Governors Island Offers Cash Awards for Plans to Fight Climate Change
The Trust for Governors Island is offering prizes of up to $10,000 each for five winners in its first annual Climate Challenge. The cash awards will go to proposers whose plans can answer, “how can water help to power climate solutions that grow blue and green jobs and create healthier communities?”
The “water abundance” theme of the inaugural challenge is based on the realization that “communities need climate adaptation and mitigation solutions that rework our relationship with water to power a just transition and that create blue and green jobs that can support a safe, healthy future for all,” according to the announcement.
The competition is particularly geared toward startups, entrepreneurs, growing businesses, and nonprofits. Apart from the cash awards, winners will be able to draw upon a pool of $100,000 in additional funding to support deployment costs, as well as free space on Governors Island for up to 12 months, technical support, and promotional opportunities.
“Urban infrastructure and buildings need to be upgraded, presenting opportunities to integrate water-powered and nature-based solutions that can help manage flood risk, decarbonize the grid and city, and restore balanced ecosystems,” the Trust added.
Applications are due on August 15, and winners will be announced this October. Find more information here.
The Climate Challenge is part of the Center for Climate Solutions, a planned $700-million project that will combine interdisciplinary research on climate change with education in a single physical hub. In April, the administration of Mayor Eric Adams announced that a partnership led by the State University of New York at Stony Brook had won a competition to build the facility.
The Center for Climate Solutions’ 400,000-square-foot campus will include classrooms, laboratories, research labs, public exhibition space, student and faculty housing, university hotel rooms, and an auditorium space, and will feature the restoration of more than 170,000 square feet of space within existing, historic structures such as Liggett Hall and the Fort Jay Theater. The project is slated to begin construction in 2025, with a projected opening date of 2028.