering electric models for their next purchase.
Today, Traton is a company in transition. A subsidiary of Volkswagen, it is made up of a collection of commercial vehicle brands, including Scania, MAN, and International. While it still manufactures conventional trucks that run on fossil fuels, it’s making rapid progress in the EV space. Some of Scania’s long-haul electric semis can travel about 350 miles before needing to recharge, for example.
Its EV models are also starting to pick up in terms of sales. In the first half of 2025, Traton sold 1,250 electric models globally, which was twice as many as during the same period last year. That puts it not far behind Volvo, another market leader. Traton is now ramping up production—MAN recently opened a new factory line that can assemble electric and diesel trucks interchangeably. That should also help bring costs down, key to success for the sector—today, the price of an electric truck can be several times higher than for diesel ones.
What’s more, Traton is working to install hundreds of publicly available chargers across Europe through an industry partnership called Milence. That group has also invested in high-powered chargers that can deliver more than 1 megawatt of power to heavy-duty trucks, allowing trucks to recharge in 45 minutes or less (for comparison, rapid chargers available for cars today deliver between 50 and 350 kilowatts).
Key indicators
- Industry: Electric vehicles
- Founded: 2015
- Headquarters: Munich, Germany
- Notable fact: One of Traton’s subsidiaries is a leading school bus manufacturer in the US and Canada, where it debuted its first electric school bus in 2021.
Potential for impact
Moving freight produces about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Most of that pollution (65%) comes from trucks and vans—more than cargo ships, trains, and planes combined. And the World Economic Forum expects demand for road freight will triple by 2050.
Electric trucks do have a climate impact from the mining and manufacturing processes required to build them. The source of electricity that powers them—whether renewable or fossil fuels—also matters. Even so, battery-electric trucks operating in Europe today reduce emissions on average by 63% compared with diesel trucks, according to an analysis by the nonprofit International Council on Clean Transportation.
To mitigate climate change, the ICCT has said that all of the world’s major markets need to fully transition to selling only zero-emission trucks by 2040. Last year, about 90,000 electric trucks were sold globally; electric models accounted for less than 2.5 percent of total truck sales in the year prior. But market forces seem poised to accelerate this transition, and Traton is a small but growing player.
Today, China leads the world in electric truck production and sales. In Europe, though, sales are expected to tick up as the EU requires manufacturers of heavy-duty rigs to slash CO2 emissions from their fleets by 90% by 2040, with progressive targets leading up to that level—the first of which kicked in as of July.
Caveats
It’s early days for electric trucking, as supply chains and charging infrastructure are built out. A large electric truck requires four to six times as many battery packs as an electric car, and securing enough batteries has proven particularly difficult for many EV firms based outside of China, where most batteries are produced.
To mitigate this risk, Traton is building its own battery production, starting with facilities in Södertälje, Sweden and Nuremberg, Germany—with plans to make 50,000 battery packs a year, which could power about 10,000 heavy-duty trucks. (The company declined to say what proportion of the batteries currently used in its trucks comes from China.)
The company’s International brand, which operates in the US, could be hit by tariffs and see demand drop as the Trump administration moves to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles.
No matter what, the competition will be fierce—every major European truck manufacturer offers electric models now, and Chinese firms have already expanded internationally and built a strong customer base in markets like South America through sales of electric buses.
Next steps
For now, MAN is working toward its goal of delivering 1,000 electric trucks from its new manufacturing line by the year’s end. Looking ahead, Scania aims to begin selling its first heavy-duty truck compatible with megawatt chargers in February, with deliveries to follow later in the year. Through Milence, megawatt chargers are now available at three sites, in Sweden, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and will soon be installed at five more.
2025 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Ather Energy and its premium e-scooters
More than 70% of the 200 million registered vehicles in India are two-wheelers. Ather Energy builds e-scooters for the rising middle class that could help commuters ditch highly-polluting, gas-guzzling models.
While sales of Tesla or BYD cars drove electric vehicle adoption elsewhere in the world, two-wheelers have led the green energy transition in India. As one of the earliest “pure play” e-scooter makers, Ather Energy has helped drive micromobility EV penetration throughout India and boosted the shift away from carbon-emitting vehicles.
In 2018, the company introduced an expensive sports scooter, with features like a touchscreen dashboard, built-in navigation, and over-the-air software updates, previously unseen in two-wheelers. Today the company has two product lines: the Ather 450 (a sporty performance scooter) and the Ather Rizta (a family-friendly scooter for daily use).
