The Climate track at the 2026 Yale Innovation Summit is about what it takes to make climate progress at scale — bringing founders, investors, scientists, and researchers into the same room to push ideas further and faster than any of them could alone. Over two days, the program draws the fields of water, energy, capital, and computation into closer conversation, with a clear focus on the gaps between promising innovation and global impact.

At the center of the program is a keynote session that sets the terms for the entire conversation. In Climate Intuition in a Rewired World, Sarah Kapnick (Global Head of Climate Advisory – JP Morgan) and Aliya Haq (President – Clean Economy Project), will explore how technology, resource use, and geopolitics are transforming the global economy — and what resilient climate ventures need to prioritize in order to build, finance, and scale in a new energy-security era. With trillions flowing into electrification and clean energy, market and political volatility are both accelerating and hindering the rate of innovation unevenly across the globe. The session translates global trends and climate science into decision-grade intelligence for the investors, corporates, and builders shaping what comes next and where it happens.  

That same focus on connecting ideas to action runs through the track's pitch sessions. In the Climate Pitch Competition, ten early-stage ventures across energy, infrastructure, and resilience present to a panel of investors and operators — surfacing where founders are focusing, how they are thinking about cost and scale, and which ideas are beginning to hold up under real scrutiny. The Climate Track Reverse Pitch flips the dynamic entirely, with climate-focused investors taking the stage to outline the most urgent market gaps they want innovators to tackle. Together, these sessions create something rare: a genuine two-way conversation between the people building climate solutions and the people backing them.

The broader program spans critical mineral supply chains, AI infrastructure, water systems, and university research making its way from lab to market. What connects it all is that beneath the headlines, there is an accelerating transformation — grounded in the law of physics, the economics of trade, and technological innovation and spurred on by the people, capital, and ideas capable of shifting the direction of the global economy.

Stuart DeCew, Executive Director of the Yale Center for Business and the Environment and Director of Yale’s Planetary Solutions Impact Accelerator, puts it plainly:  

“Our current moment shows the foresight of the builders, investors and innovators drawn to climate and environmental innovation. They have been building new ventures on clear principles. Clean energy is secure energy. Accessible, plentiful, healthy water is an economic necessity. Global resources are both abundant and scarce. These folks possess a rare integration of scientific rigor, nimble thinking, and market realism the world needs right now. They understand the hard reality of building things and the absolute necessity of healthy ecosystems. The world is moving fast and thankfully we have a network of talented folks who stay ahead of the curve.”