Team for the Planet Launches €1 Million Global Climate Innovation Award

Team for the Planet, a nonprofit limited partnership founded in Lyon in 2020 and backed by 133,000 shareholders who have collectively raised €41 million across Europe's largest crowdfunding campaign, has launched a global call for innovation awarding €1 million in equity to climate inventors whose technologies can reach industrial scale and deliver measurable greenhouse gas impact of several million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent annually. The award goes beyond capital to pair winners with an experienced executive to co-lead the venture, provide access to the 133,000-strong shareholder network and adopt an open-licence model that has already multiplied one portfolio project's profitability tenfold, with the winner announced in December 2026 and eligibility open to any nationality or legal structure worldwide. Mehdi Coly, Founder of Team for the Planet, said a tonne of carbon dioxide avoided has become an economic asset and that the winner will not receive a prize but will be signing the first funding round of a future global decarbonisation leader.

 

The Selection Architecture and Innovation Criteria

 

The selection process is designed to combine breadth of evaluation with scientific rigour, passing each application through 10,000 trained volunteer evaluators before engagement with an independent scientific committee of 14 experts from CNRS, CEA, INRAE and École Polytechnique, 13 private equity professionals and a final shareholder vote. This multi-stage evaluation architecture reflects Team for the Planet's conviction that identifying the most commercially and technically credible decarbonisation innovations requires both mass participatory screening and expert technical validation, preventing both the concentration of selection authority in specialist gatekeepers and the dilution of scientific standards through purely popular vote. Since 2020, more than 1,700 proposals have yielded 14 portfolio companies across energy, industry, transport, agriculture and construction, providing a track record of selection quality that gives the €1 million award credibility as a genuine pathway to commercial scale rather than a symbolic recognition prize.

Jean Jouzel, former IPCC Vice-Chair, said major innovations needed to structurally decarbonise the economy mostly already exist but are not scaling, framing Team for the Planet's mission as bridging the gap between proven technology and industrial deployment rather than funding fundamental research. This focus on scaling proven innovations rather than discovering new ones addresses a critical gap in the decarbonisation technology landscape where many technically sound solutions fail to reach commercial scale due to a combination of insufficient capital, missing management expertise and lack of market access rather than fundamental technology limitations. The open-licence model that has multiplied one portfolio project's profitability tenfold challenges the conventional assumption that patent protection maximises innovation value, suggesting that wider adoption enabled by open licensing can generate greater commercial returns than restricted proprietary technology for mass-market decarbonisation applications.

 

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The Investment Model and Climate Performance Measurement

 

Team for the Planet's innovative share valuation mechanism, which since January 2026 revalues shares annually against the portfolio's real worth but recognises gains only when a holding's climate targets are met, creates a direct financial linkage between portfolio performance and verified emissions reduction outcomes that represents a genuine structural innovation in impact investment accounting. This performance measurement approach, built around Climate Dividends where one dividend equals one tonne of carbon dioxide avoided, provides investors with a metric that directly measures the core purpose of the investment rather than using conventional financial returns as a proxy for impact quality. The growing interest from venture capital and institutional investors alongside the original crowdfunding shareholder base reflects the commercial validation of Team for the Planet's model as it transitions from a pioneering grassroots initiative into a credible institutional investment platform with a demonstrated track record.

The combination of €41 million raised, 14 portfolio companies and the move toward venture capital and institutional investor participation in five years from founding demonstrates that the crowdfunded impact investment model can achieve institutional scale when the governance, selection and performance measurement infrastructure is sufficiently rigorous to attract professional investors alongside retail shareholders. The French government backing alongside private investors including the Mulliez family and Duval Group provides the institutional credibility and patient capital that allows Team for the Planet to maintain its long-term orientation toward climate impact rather than optimising for short-term financial returns at the expense of its core mission.

 

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Outlook for the Global Innovation Call

 

The December 2026 winner announcement timeline creates a six-month engagement window for climate innovators worldwide to develop and submit applications, with the universal eligibility across nationalities and legal structures reflecting Team for the Planet's ambition to identify the most impactful decarbonisation technology globally rather than privileging innovations from established innovation ecosystems. Whether the 2026 global call can attract applications from beyond the European contexts where Team for the Planet has built its reputation will determine whether the initiative achieves its potential as a genuine global decarbonisation innovation platform rather than primarily a French or European climate technology programme. Sustained deployment of winning innovations toward the several million tonne annual carbon dioxide equivalent impact threshold required for eligibility would establish Team for the Planet's portfolio as a meaningful contributor to global decarbonisation at a scale that justifies the investment thesis and validates the Climate Dividend performance measurement approach.

 

Source: PRNewswire