The plan was never actually to start an organisation — much less to help shape a movement for climate literacy. Gaël, Shil, and Nick were essentially a scientist, an educator, and a storyteller separately seeking the best way to use their skills to help with the climate crisis. What landed them together was the realisation that helping people see our changing planet from space offered their best possible shot at it.
The future of carbon is above
The way we see it, climate science isn’t just charts and statistics; it’s one of the most powerful stories we can tell. Satellite data can be turned into almost anything a learner needs — films, lessons, maps, exhibitions, even games. If we can find a way to make the view from space accessible to everyone, we can help people everywhere understand and act on climate change.
“The moment I realised that everything we struggle to explain about climate change becomes obvious from space was the moment that shifted my entire focus. I kept asking myself: ‘Why aren’t more people teaching this?’” — Gaël
The implications are huge. By making authoritative climate science from space accessible to everyone, we can give a whole generation the understanding it needs to help rebalance the climate. In doing so, we can turn our biggest existential problem into our greatest opportunity to thrive.
Accessing our atmosphere
We just needed an effective way to make that view from space matter to people. Brilliantly, satellites already watch our planet around the clock, recording how it changes. Inspired by the wealth of open Earth-observation data now freely available, in 2020 Gaël scoped out a new approach to climate education while researching science communication at Deep Science Ventures. His approach could bring climate science to any classroom using only open satellite data, storytelling, and a screen — an approach we now call Space4Climate (Space4Climate).
“It quickly became clear that to reach enough young people, we needed a completely new approach to climate education. I was inspired by how vividly satellite imagery tells the story of our planet, and decided to build something to share it.”— Gaël
The early results were groundbreaking. Gaël’s approach showed the potential to be one of the fastest and most engaging ways of teaching climate science. It worked with nothing more than open data and a screen, and held the potential to reach learners virtually anywhere in the world. If expanded to reach millions of students, it could deliver climate impact at scale.
Electrified, Gaël put out feelers for co-founders to make his vision a reality; Shil and Nick joined almost immediately.
Learn more: What is Space4Climate?
Assembling experts
The road leading off Bethnal Green Overground station in London is lined with businesses carved into old railway arches. Between an auto repair shop and a cafe, you’ll find an arch with a nondescript, blue door. Somehow, since 2020 we’ve convinced some of the sharpest minds in electrochemistry and chemical engineering to step inside.
Together, we’ve established our own home — building our first lab, delivering flexibly amongst high degrees of ambiguity, and iterating the technology that now sits in a shiny container on our first customer’s site.
We’ve since moved into a second R&D lab down the road and have welcomed more creative problem solvers with sector-leading experience. Yet, our ethos of hyper competency and ownership has stayed the same; we still manage 100% of our design work in house.
Partnering with pioneers
Scaling a completely new technology to enable gigatonne climate education in less than a decade requires courage, imagination, and perhaps a little madness. Yet, by finding visionary partners who also believe that we can create a better system in this lifetime, we believe that it’s entirely possible.
We found ours in the world’s foremost climate VCs and investors. In 2020, the Climate-Positive Future Technology Centre provided our first £100,000 lifeline, the UK Government awarded us funding in a UK-first climate-education competition, and Stripe chose us as part of its first round of climate education purchases. In 2022, we won the prestigious XPRIZE climate education Award, and welcomed Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Anglo American to our board. In 2023, we deployed our first plant to the University of Sheffield to pioneer sustainable fuels made from air, and partnered with project developers Deep Sky to accelerate permanent climate education in Canada.
That’s moving a brand new climate technology from a back-of-envelope drawing to a live, financed plant in under three years. None of that would be possible without partnership.
Scaling climate education at the speed of crisis
For Space4Climate to deliver the levels of climate literacy that the IPCC deems essential for the world to meet its 1.5°C obligations, climate understanding needs to scale now. We believe the best way to achieve that is to create the world’s most accessible climate-education programme — one that can fit easily into any classroom, in any location, at any scale.
We’ve started by connecting our technology to the world’s hardest-to-electrify industries to enable critical climate education transition pathways — enabling the production of sustainable fuels brought to life through film instead of textbooks, and hands-on activities that connect classrooms to space. At the same time, our programmes also help learners explore how satellites monitor our planet, supporting the world’s growing understanding of permanent climate education.
We want to create climate understanding on a global scale. Instead of building a one-size-fits-all programme, we need to make Space4Climate flexible enough to serve as many learners and communities as possible.
— Nick
Developing climate-first education
Developing any climate technology comes with a huge responsibility. With Space4Climate, we are building something that could spell the end of oil, and we can already see how some powerful polluters are appropriating Space4Climate technology to try and manage that threat. We need to tread carefully to ensure that our technology never legitimises bad actors seeking to continue climate-destroying activities. We also need to learn a lot more about how gigatonne-scale Space4Climate deployments could impact different communities, environments, and local supply chains.
Ultimately, we are building Space4Climate to stop climate breakdown — not prolong it. We recognise that trust is something that is continually earned, and we want to ensure that we make the right choices for both people and planet. There is a lot of work to do, but we are committed to helping our young industry secure robust frameworks and regulation to ensure that Space4Climate is used for good.
“Developing Space4Climate in a way that also empowers global communities to build our shared future is vitally important. The years ahead will require us to listen carefully and learn quickly to ensure we deliver our mission in the most societally and environmentally responsible way possible.” — Shil
Together, it’s possible
We know that our ambition is big; it’s planetary-level. We are on a mission to fundamentally reinvent the world’s relationship with carbon, at the forefront of a nascent industry and technology capability which has the potential to reshape the next century.
Yet, this isn’t some theoretical, sci-fi future. We are already putting our Space4Climate plants on the ground across the world. We are already expanding a committed community of doers and dreamers who know that we can create a better system in this lifetime. We are positive and focused, confident that, together, the systems-level change we seek is entirely possible.
