Jacquelyn Francis on Finding, Funding, and Elevating Climate Leaders

Flanigan's Eco-Logic

In this episode of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Jacquelyn Francis, Founder and Executive Director of the Global Warming Mitigation Project (GWMP). GWMP contributes to decarbonizing the planet by identifying innovative climate leaders and deploying resources to advance solutions. It comprises three interconnected programs that work together to address the funding, capacity building, and visibility challenges that global changemakers face as they scale their science-based solutions to decarbonize the planet: The Keeling Curve Prize, The Constellations Fellowship, and The Climate Impact Conduit.

GWMP's signature program is the Keeling Curve Prize, which awards $50,000 annually to each of 10 global projects that demonstrate the ability to reduce, replace, or remove greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Since 2018, GWMP has awarded $1.75M to 60 nonprofits, for-profits, and startups, vetted more than 1,100 viable solutions, and grown one of the largest networks of global warming mitigators in the world. The projects that GWMP has awarded are currently projected to reduce 3.27 gigatons of CO2e emissions this year alone.

Ted and Jacquelyn discuss her background, growing up in Aspen, Colorado. While attending John Hopkins University for a Master’s program in Energy Policy and Climate, she decided that the solution to decarbonizing the planet was to find, fund, and elevate climate leaders and entrepreneurs around the world. This realization led Jacquelyn to create the Keeling Curve Prize and the Global Warming Mitigation Project (GWMP) in the fall of 2017, and a commitment to investing her skills, expertise, and resources to help transition all of humanity to a future beyond fossil fuels. She uses scientific rigor, mathematics and pragmatism as tenants for climate forward-thinking leadership.

She shares some of her favorite impact stories with Ted, highlighting creativity from the younger generation finding new ways to make solutions that are smart and effective. She also discusses upcoming events, running programs, and a new tool within their database - carbon abatement portfolios - an idea that comes from the voluntary carbon markets. She concludes by emphasizing that solutions to the energy transition and emission abatement already exist, and are just waiting to be scaled up.