It’s easy to get the impression that climate tech is just solar panels and lithium batteries. The founders on this list are building across a far wider spectrum. They’re solving key problems in energy storage, critical materials, forest intelligence, food waste and circular materials across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia.
Supported by climate-venture networks and impact funds like P4G, they’re building in industries that seldom get featured alongside typical solar and wind ventures.
Why Climate Tech Coverage Keeps Missing Half The Picture
The media tends to fixate on shiny hardware and mega-solar farms simply because they offer straightforward narratives.
Complex sectors like material scarcity, organic waste processing and forest intelligence are harder to explain, despite being at the heart of the green transition. Shortages of key raw materials threaten to stall clean technology hardware production, regardless of investment levels.
Geographic bias further distorts the narrative. Founders operating across Kenya, Indonesia, Cambodia or Kazakhstan create technologies tailored to localised challenges, including crop waste, deforestation and unreliable refrigeration.
We found operators focusing on local market realities to deliver lasting impact with their tech.
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The Top Women In ClimateTech In 2026
The following profiles highlight the leaders reshaping the net-zero landscape on the ground.
1. Assia Kasdi, Co-founder, Milvus Advanced
Kasdi founded Milvus Advanced after training as a chemist at the University of Oxford, where her research focused on recreating the properties of scarce metals using earth-abundant alternatives.
The company engineers nanoalloys from abundant elements such as copper, iron and nickel that rival platinum-group metals in performance, cost and supply-chain resilience. Milvus has raised capital from Lowercarbon Capital, Unruly Capital, Übermorgen Ventures, Wilbe, Climate Club, MD One Ventures and Hoxton Ventures.
Critical materials scarcity is a genuine challenge for scaling clean technology, and Milvus Advanced is tackling it directly instead of working around it. The company has moved from milligram-scale experiments to kilogram production and is building its first US demonstration plant, reducing dependence on metals concentrated in a handful of geopolitically sensitive countries.
2. Alessandra Accogli, CEO and Co-Founder, Sinergy Flow
Accogli co-founded Sinergy Flow, an Italian startup creating redox-flow batteries for long-duration energy storage using cheap, abundant materials instead of scarce lithium. Scaling long-duration storage remains a tough hurdle for green power, given how rarely wind and solar output matches real-time energy demand.
Redox-flow technology is well established, but relying on cheap, mass-market materials is where the true commercial win lies. Sinergy Flow operates in a niche set to explode as grid operators seek storage solutions that run for hours instead of minutes.
3. Michelle Ruiz, Founder, Hyfé
Former ExxonMobil chemical engineer Michelle Ruiz launched Hyfé in 2021 to transform food processing waste into green chemicals that replace petroleum in consumer goods. By turning disposal costs into a profitable feedstock, Hyfé flips the balance sheet for its food manufacturing partners.
The startup has secured 11 million dollars in funding from MIT’s Engine Ventures, Synthesis Capital and US Department of Energy grants.
Fruit and vegetable processing alone generates an estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of underused waste every year. Hyfé bridges industrial biotechnology and circular manufacturing, a blend that is drawing significant investor interest.
4. Diana Paola Camacho Sarmiento, Co-founder, NanoFreeze
Camacho Sarmiento co-founded NanoFreeze, a Colombian bio-nanotechnology company developing more energy-efficient refrigeration technology, with applications in food preservation and reducing food loss.
P4G highlights the company as a standout women-led startup, with female founders steering the entire leadership team.
Inefficient cooling drives up emissions and spoils vast amounts of food in emerging economies. NanoFreeze fixes both issues at once, choosing fundamental material innovation over slight equipment upgrades.
5. Dana Shukirbayeva, Founder, FOREST HERO
Shukirbayeva launched FOREST HERO, an AI platform bringing data intelligence to forest conservation across Central Asia.
