The Women4Climate Tech Challenge is an international contest open to women carrying out an innovative tech solution for climate action in cities. Complementary to the Women4Climate Mentorship Programme, the Tech Challenge is open to all C40 Cities and promotes concrete solutions with a measurable impact. The key goal of the Tech Challenge is to promote, experiment, and implement women-led climate innovation in C40 cities. It provides the winners with support and acceleration from C40 & partners; and the opportunity to pilot solutions in C40 cities.

City-inspired innovation is crucial to accelerate the reduction of green-house emissions in cities but to achieve gender-inclusive climate action we need more women bringing their perspectives and experiences into decision-making processes and participating in the ideation, conception, experimentation and implementation of innovation. Without this, we will build a future that lacks the perspectives and experiences of half the world’s population.

This competition for women only is a joint initiative from The VELUX Group and C40 Cities. 
Four C40 cities – Lisbon, Los Angeles, Stockholm and Tel Aviv-Yafo – have committed to pilot one of the winning solutions in their cities.

WOMEN4CLIMATE TECH CHALLENGE 2020 WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Four inspirational women have been announced as the winners of the Women4Climate Tech Challenge 2020. The winners are:

• Lorena Gordillo Dagallier from Cambridge who successfully pitched her initiative “open-seneca”- a mobile air quality sensor network that will be installed throughout the city alongside educational workshops.
• Anai Green from Tel Aviv-Yafo who impressed the judging panel with her innovative fabric “Lumiweave” which offers a shade function at the same time as permitting light.
• Meiling Gao and Vivian Bi from California, who jointly won with their initiative “Clarity”, a smart, indoor-outdoor low cost air monitoring system that provides real-time air quality data.

These entrepreneurs will now see their innovations brought to life in one of this year's host cities: Los Angeles, Lisbon, Stockholm and Tel Aviv-Yafo, with  $50,000 in funding to be split amongst the winning projects and used to support their experimental phase in each city.