30 Clean Tech “Moonshots” Could Unlock Net Zero Energy Breakthroughs

New Climate Tech Atlas highlights opportunities for a net zero future

Clean energy adoption is surging, driven by record renewable energy deployment that passed 40 percent of global electricity generation in 2024 and could supply half of global electricity demand by 2030.

Decades of innovation have made technologies like solar, wind, batteries, and electric vehicles among the cheapest options available today – cutting consumer costs while they strengthen domestic energy security.

But even surging growth of these technologies is still falling short of the trajectory needed to hit net zero emissions by 2050, the target established by the United Nations to secure a safe climate future.

Innovation, combined with proper investment and supporting policies, can accelerate decarbonization by unlocking new technologies in unexpected ways – consider how U.S. government subsidies and research for shale gas fracking that began in the 1970s unlocked the enhanced geothermal projects are now being deployed by American companies like Fervo Energy.

So, what are the breakthroughs of tomorrow that can be unlocked by the research and investment of today?

A new digital platform, the Climate Tech Atlas, identifies more than 60 technical “innovation imperatives” and 40 “moonshots” across 24 opportunity areas to accelerate decarbonization and create a new generation of clean energy jobs – it’s “a compass pointing to the frontiers of tomorrow,” according to Ryan Panchadsaram, co-author of Speed & Scale.

Energy Innovation joined the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, Speed & Scale, Breakthrough Energy, McKinsey Sustainability, and Elemental Impact to identify the opportunities where innovation can drive investment and accelerate deployment of the climate technologies needed to unlock a decarbonized future. Our team modeled out the potential emissions reductions at stake for the Atlas’ priority policies and technologies.

The Atlas covers six primary sectors: electricity, transportation, manufacturing, buildings, and greenhouse gas removal; along with food, agriculture, and nature. Since Energy Innovation focuses on cutting energy sector emissions, this post highlights 30 clean tech “moonshots” along with 60 “innovation imperatives identified by the Climate Tech Atlas in energy-intensive sectors that could unlock a net zero future. These moonshots are high-risk, high-reward innovations that could take longer to unlock but could radically alter the net zero pathway.

Manufacturing sector

Industry – manufacturing things like steel and cement – emits a third of human-caused climate pollution, and could be the world’s largest source of greenhouse gases within decades. We can’t secure a safe climate unless we clean up the factories that make everything society needs to grow, and these moonshots could fundamentally clean up how products are made, used, and reused The Atlas identifies a whopping 26.7 gigatons of emissions at stake for the manufacturing sector in 2050, including these seven moonshots:

• Carbon-Negative Concrete: This moonshot aims to turn our buildings and infrastructure into sponges that soak up carbon dioxide by inventing carbon-negative building blocks that perform as well as today’s materials at a competitive cost and that can scale to billions of tons per year. Success here could fundamentally redefine construction, turning civilization’s foundation into a lasting reservoir for captured carbon.

• Infinite Steel Recycling: This moonshot seeks to turn steel, the world’s most recycled material, into an indefinitely closed loop that removes trace impurities which degrade quality and restricts scrap use in high-performance applications, drastically reducing the need for virgin ore and slashing emissions from primary steelmaking.

• Ultra-Low-Cost Electrolysis: This moonshot would make electrolysis so efficient and inexpensive that it outcompetes fossil fuels as the primary pathway for chemical production, creating critical molecules with clean electricity at a fraction of today's cost. Hitting this target would enable vast production of cheap green hydrogen and other foundational chemicals.

• Scalable Geologic Hydrogen: This moonshot would determine if geologic hydrogen exists in extractable formations at high enough concentrations to be economically viable, could eventually accelerate or emulate the natural reactions that generate natural deposits, or extend to converting hydrogen into more stable carriers like ammonia to simplify transportation.

• Industrial Nuclear: This moonshot would deploy small modular reactors to decarbonize industrial heat, providing steady, on-site, clean energy capable of meeting the intense thermal demands of products like steel, cement, and chemicals without fossil fuel emissions.

• Carbon-Negative Mining: This moonshot would convert mining byproducts into resources to lock away carbon dioxide via the natural process of mineralization, turning a large source of emissions into a powerful carbon sink through enhanced weathering.

• High-Efficiency Resource Extraction: This moonshot could reinvent mining processes to minimize its emissions and waste footprint and dramatically expand the critical mineral production needed for the clean energy transition.

Electricity sector

The global electricity sector powers our economy, is the backbone of a net-zero future, and is required to shift fossil-fueled factories to vehicles to clean electrified technologies – but the power sector is still the world’s largest source of carbon dioxide emissions due to burning coal and gas. The Atlas identifies 13.3 gigatons of emissions at stake for the electricity sector in 2050, including these 13 moonshots:

• Ultra-High-Efficiency Solar Cells: This moonshot would advance integrated tandem perovskite cells and other next-generation architectures to convert more sunlight into electricity, enabling cities to be powered from smaller land footprints, embedding high-output generation directly into vehicles and buildings, and unlocking clean energy in even the most space-constrained environments.

