The roadmap from climate strategy to real-world solutions

Imagine a world where conversations have moved beyond climate strategy to delivering climate solutions — that’s the impact the Abrams Climate Academy Fellows are delivering. From protecting coastal communities to removing carbon from the atmosphere, meet two student teams from the Abrams Climate Academy who are collaborating with global impact leaders to help build more sustainable solutions. 

The San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission

CarbonCapture

William Stinson ’26 Two-Year MBA, Madhav Nandan ’27 Evening & Weekend MBA, Sambhav Jain ’26 MMM Program and Mayuri Bochare ’26 McCormick School of Engineering have teamed up with climate tech company CarbonCapture. The team is exploring how direct air capture (DAC) technology can remove existing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere to tackle legacy emissions that continue to fuel climate change. 

Learn more about their innovative fellowship projects and how they’re contributing to sustainable solutions that drive real-world impact. 

Tackling climate challenges and creating value

If you had to explain the climate problem your team is facing to a friend with no sustainability background, how would you describe it in a few sentences?

Team BCDC: The core challenge we are working on is figuring out creative methods for how to fund infrastructure that protects communities before the damage from climate change occurs. Due to climate change, sea levels are rising and storms are becoming stronger, putting coastal areas like the San Francisco Bay Area at greater risk of flooding. Flooding can damage homes, infrastructure and local economies. Protecting these areas through adaptation projects such as seawalls, wetlands or raised infrastructure is costly, and because the benefits accrue broadly over time, it’s often unclear who should pay, how much and when.    

Team CarbonCapture: DAC is the technology that physically removes the existing carbon dioxide from our air, so that it can either be used by industry or stored underground permanently (sequestered). It’s not a replacement for reducing emissions, but it’s a novel solution to address the pollution already present. 

Carbon dioxide acts like a blanket of pollution in Earth’s atmosphere. The more we cut down trees, burn coal, oil products and methane gas, the thicker that blanket gets — and the more heat gets trapped. That warming causes stronger storms, rising seas, and more severe droughts. Drawing down that pollution from the atmosphere with DAC helps reduce that blanket, which is why DAC may become an incredibly important climate solution in the future as these challenges continue to impact our communities and economies. 

What’s the core insight or innovation behind your solution, and why do you believe it could meaningfully shift the status quo?  

Team BCDC: Communities don’t want to pay upfront for benefits that feel uncertain, long-term, or unevenly distributed. Our approach reframes this by making value and responsibility visible as we map out who benefits from resilience infrastructure, who is most at risk from climate impacts, and who can most afford to pay for these efforts.  We then build stacked financing models that harness the power of public-private partnerships (e.g. grants, cross-subsidies, insurance, private capital) that intentionally close equity gaps rather than widen them. This can shift the narrative from having no clear responsible payer to a shared, structured investment with equity designed into the funding solution from the beginning.  

Team CarbonCapture: Even if the world cut pollution from human activities to zero tomorrow, there is still a huge amount of greenhouse gas pollution already in the atmosphere that should be removed to help humanity avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Without removing it, we will not feel the real benefits of stopping emissions for a very long time.  Unlike planting trees — which take decades to grow — DAC technology is a permanent, verifiable, physical solution. It meets the highest standards for carbon credits: removals are precisely measured and stored for thousands of years. This combination of permanence, measurability and scale makes the technology a true environmental benefit, not just a hard-to-quantify, feel-good fix. 

An interdisciplinary approach to tackling climate issues

What has the collaboration between your team and the partner organization been like?

Team BCDC: The collaboration has been incredibly strong and hands-on. We had the opportunity to meet in person with BCDC, where they connected us with stakeholders across the Bay Area, from Alameda to San Rafael to the Port of San Francisco. They are a highly engaged, deeply knowledgeable and passionate group who have consistently provided thoughtful, actionable feedback. They’ve trusted us to bring our own perspective and operate as subject matter experts as we dive deeper into the climate challenge. 