Her accolades include a Forbes 30 Under 30 listing, a WEF Young Global Leader role, victory at the COP28 Women Climate Entrepreneurs pitch contest, and co-founding both urban startup Qala AI and NGO Climate Action Initiative Central Asia.
Forest monitoring and protection technology is an underdeveloped category relative to its climate significance, and Central Asia is rarely represented in climate-tech coverage at all.
FOREST HERO’s use of AI for forest intelligence points to a category likely to grow as deforestation monitoring becomes a regulatory requirement in more markets.
6. Carol Ofafa, Founder and CEO, E-Safiri
With more than a decade of high-voltage transmission experience, engineer Ofafa launched E-Safiri to make electric mobility viable for rural Kenyan workers reliant on motorbikes and trikes.
Her model focuses on utility over tech hype, by delivering income boosts to local couriers. Supported by its SunRun partnership, the business has generated 400 jobs and claimed 16th position in the Top 50 African Mobility Companies 2026 rankings.
Electric transport works better when designed around local infrastructure rather than being adapted from Western templates. E-Safiri addresses actual operating conditions across Kenya while creating jobs for women as riders, battery operators and hub managers, reflecting a shift toward regional climate innovation.
7. Shen Ming Lee, CEO and Co-Founder, Terra Oleo
Lee is CEO and co-founder of Terra Oleo, advancing microbial technology to produce next-generation fats and oils as alternatives to palm oil.
She is also the author of Hungry For Disruption, a book on food and agriculture innovation and Terra Oleo was selected for Breakthrough Energy’s 2025 Fellows Program, supporting early-stage innovators working toward gigaton-scale emissions reductions.
Southeast Asia’s climate-tech sector is frequently overlooked relative to its environmental stakes, and palm oil alternatives specifically are at the centre of some of the region’s hardest land-use trade-offs. Terra Oleo’s microbial approach offers a route around the deforestation problem rather than a mitigation of it.
8. Roikhanatun Nafi’ah, Founder and CEO, Crustea
After losing over half her crop as a shrimp farmer, Nafi’ah founded Crustea to stop other growers suffering the same fate.
Her startup combines solar aeration, IoT sensors and AI disease monitoring to boost yields while cutting emissions for smallholders. The venture won first place at the World Bank Group Youth Summit 2026 pitch contest, beating more than 900 global entrants.
Building climate resilience into aquaculture practices, instead of treating it as a downstream adaptation problem, positions Crustea in a rare category with real food-security stakes.
First-hand farming experience means Nafi’ah understands the financial pain points as intimately as the technical ones. She advocates for tailored agricultural loans that sync with yield cycles rather than fixed monthly repayments.
9. Hanh Do, CEO and Co-Founder, BUYO Solutions
Do is CEO and co-founder of BUYO Solutions, a Vietnamese company founded in 2022 that converts agricultural bio-waste into bio-resins, tableware and other biodegradable plastic alternatives using bio-fermentation and material engineering.
BUYO was named to the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch 2026 list after raising $2.4 million in funding and grants.
Upcycling organic waste into biodegradable materials stops plastic pollution at the source rather than relying on municipal recycling systems that often fail. BUYO Solutions exemplifies the practical, locally grounded circular manufacturing that international tech outlets routinely ignore.
10. Ingrid van Ginkel, Managing Director, HUSK
Van Ginkel is Managing Director of HUSK, a company converting rice-husk waste into biochar and soil-improvement products across Cambodia and Vietnam, having risen through the organisation from Country Manager Cambodia to COO.
Rice farming generates enormous volumes of husk waste across Southeast Asia, most of which is currently burned or discarded. HUSK’s biochar has been shown to boost crop yields by 15 to 30% and helps address cadmium contamination that has driven export rejections in Vietnam’s durian sector.
Transforming agricultural by-products into biochar delivers a dual benefit for farmers: healthier soil and long-term carbon storage. HUSK built a viable business around regional crop waste rather than theoretical models, attracting institutional backing from Mekong Enterprise Fund IV.
