The Urban Future Lab is pleased to announce, for the eighth consecutive year, the Urban Future Prize Competition, which seeks to find the brightest climatetech startups and, through the generous support of The New York Community Trust, MUFG Bank, and NYU Tandon School of Engineering, award two winners with $50,000 cash prizes. These awardees will also receive admission into the ACRE Incubator, New York's longest-running and most successful climatetech program.
New this year, we will be running a prize track explicitly focused on climate adaptation and resilience, the Future Resilience Prize. Most funding to date has gone to address climate mitigation (e.g. decreasing emissions), but very little funding has gone to innovations that support the adaptation side of the climate crisis. According to UN estimates, the climate adaptation financing gap is as high as $366B annually. With the Future Resilience Prize, we hope to spotlight innovative climate adaptation and resilience solutions, catalyze more private investment into this space, and ensure a positive impact on vulnerable communities most adversely impacted by climate change.