Central to the company’s success has been its focus on product quality and the rider experience. Ather installs its own software, manufactures the vast majority of its hardware, and wants to invest much of the proceeds from its initial public offering into R&D.
Key indicators
- Industry: Electric vehicles
- Founded: 2013
- Headquarters: Bengaluru, India
- Notable fact: Unlike competitors who either rebranded an acquired scooter or sold imported EVs from China, Ather does almost everything in-house, from its software stack to hardware design.
Potential for impact
While emissions of individual two-wheelers is much less compared to that of a car or a larger vehicle, the sheer number of these scooters on Indian roads adds up. Two-wheelers contribute about one-third of transport emissions in India, and successful electrification could reduce their share to just 3% by 2050. Ather’s success in moving people from gas-guzzling scooters to electric could not only propel India closer to its goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2070 but also reduce health impacts in a country where around 1.5 million deaths a year are from breathing polluted air.
As the country’s leading EV-only scooter maker, Ather’s successful expansion could supercharge India’s shift away from fossil fuels, and help achieve the government’s goal of reducing air pollution, while also building a market presence internationally.
In mid-2024 Ather introduced the Ather Rizta, a spacious family scooter with a large seat, more storage, and fast charging, which sold over 100,000 units within a year of its launch. To catch up to well-capitalized competitors, such as Ola Electric, Ather is spending $105 million to build a third factory that aims to produce 500,000 two-wheelers a year by March 2027. It has also expanded its charging network to some 4,000 charging points and has pushed into newer markets, including Nepal and Sri Lanka.
Caveats
In the past five years, driven by state and federal incentives, electric vehicle competition turned fierce in India. Car and scooter makers raced to capture the market, including legacy automakers TVS Motor and Bajaj Auto. Both have since zoomed past Ather, selling cheaper e-scooters and scaling faster, by leveraging their sprawling retail presence. Together, they have cornered a combined share of 40% of India’s e-scooter market.
Meanwhile, EV adoption has grown more slowly in India than expected. Indian EV sales were 7.6% in 2024, far off pace of hitting the government’s target of 30% by 2030.
For Ather to have a real impact on India’s transport emissions, it must scale significantly. The company is working to double its retail footprint to 700 stores and continue its expansion into smaller cities. But geopolitics could interfere: China’s retaliatory export ban on critical rare earth minerals in response to US tariffs announced in April caused a ripple effect; Ather said in August that it has found it hard to secure the magnets it needs for its motors.
Next steps
As the Indian government rolls back subsidies that slashed the cost of purchasing an electric scooter, Ather plans to launch cheaper options. In mid-2024, it began transitioning to a newer battery chemistry called lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) that has lower environmental impacts, requires fewer expensive minerals, and should be about 20% cheaper than other battery packs.
The company isn’t profitable, but its gross profit per vehicle has been improving. Momentum seems to be building—in May, Ather reported its annual sales to March 2025 were up 42 percent compared to the year prior. Now, the company is betting that investing further into product innovation will help it take the lead in India’s two-wheeler revolution.
2025 Climate Tech Companies to Watch: Cyclic Materials and its rare earth recycling tech
Rare earth magnets are essential for clean energy, but only a tiny fraction of the metals inside them are ever recycled. Cyclic Materials aims to change that by opening one of the largest rare earth magnet recycling operations outside of China next year. By collecting a wide range of devices and recycling multiple metals, the company seeks to overcome the economic challenges that have long held back such efforts.
Powerful rare earth magnets are at the heart of many advanced technologies, from electric vehicle motors and wind turbine generators to smartphones and robots. Demand for key magnet metals like neodymium is expected to surge as the energy transition progresses, and new supplies are urgently needed—especially outside of China, which dominates the rare earth supply chain and further escalated export restrictions in response to recent US tariffs.
One largely untapped supply is the mountain of rare earth magnet–containing devices discarded each year. In China, rare earth magnet manufacturers recycle significant amounts of scrap from their fabrication process, and a smaller number of magnets are collected for recycling at end of life. But globally, just 0.2% of rare earths are recycled from spent devices, largely because it’s hard to collect magnets that are contained within billions of old gadgets.
Cyclic Materials is trying to address that challenge. In its two-part recycling process, rare earth–containing devices will first be amassed at “spoke” facilities. The devices will be shredded, and their magnet waste will be separated from steel parts and other recyclable metals before being sent to centralized “hubs,” where the company will use a chemical extraction process to recover a purified mixture of rare earth metals.
