Each year, through its global observatory, 2050NOW La Maison identifies 3,000 innovations across all sectors. This intelligence enables us to highlight major emerging trends in sustainable innovation and disruptive solutions to inspire, disrupt and open up new perspectives for businesses.
With the help of our Scientific Committee, we select the 10 most promising solutions to the major social, economic and environmental challenges of our time.
These initiatives receive awards at the Explore Summit, our annual event dedicated to sustainable innovation.
The winners of the 2025 Summit are below.
Beekee Box – Bridging the global education divide
Switzerland
Researchers from the University of Geneva have developed the Beekee Box, an educational device that generates a wireless network without requiring an Internet connection or a constant electrical supply. This platform contains a range of learning apps and is designed for use in refugee camps, war zones, and areas with limited internet access, enabling individuals to connect via smartphones, computers, or tablets to access educational content locally. Supported by UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union, the Beekee Box, part of the “Giga” project, aims to connect all schools worldwide by 2030. It operates autonomously for about nine hours and updates when connected to the Internet.
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Biohybrid Fungus Robot – Nature-controlled tech
USA & Italy
Cornell University and University of Florence researchers have developed a robot controlled by electrical signals from King oyster mushroom mycelium. Their work pioneers ‘biohybrid’ robots that could monitor soil chemistry changes in agriculture. By cultivating the fungi and using it within a 3D-printed robot framework, they translated mycelium electrical responses to UV light into digital commands that moved robots. This biohybrid technology may lead to autonomous robots capable of detecting and responding to environmental changes in crop fields.
Concrete Supercapacitator – Energy storage with common materials
USA
Researchers at MIT have developed a novel electricity storage system using cement, the second most consumed material on Earth. Traditional lithium-ion batteries rely on rare materials like cobalt, lithium, and nickel, but the new cement-based supercapacitor offers a more sustainable alternative. By combining cement with carbon black, which has a large surface area for electron storage, the team created a supercapacitor capable of storing enough electricity to power a house for a day. The process involves mixing cement, carbon black, and water, then hardening the material to form electrodes. This innovation not only curbs cement’s environmental impact but also provides a scalable solution for energy storage, with potential storage capacities of 20 to 220 Wh per cubic meter.
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EnPhytoBox by Syrinx – Wetland in a box
Australia
Billions of people are subject to water-stressed conditions. Syrinx, an Australian startup, has developed the EnPhytoBox, a modular “wetland-in-a-box” designed to locally recycle and clean water. Inspired by natural wetland filtration, the system uses plants, biosorbents, and microbes to treat wastewater without creating waste. The EnPhytoBox is energy-efficient, can be powered by renewable sources, and is remotely monitored via IoT technology. Scalable and self-sustaining, it has various applications such as water recycling on farms, groundwater cleaning, and post-mining remediation. It also supports nature repair and alternative water supplies for remote communities.
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Klim – Regenerating agriculture with data
Germany
Klim, a Berlin-based agritech startup, is promoting regenerative farming. The platform helps farmers transition to regenerative practices that enhance soil health, increase biodiversity, and capture carbon.
Using satellite data, soil samples, and primary data, Klim enables farmers to plan, execute, and track their regenerative efforts. This approach allows farmers to earn revenue not only from traditional crops and livestock but also from selling carbon “insets” linked to their supply chains. Food companies can purchase these “ecosystem services” to make their supply chains more sustainable. Klim has already served 3,500 farmers, covering 700,000 hectares of land, and works with clients like Nestlé, Kaufland, and Aryzta.
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NatureLM-Audio by Earth Species Project – Decoding non-human languages
USA
NatureLM-audio is a model designed to analyze animal sounds, trained on a large dataset including bioacoustic recordings, human speech and music. It can identify species, predict the age of birds or classify types of calls without requiring retraining. Capable of generalizing to unknown species, it responds to natural language queries by generating textual descriptions. By leveraging both human and animal data, NatureLM-audio offers a solution to the lack of bioacoustic data and provides new capabilities for ecological research and conservation. The aim of the Earth Species Project is to decode non-human languages using AI according to language patterns.
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Rize – Make rice green again
Singapore
Rice accounts for around 10% of global emissions of methane (a far more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2), so has the highest carbon footprint of any crop. This is because it is grown in water to prevent the formation of weeds. The water is gradually depleted of oxygen, allowing methane-producing bacteria to develop. Drying out the field several times a year could prevent those bacteria from forming, a proven technique that many traditional farmers are reluctant to implement. Rize’s economic model involves selling farmers seeds, fertilizer, pesticides etc. at lower prices thanks to their bulk buying power in return for farmers implementing the technique. Field trials show a 50% reduction in methane production with no drop in yield.
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TerraBreeze by Social Cooling – Rethinking air conditioning
Austria
The TerraBreeze is an eco-friendly, innovative air conditioning system that combines modern technology with ancient cooling methods. Designed as a compact, standalone, plug-and-play device the size of a bedside table, it requires no external unit or exhaust pipes, simplifying installation. TerraBreeze consumes significantly less energy than traditional air conditioners while delivering comparable cooling performance, significantly reducing energy costs and carbon emissions.
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Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering – Restoring the seabed with drones
USA & Ireland
Seagrass, covering only 0.1% of the ocean floor, is vital for marine ecosystems, supporting plants and fish, filtering water, and capturing carbon. However, it is being destroyed at a rate of 7% annually due to climate change and other factors. Ulysses Ecosystem Engineering aims to restore seagrass using autonomous robots. To enhance ocean biodiversity and boost nature conservation, the robots collect seagrass seeds from healthy donor meadows and replant them in degraded areas while monitoring the new vegetation’s growth. The low-cost robots accelerate restoration 100-fold compared to manual planting.
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Vycarb – Scalable carbon capture
USA
Vycarb is using ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) to capture and store carbon in stable mineral forms. At its test site by New York City’s East River, the startup uses crushed calcium carbonate and other components to create an alkaline slurry that neutralises CO₂-rich water. The process converts dissolved CO₂ into stable compounds, preventing it from re-entering the atmosphere. Vycarb’s precise monitoring system directly measures CO₂ levels in the water before and after treatment, unlike other OAE methods that rely on complex modelling. Early results show a significant CO₂ reduction. Currently, the project is set to remove 60 tonnes of CO₂ annually, showcasing a scalable solution to global carbon capture challenges.
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