Voting open for top climate change innovations

The MIT Climate CoLab has opened public voting to select the top innovative ideas on how to tackle climate change.

A project of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, the Climate CoLab is an online platform where a growing community of over 35,000 experts and non-experts around the world work together to develop and select proposals to help solve this massive, complex issue.

Each year, the Climate CoLab runs over 15 contests focused on different issues related to climate change, such as decarbonizing the energy supply, implementing a price on carbon, and shifting public attitudes and behaviors. Over the last six months, contest judges evaluated the proposals submitted to the platform and selected 58 contest finalists.

From now until September 12, the public is invited to cast their votes for one proposal in each contest. The author with the most votes will win that contest's Popular Choice Award and, along with the Judges' Choice winners, will receive a special invitation to attend select sessions at MIT's SOLVE conference and present their proposals before key constituents at the MIT Crowds and Climate conference October 5-6, where a $10,000 grand prize will be awarded.

The popular U.S. Carbon Price contest returned this year, which sought innovative policy and political mobilization strategies on how to implement a carbon price in the United States. Serving as advisors for this contest are former U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz; former U.S. Rep. (R-SC) and current director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative Bob Inglis; and former U.S. Rep. (D-IN) and current president of Resources for the Future Phil Sharp.

A number of contests were run in collaboration with organizations such as the World Bank (Urban Energy Efficiency), the American Geophsyical Union (Anticipating Climate Change in the Pamir Mountains) the MIT Sloan Latin America Office (Energy Solutions for Latin America), and the City of Somerville, Massachusetts (Atypical Solutions for Going Carbon Neutral).

Serving as judges for the 15 contests are over 60 experts from MIT, Stanford University, Columbia University, Tokyo University, Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology, the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, the United Nations, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Carbon War Room, the Clinton Climate Initiative, the World Resources Institute, the Paulson Institute, Lockheed Martin, Goldman Sachs, Shell, and many other institutes and organizations.

To vote for your favorite finalists, visit the Climate CoLab website, register for a free profile, browse the 2015 finalists list, and select the "Vote for proposal" button on their proposal page. Each registered voter can support one proposal per contest.

This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching.