Women Founders Building Climate Solutions Across Carbon Capture, Critical Minerals, Clean Energy, Air Quality, and Water Treatment
Climate change is transforming how the world thinks about technology. Rising temperatures, poor air quality, extreme weather, and water pollution are forcing industries to find new ways to work. The challenge is huge and has no single solution.
Women founders are stepping into this space with ideas that target some of the biggest climate problems. Their companies are turning carbon dioxide into useful products, finding cleaner ways to recover metals, tracking air pollution, cutting diesel use, and treating harmful chemicals in water.
Their work also shows how broad climate technology has become. It is no longer limited to solar panels, wind turbines, or electric vehicles. New climate solutions are reaching factories, mines, cities, telecom networks, and water treatment plants.
Women Building Solutions Across Climate Tech
Climate technology covers many areas, and each one comes with its own set of problems. These founders are using science and technology to tackle some of them.
Etosha Cave
Etosha Cave is the co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Twelve. The company uses carbon dioxide, water, and renewable energy to replace products that are usually made from fossil fuels.
Twelve is also working on sustainable aviation fuel. Its technology turns captured carbon dioxide into materials, chemicals, and fuels. The idea is simple. Instead of treating carbon dioxide only as waste, it can be used as a raw material.
Megan O’Connor
Megan O’Connor is the co-founder and CEO of Nth Cycle. Her company is focused on another major climate issue: critical minerals. Metals such as nickel and cobalt are needed for batteries and other clean energy products. Mining these materials can be environmentally expensive.
Nth Cycle has developed a system that uses electricity to recover metals from materials such as mine waste and industrial waste. The company says its process can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 90% compared with traditional mining methods.
Davida Herzl
Davida Herzl is the founder and CEO of Aclima. Her company works on a problem people often cannot see: air pollution. Aclima uses sensors to measure air pollution and greenhouse gases at a local level. Its technology can show how pollution changes from one area to another.
Aclima has worked on large air monitoring projects in the US. A California program uses its technology to provide local air quality data to communities across the state.
Alexandra Rasch Castillo
Alexandra Rasch Castillo co-founded Caban Systems in 2018. The company focuses on cleaner power systems for telecom networks and other critical infrastructure. Telecom sites often rely on diesel generators for backup power. Caban uses batteries, software, and monitoring tools to reduce the need for diesel.
In 2023, the company said its systems were operating at more than 500 customer sites across 10 countries. It also reported helping customers avoid more than 8,400 metric tons of carbon emissions.
Julie Bliss Mullen
Julie Bliss Mullen is the founder of Aclarity. Her company is taking on PFAS, a group of chemicals that can remain in the environment for a long time. PFAS have been found in water supplies in many parts of the world. Removing them is difficult, and some treatment methods only move the chemicals from one place to another.
Aclarity has developed an electrochemical system designed to destroy PFAS in water and liquid waste. The company raised $15.9 million in Series A funding in 2023 to expand its work.
Turning Bold Ideas into Climate Action
The women founders mentioned above are tackling different problems. However, their work shows how many paths there are in climate technology. A climate solution can start with carbon, batteries, sensors, energy systems, or water treatment.
The next test is scale. These ideas need to move from promising technology to solutions that can serve more people and businesses. More funding and support for women founders could also bring more ideas into a sector that needs fresh thinking.
Climate change is a huge challenge, yet progress can come from many directions. These women are showing how science, business, and technology can come together to tackle problems that affect the planet and everyday life.
