The Summit
Incubating innovation.
Applications for the 2024 Urban Future Prize Competition are now closed.
The Pitch Event
The Urban Future Summit
The Urban Future Prize Competition culminates with the Urban Future Summit, an event for climate entrepreneurs, technologists, government officials, business leaders, investors, and innovators in New York City.
Through our partnership with New York Community Trust, MUFG Bank, and Mitsubishi Corporation (Americas), the Urban Future Summit will feature pitches from finalists of the 2024 Urban Future Prize Competition and an industry panel discussion. We will also highlight the commitment of our sponsors as leaders who take constructive measures to improve and benefit our planet.
Urban Future Prize Competition Stats
8 Years
The Urban Future Prize Competition is in it’s 8th year running
$800K
In Prizes awarded
20
Startups joined ACRE Incubator from the Urban Future Prize Competition
$8.8M
Average raised so far per startup that joined ACRE through Competition
Past Competition Winners
A Selection of Past Winners
Past prize winners are startups boldly tackling challenges to our urban infrastructure and climate change. We’ve awarded seventeen winners and helped these companies achieve accelerated growth in their respective industries. They’ve received help fundraising, getting large commercial contracts, building out their teams, and expanding to new markets. Look out for these exciting startups as they emerge as leaders in cleantech.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2023
Cadence OneFive
Cadence One Five’s software platform helps asset owners, project funders, contractors, and government come together to increase the speed and decrease the cost of retrofit and adaptation projects in multi-family buildings.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2023
Carbon Collective
Carbon Collective is a climate-focused 401(k) and investment provider on a mission to get climate-smart portfolios as an option in every 401(k) plan in the US.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2022
Olokun Minerals
Olokun Minerals extracts valuable metals and minerals from salty, mineral-rich wastewater streams and creates products that can be used in concrete to build infrastructure, fertilizers for agriculture, and batteries for electronics and vehicles.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2022
LimeLoop
LimeLoop combines reusable packaging and smart technology to create an efficient, profitable reusable shipping program while saying goodbye to single-use packaging.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2021
Remora
Remora captures CO₂ from semi truck emissions. The device mounts between a truck and its trailer, attaches to its tailpipes, and captures at least 80% of its carbon emissions. Remora sells the captured carbon dioxide to concrete producers and other end users, helping companies earn new revenue while meeting their climate commitments.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2021
Shifted Energy
Shifted Energy supports utilities and consumers through deployment of low-cost distributed energy resource control systems and monitoring, machine learning-based data analytics, and aggregation and dispatch optimization software.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2021
Nos Quedamos
Nos Quedamos/WE STAY is a South Bronx-based community development corporation with decades long expertise in advocating for climate justice. They created a plan to support entrepreneurial climate justice solutions in their community. The prize money will directly support their work to cultivate a new generation of youth community leaders who are advocating for climate justice in the South Bronx.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2020
WexEnergy
WexEnergy has designed a window retrofit that reduces carbon emissions and energy loss of the building envelope. WindowSkins can be installed by building staff in seconds with no tools, no disruption, and no construction. WindowSkins improve cash flow for building owners at a cost less than 15% of the cost of new windows. Unlike other window retrofits, WindowSkins snap directly onto the glass windowpane to optimize insulation while allowing windows and window treatments to remain operable.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2019
Amperon
Amperon provides real time load forecasts and analytics based on high-resolution smart meter data for energy suppliers and utilities. They use this data to help suppliers and utilities adapt to rapidly changing grid conditions as they operate their businesses. Amperon currently focuses on grid scale load forecasting for retail energy providers and utilities; they will soon move into premise-by-premise demand forecasting to enable more advanced applications around distributed energy storage operations, renewables firming, peak shaving, and demand response.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2018
Dollaride
Dollaride is a ride-sharing service connecting drivers to people living in transit deserts. The company provides a digital platform and private mass-transit operating framework to communities in need of "last mile" access to public transit. For drivers and passengers, Dollaride's mobile app supports cash and credit card payments. For owner-operators, Dollaride provides a fleet management web application to help owners monitor their operations and cash-flow with real-time data. In NYC, Dollaride supports a loyal ridership of 125,000 daily passengers, and aims to improve upon the existing "dollar van" models with a new layer of digital intelligence.
Urban Future Prize Competition Winner, 2016
Tagup
Tagup offers manufacturers, value added resellers, and end users the means to quickly and effectively integrate their equipment to the Internet, enabling them to monitor asset performance remotely. Tagup’s patent-pending analytics platform can reduce unplanned downtime on equipment, such as power transformers, by as much as 70%.
Join a community of innovators.
Past winners, competitors, and finalists - all changing the climatetech world, one innovation at a time.
“We at Olokun Minerals have enjoyed the support we have received from UFL. Through this collaboration, we have received funding to continue our technology development, connected with our first intern through the NYU collaboration, and connected with brine producers and investors.” - Lacey Reddix, Founder and CEO, Olokun Minerals, 2022 Winner
“The Urban Future Lab has been extremely helpful to the Air Company as we build our business in NYS. The funds we have raised have been with the help of the Urban Future Lab; their introduction led us to our lead funder, Carbon Direct. In a city where it is very hard to find lab space, the Urban Future Lab has been able to accommodate our needs by partnering with the Multifunctional Material Systems Lab at NYU.” – Stafford W. Sheehan, Phd, Co-Founder and CTO, Air Company, 2019 Finalist
“ACRE and the Urban Future Competition provided us a meaningful prize award and the support needed to get our business off the ground at an early stage. The ACRE team was also instrumental in identifying a project opportunity with NYSERDA and Con Edison. The community and overall support is terrific.” – Jon Garrity, Co-Founder, Tagup, 2016 Winner
Competition Sponsors
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