TIME100 Climate list honors eight Stanford alumni

Time magazine’s second annual list of 100 business leaders in climate worldwide includes eight Stanford University alumni, while another made the TIME100 Next list for his carbon sequestration startup.

One Stanford alumnus, Tom Steyer, MBA ’83, made the Climate list in the subgroup “Leaders.” The “Innovators” subgroup includes Bret Kugelmass, MS ’12; Tim Latimer, MS/MBA ’17; JB Straubel, BS ’98, MS ’00; Nedjip Tozun, BS, ’02, MBA ’07; and Colin Wessells, PhD, ’12.  In the “Catalysts” subgroup are alumni Ellen Jackowski, MBA ’18, and Michelle Tan, MBA ’17. Notably, five of the eight hold Stanford Graduate School of Business degrees.

Climate leaders

Time recognized Tom Steyer along with Katie Hall, his co-executive chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions, a climate-focused global investment firm. Specifically, the magazine’s editors cited Galvanize’s new real estate division, which buys buildings with significant decarbonization potential. It then upgrades the properties by, for example, replacing fossil fuel-based heating with solar power, making buildings more energy efficient, and fortifying them against extreme climate events. The division expects to invest $1.85 billion over the next three years.

Climate innovators

The five Stanford alumni Time honored as innovators were recognized for their sustainable energy companies. Bret Kugelmass is the founder and CEO of Last Energy, which is developing a very small modular nuclear reactor and has contracts to bring its first one online by 2027. The startup has commercial agreements for 80 microreactors, according to Time, most of which will be used at data centers. Kugelmass secured a new $40 million series B funding round this past summer.

The magazine also recognized Tim Latimer, CEO and co-founder of the enhanced geothermal startup Fervo Energy, as a climate innovator. Latimer and his team have applied their knowledge of technologies behind the boom in U.S. oil and gas production, including horizontal drilling, but for renewable energy. And, unlike solar and wind power, geothermal energy is produced around the clock. The company recently won federal approval for a project in Utah that could power two million homes, and it continues to cut its production costs.

Like many younger cleantech entrepreneurs who attended Stanford, Latimer took the entrepreneurial course Stanford Climate Ventures and received a grant from the Innovation Transfer Program at the university’s TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, both of which helped set Fervo on its path.

“I specifically chose Stanford and pursued the dual degree so that I could equip myself with the skills necessary to start a geothermal company.” –Tim Latimer, MS/MBA ’17

JB Straubel, co-founder and former chief technology officer of Tesla, was recognized as the founder and CEO of Redwood Materials. The business recycles the materials in lithium-ion batteries and repurposes them for electric vehicle batteries or less-demanding energy storage applications. Redwood retrieves up to 95% of the critical minerals from batteries while producing less greenhouse gas emissions than traditional battery recycling, according to Time. It sells refurbished materials to customers, including Audi, BMW, Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen. Battery recycling lessens the EV industry’s mineral supply vulnerabilities and mining’s environmental damage.

Time also honored Nedjip Tozun, founder and CEO D.Light. Tozun's company makes inexpensive and clean lanterns, solar home systems, and other appliances, primarily for people living in rural areas of developing economies with no electricity systems. Using a pay-as-you-go business model, D.Light has brought electricity to 30 million homes in 72 countries, according to Time, and the company hopes to serve one billion people by 2030. The company estimates that it has supplied power while avoiding 38 million metric tons of GHG emissions by replacing kerosene with its products.

The fifth entrepreneur in the climate innovators group is Colin Wessells, founder and co-CEO of Natron Energy, the first U.S. company to produce sodium-ion batteries at a commercial scale. Backers of the up-and-coming battery chemistry hope to compete with the dominant lithium-ion battery design. The big attraction for sodium-ion batteries is that they will become less expensive than lithium-ion while also avoiding lithium-ion’s vulnerability to mineral supply chain disruptions. Natron recently announced plans to build a $1.4-billion “gigafactory” in North Carolina.

Climate catalysts

Ellen Jackowski, the chief sustainability officer at Mastercard, is one of two Stanford alumni that Time recognized in the Climate catalyst subgroup. Under Jackowski’s leadership, Mastercard in 2023 grew revenue by 13% while decreasing its emissions by 1% compared to 2022. It also cut its Scope 3 emissions by 40% compared to its baseline year of 2016. “All of this puts Mastercard in a steady position to hit its interim 2025 climate targets on its way towards net zero by 2040,” the magazine says.

Michelle Tan, the head of sustainability at the Singapore Economic Development Board, a government agency, was also honored in the catalyst group. Tan has contributed to building Singapore’s carbon services ecosystem. With a population of six million people, the city-state is making its carbon credit market more accessible, transparent, and accurate, according to Time. Buying carbon credits has been criticized for years as lacking integrity and as inferior to companies reducing their GHG emissions. The Economic Development Board this year launched the Carbon Market Alliance and the Singapore Emission Factors Registry, which helps local businesses track their carbon emissions more accurately, the magazine’s editors write. 

The TIME100 Next list, which was announced last month, also includes a Stanford alumnus working on sustainable energy. Aadith Moorthy, PhD ’18, founder and CEO Boomitra, which pays farmers and ranchers across the globe to recarbonize their soil through improved land management. It then measures and verifies the carbon sequestration and sells the offset credits. Boomitra says it has motivated the removal of 10 millions tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  

Time describes its Next list members as “rising stars who are shaping the future of business, entertainment, sports, politics, science, health, and more.” In addition to Climate and Next, the other TIME100 lists are Women, Health, and AI. The flagship TIME100 list spotlights the “most influential people” of the year worldwide and over a wide array of work. It tends to be dominated by artists, athletes, politicians, and CEOs.

Read the full TIME100 Climate report here. The individual profiles include brief interviews.

Steyer and Straubel are also members of the Precourt Institute for Energy's advisory council. The Precourt Institute and the TomKat Center are both part of the Stanford Doerr School of Susainability. The Stanford Climate Ventures course is funded by Tom and Johanna Baruch and offered through the Department of Energy Science & Engineering. The TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy was founded in 2009 with a gift from Steyer and Kat Taylor, JD/MBA ’86.