Team CarbonCapture: It's been a strong partnership with in-person meetings and on-site visits. At the facility in Los Angeles, we saw the technology and pilot projects firsthand — making our work very real. Carbon Capture Inc is a startup after their Series A, so they are constantly adjusting their strategy. There are the usual challenges that come with that kind of fast-moving environment, but they have been genuinely collaborative and responsive from the start. Our consistent biweekly meetings have ensured that every question is thoroughly addressed, becoming one of the most grounding parts of the fellowship. 

Speaking of collaboration, your team consists of students from across programs both at Kellogg and Northwestern University. How has this mix of perspectives shaped your solutions approach, and why do you think interdisciplinarity is essential when addressing climate challenges? 

Team BCDC: Our team combines perspectives from business, engineering and design innovation, bringing diverse industry experience including tech, government, life sciences and energy. When tackling issues as complex as funding adaptation projects, we leverage our diversity of experience to break apart the problem into approachable pieces. For example, we’ve drawn from our design, policy and engineering expertise to create insightful stakeholder interview guides and synthesize complex policy landscapes and academic research, while using AI tools to accelerate insights. This cross-functional process helps us move more quickly toward actionable solutions. 

Team CarbonCapture: Climate change affects everything, so you need people who understand different parts of the system. When our team sits down on a problem, an engineer asks, “Can we actually build this?” A businessperson asks, “Who will pay for it?” A policy expert asks, “What regulations are in the way?” Those three questions alone could take a single-discipline team months to surface. A climate technology that only makes sense to engineers or only appeals to investors will fail in the real world. The more perspectives you have at the table, the more agile and complete your solution becomes. 

Every project hits a bump or two. What has been the biggest challenge so far, and how did your team navigate it?

Team BCDC: Midway through the year, our team had to switch to an entirely new project and quickly get up to speed in a new problem space. None of us had deep finance backgrounds, so we had to rapidly learn about funding mechanisms, California policy and coastal resilience stakeholders. We navigated this by dividing work based on our strengths, conducting targeted interviews and synthesizing key research. We also worked closely with our client to access the right resources. This approach helped us quickly form a clear point of view and find our rhythm as a team.  

Team CarbonCapture: The voluntary carbon market has never been stable — that’s just the reality of this space. Demand is unpredictable, credit quality is constantly scrutinized and standards keep shifting. DAC credits are the highest quality available but are expensive and have limited demands. Rather than waiting for the market to catch up, we shifted our focus to carbon utilization: finding use cases where captured CO2 becomes a raw material for industries like food and beverage.  

This pathway doesn't remove carbon from the atmosphere the way sequestration does, but it lowers costs and keeps the technology viable while the market matures. What carried us through was consistency as a team, a clear goal and flexibility. In climate tech, adaptability is not the backup plan; it is the plan. 

The road forward 

What have you learned about building climate solutions that you didn’t expect going into this program?  

Team BCDC: We’ve learned that building climate solutions is much more layered and not just technical, but deeply strategic and human. There’s a lot of hope, driven by passionate people, but also frustration because the problems are complex and interconnected. What surprised us the most is how much progress depends on buy-in. Even strong solutions can stall without the right incentives, funding and coordination. 

Team CarbonCapture: Three lessons have stood out:

1. Climate tech isn’t a niche passion project anymore but an economic necessity. Companies are building climate into everything they do, and every job is quietly becoming a climate job.
2. Government policy is what drives climate technology. Policy creates demand for carbon removal through tax credits, funding and mandates, making commerical viability possible for even the most advanced technologies.
3. Agility and optimism are survival skills. The market changes, strategies shift and plans fall apart. The only way through is to stay curious, listen to differing perspectives and a willingness to start over.  

Building a sustainable future 

Projects like these are testament to the power of collaboration between academia and industry to drive climate innovation. Learn more about the Abrams Climate Academy or submit a project proposal.  

Explore more stories from the Abrams Climate Academy Fellows

• Rethinking recycling and reimagining climate capital
• Reimagining the systems that shape our climate future 

 

The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Kellogg School of Management or Northwestern University.