The Earthshot Prize: Accelerating green innovation
Deloitte is helping The Earthshot Prize find and scale the solutions for a better future
Can the business community speed up the race to net zero by working with trailblazing environmental innovators?
Everything’s possible with The Earthshot Prize.
Founded by HRH Prince William, the Prize is on a mission to identify solutions that can protect and restore our planet by 2030. The challenge is undeniable, but there’s great news – the green innovation movement is already happening.
Successfully discovering and growing solutions as fast as possible relies on the power of collaboration between businesses, the public sector and NGOs - and Deloitte is proud to be at the heart of the movement.
We’re helping the Prize find innovative entrepreneurs, creating networks and sharing our expertise to scale the solutions that can contribute to a better future. And the result? Exciting new ways to eliminate plastic, capture carbon, transform our built environment, tackle pollution, boost material innovation and make fashion more sustainable.
The Earthshot Prize is a powerful innovation search engine like no other, scouring the planet for groundbreaking and impactful environmental initiatives
So far, more than 2,900 nominations have been received over three cycles since the Prize was launched in 2020, and they tell an optimistic story. The movement has already found pioneering solutions with the potential to protect and restore nature, clean our air, revive our oceans, build a waste-free world and fix our climate. We just need to grow them.
Deloitte is the Implementation Partner for the Prize. Every year, experts from our Sustainability & Climate practice worldwide support The Earthshot Prize Council to independently assess thousands of nominations, from established changemakers to emerging solutions and sustainable technologies.
To find the 15 finalists – three in each of the Earthshot categories – we designed a multi-stage selection process that includes diverse screening criteria. It allows the Prize to evaluate innovation aligned to Earthshot impact priorities, understand scalability and see the possible impact on communities and the natural world. We’ve also supported The Prize to develop its own ambitions, helping to determine priority focus areas and the types of ideas that support its mission.
Alongside this, we’re members of The Earthshot Prize Global Alliance, a community of businesses that offer expertise, raise capital and establish networks that winners and finalists couldn’t otherwise access. To date, we’ve helped 20 Earthshot innovators accelerate their impact.
“Reaching net zero will require the global economy to decarbonise as part of a connected system,” says Smruti Naik-Jones, Chief Sustainability Officer for Deloitte in the UK and North & South Europe. “We are using our skills, influence and targeted investment to catalyse this transition. Earthshot innovators have different growth ambitions and needs. By investing in pro bono support and mentorship for finalists and winners around the world, Deloitte can help develop and scale their ideas so they can have a real and lasting impact.”
"We’re bringing the full breath of our expertise to find and assess Earthshot solutions that have the potential to solve the world’s biggest environmental challenges and positively impact societies. Through this understanding of green innovation, we also can help our clients create a competitive advantage of sustainability and solve their business challenges.”
Katherine Lampen, Sustainability and Climate Change Lead, Deloitte
Meet some of the inspirational innovators we’ve already supported
Notpla
London-based Notpla, a 2022 winner, has created a seaweed alternative to plastic packaging. Its newest invention is a fully soluble, biodegradable film for laundry sachets and cosmetic samples. Deloitte has helped Notpla develop growth and product strategies for Notpla Film, which could have a huge impact as plastic films account for 46% of ocean plastic leakage.
Low Carbon Materials (LCM)
Durham-based LCM is making the construction industry more sustainable with its carbon negative aggregates for concrete, OSTO®, and asphalt, ACLA®. By enabling LCM to understand the low-carbon market ecosystem, the regulatory landscape and licensing options, we’ve helped open up growth possibilities for ACLA. We’re also helping to scale production by sponsoring immediate optimisations to their factory capabilities. One tonne of asphalt generates up to 50kg of CO₂ emissions. So solutions like ACLA®, an aggregate that can be added to the mix to lower the carbon footprint of traditional asphalt and act as a permanent carbon storage solution, are vital to decarbonise the UK road network - and it’s already being trialled on a stretch of the M11 motorway.
ENSO
When a car accelerates, brakes or turns, its tyres send thousands of tiny particles into the atmosphere. It adds up to 6 million tonnes of pollution a year. ENSO designs and makes sustainable and durable tyres for electric vehicles, including London taxis. Deloitte experts have been helping Enso develop a robust financial model to support their business plan; brining their innovate product to life and changing the tyre market for millions of vehicles.
44.01
Sequestering carbon from the atmosphere is essential to limit global warming. Oman-based 44.01 removes it forever by mineralising it in rock.
Due to the innovative nature of its technology, the 2022 Earthshot winner operates in an emerging market with low buyer awareness. We’ve helped the business to develop a pricing strategy that identifies the largest opportunities for profitability as the business grows.
It could also position 44.01 as a pioneering force in the carbon capture industry.
Colorifix
The textile sector’s conventional dyes contain more than 70 chemical pollutants, and dyeing fabrics uses 5 trillion litres of water every year. Colorifix is a first mover to introduce a biological process – reducing water use by 81%.
With Deloitte, Colorifix has been developing its sustainability goals and identifying a path to growth.
It’s essential work, addressing a key sustainability challenge for the fashion industry. Colorifix’s ambitions to dye 15% of the world’s clothes by 2030.
Setting the stage for multiplying the Earthshot impact
Every year, The Earthshot Prize Award Ceremony beams the magic of The Earthshot Prize across the world. In 2023, the broadcasted event in Singapore was viewed by 24.3 million people on YouTube alone. Deloitte colleagues also shared their experiences from the green carpet.
To make this celebratory moment even more meaningful for winners and finalists, for the first time the Prize staged Earthshot Week. This was a series of forums, networking and media initiatives designed to spark collaboration; bringing together more than 100 businesses, innovators and policymakers.
In the run up, we conducted research with start-ups, major global brands, fashion councils and experts across our firm to help define their Earthshot+ thought leadership discussions.
At Earthshot Week, Deloitte focused on sustainable fashion and spotlighting nature-based alternatives to synthetic materials, building on the science behind Notpla’s packaging and 2023 finalist Sea Forest’s use of seaweed to revolutionise livestock farming.
Following a panel with HRH Prince William and Christiana Figueres, our Sustainability and Climate Change Lead, Katherine Lampen, also took to the stage with Earthshot entrepreneurs for a thought-provoking session on the circular future of fashion.
At London Climate Action Week 2024, Deloitte colleagues supported a workshop and community event to celebrate The Earthshot Prize portfolio through Launchpad – a platform connecting innovators and investors to accelerate funding for climate and environmental solutions.
Above the London skyline, Katherine shared a stage with prominent environmentalists, telling the stories of systemic change shaped by Earthshot finalists and how collaboration drives scale and inspires climate action.
In November 2024, the Earthshot Prize travels to South Africa. As a platform for positive impact, its power to drive collective change globally is growing. We’re honoured to play our part in this green innovation movement.