Today, Cyclic Materials is constructing its first spoke facility in Mesa, Arizona, and its first commercial hub in Kingston, Ontario. These plants are expected to begin recycling magnets commercially next year in what is shaping up to be one of the largest such operations in the Western world.
Key indicators
- Industry: Critical minerals
- Founded: 2021
- Headquarters: Toronto, Canada
- Notable fact: Cyclic Materials is recovering rare earth magnets from wind turbines and has collected used turbines on three continents.
Potential for impact
With the first big waves of EVs and wind turbines approaching the end of their useful lives, rare earth magnet recycling could recover valuable resources and make the energy transition more sustainable. Cyclic Materials says its process uses 95% less water and produces roughly 60% fewer emissions than rare earth mining does.
The company is starting small, with its Kingston hub designed to recycle 500 metric tons of magnet waste a year. (By 2035, there could be over 43,000 metric tons of recyclable rare earth magnets in the US alone.) But with a list of roughly 2,000 potential device suppliers and customers, as well as more than $100 million in funding, the firm is positioning itself for global expansion.
Caveats
Making a profit from rare earth recycling isn’t easy—it can cost more to collect and recycle rare earth magnets, which are deeply embedded in devices of different sizes and shapes, than a recycler will earn from reselling the metals. Even if rare earth metals can be recycled cost-effectively, there are only a few magnet makers outside of China to sell them to.
Cyclic Materials has signed agreements with a range of suppliers, including e-scooter and e-bike giant Lime and RenerCycle, which decommissions old wind turbines, to hoover up magnets wherever it can. Earlier this year, the firm announced it will sell its recycled rare earth mixture to the Brussels-based chemical company Solvay. But it will need more buyers to scale up further, which could mean waiting for the supply chain outside of China to expand.
In the meantime, Cyclic Materials’ spoke facilities will also recycle aluminum, steel, and copper, providing additional revenue streams.
Next steps
Cyclic Materials intends to build more spoke and hub facilities around the world, first scaling its operations in North America, then expanding to Europe and Asia. It also plans to keep innovating: At its R&D center in Kingston, the company is developing ways to address recycling challenges in specific industries, such as how to rapidly deconstruct wind turbine generators and separate out their supersized magnets.
Coming soon: Our 2025 list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch
The need to cut emissions and adapt to our warming world is growing more urgent. This year, we’ve seen temperatures reach record highs, as they have nearly every year for the last decade. Climate-fueled natural disasters are affecting communities around the world, costing billions of dollars.
That’s why, for the past two years, MIT Technology Review has curated a list of companies with the potential to make a meaningful difference in addressing climate change (you can revisit the 2024 list here). We’re excited to share that we’ll publish our third edition of Climate Tech Companies to Watch on October 6.
The list features businesses from around the world that are building technologies to reduce emissions or address the impacts of climate change. They represent advances across a wide range of industries, from agriculture and transportation to energy and critical minerals.
One notable difference about this year’s list is that we’ve focused on fewer firms—we’ll highlight 10 instead of the 15 we’ve recognized in previous years.
This change reflects the times: Climate science and technology are in a dramatically different place from where they were just one year ago. The US, the world’s largest economy and historically its biggest polluter, has made a U-turn on climate policy as the Trump administration cancels hundreds of billions of dollars in grants, tax credits, and loans designed to support the industry and climate research.
And the stark truth is that time is of the essence. This year marks 10 years since the Paris Agreement, the UN treaty that aimed to limit global warming by setting a goal of cutting emissions so that temperatures would rise no more than 1.5 °C above preindustrial temperatures. Today, experts agree that we’ve virtually run out of time to reach that goal and will need to act fast to limit warming to less than 2 °C.
The companies on this year’s list are inventing and scaling technologies that could help. There’s a wide array of firms represented, from early-stage startups to multibillion-dollar businesses. Their technologies run the gamut from electric vehicles to the materials that scaffold our world.
Of course, we can’t claim to be able to predict the future: Not all the businesses we’ve recognized will succeed. But we’ve done our best to choose companies with a solid technical footing, as well as feasible plans for bringing their solutions to the right market and scaling them effectively.
We’re excited to share the list with you in just a few days. These companies are helping address one of the most crucial challenges of our time. Who knows—maybe you’ll even come away feeling a little more hopeful.