• Commercial Fusion: This moonshot would be the equivalent of building a star here on Earth to deliver limitless clean energy. Scientists have already demonstrated fusion but harnessing it for power generation will require major advances to sustain reactions at high power densities, control it precisely, and convert its energy into electricity with systems that can endure the extreme environment of a fusion reactor. Achieving commercial fusion would be a turning point for humanity, providing a permanent solution to global power needs.

• Deep Geothermal: This moonshot would drill deeper than ever before, tapping superhot rock more than five kilometers deep to unlock energy almost anywhere on Earth. This breakthrough could provide firm, carbon-free, baseload power that’s always on, independent of the weather, and available to every nation, turning the ground under us into the ultimate clean power plant.

• Space-Based Solar: This moonshot would deploy solar arrays in orbit and transmit clean energy to Earth, but would require radically reducing the cost to either launch these arrays or build them in space while mastering technology to beam that power down safely and efficiently. This breakthrough could unlock the ability to deliver energy to any point on the planet, day or night, untethered from land or weather constraints.

• Direct Nuclear Conversion: This moonshot would break the cycle of nuclear power being trapped in a steam-age paradigm by capturing raw kinetic energy from nuclear reactions and converting it directly into electricity. This breakthrough would require a leap in physics and materials science but could unlock hyper-efficient reactors.

• Mobile Clean Power: This moonshot would unlock mobile baseload generators — like floating nuclear or offshore renewables that could be anchored to coastal grids during peak summer heat or winter cold, then redeployed for disaster recovery or remote industrial needs. This breakthrough could bypass barriers to building permanent infrastructure and deliver flexible, carbon-free electricity that transforms global energy resilience.

• Carbon Fuel Cells: This moonshot could convert carbon from accelerating climate change to arresting it by transforming solid carbon like agricultural waste or forest clutter into direct carbon fuel cells. Today’s fuel cells typically run on hydrogen, but could be converted to solid carbon fuel sources that generate electricity more efficiently. These systems could use widely available clean carbon feedstocks to deliver clean, dispatchable power.

• Novel Generation Sources: This moonshot seeks to discover entirely new ways to generate clean electricity beyond today's technologies, from harnessing the hydrologic cycle to unlocking novel chemical energy without the carbon. These technologies may seem speculative, but they’re where small bets made today could yield transformational breakthroughs in clean power tomorrow.

• Nuclear Batteries: This moonshot envisions using surplus clean power to drive particle accelerators that create nuclear fuels for later conversion back into electricity. These fuels could store millions of times more energy per unit mass than today’s batteries, unlocking truly long-term, high-density storage. If solved, nuclear batteries could be the ultimate long-duration storage, providing resilient clean power on demand.

• Superconducting Transmission: This moonshot aims to revolutionize the grid’s fundamental physics through power lines with near-zero electrical resistance by either mastering advanced cooling systems or discovering a room-temperature superconductor. This would eliminate line losses and move massive amounts of clean power across countries.

• Wireless Power: This moonshot would cut the cord on our energy system, wirelessly beaming clean energy from where it’s generated to where it’s needed, overcoming some of today’s greatest grid challenges like decades-long permitting battles, land-use conflicts, and weather vulnerabilities of physical power lines.

• A Global Grid: This moonshot envisions building an electrical grid covering the entire planet through an interconnected network that uses ultra-long-distance transmission to move clean energy across continents through subsea cables, the atmosphere, or even space. This could solve renewables intermittency with a perfectly balanced system where clean power is always available.

• Alternative Electricity Carriers: This moonshot aims to "bottle lightning" by transforming electricity from an instantaneous flow into a transportable physical commodity by creating high-density electricity carriers, like metals, that can be stored and shipped anywhere in the world. That energy could then be released by reversing the process, bypassing traditional long-distance transmission infrastructure.

Transportation sector

Electric vehicles have moved into the fast-lane, with sales passing 17 million vehicles in 2024, composing more than 20 percent of new cars sold worldwide. But transportation is still the world’s second-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions and goes beyond passenger vehicles to the trucks, ships, and planes that require enormous amounts of energy delivered over long periods of time. The Atlas identifies 9.4 gigatons of emissions at stake in 2050 in the transportation sector, including these five moonshots:

• Ultra-High-Density Energy Storage: This moonshot would develop batteries or fuel cells with over 1,000 watts per kilogram, far more than today’s best commercial cells, to enable fully electric long-haul flight and ocean shipping and open the door to zero-carbon global transport.

• Onboard Power Generation: This moonshot would achieve compact, high-density power sources like small modular nuclear for shipping or integrated high-efficiency solar power on vehicles, unlocking near-limitless operation without relying on external refueling.

• Remote Power: This moonshot envisions remote power sources like wireless microwaves or laser transmission to power vehicles remotely instead of carrying all their energy onboard. This could eliminate the weight and size constraints of batteries to empower long-range electric transport with minimal onboard storage.

• Advanced Airframe and Ship Design: This moonshot would reorient planes and ships from fossil fuel-based designs to advances like ultra-light airframes, distributed electric propulsion systems, novel hull shapes, and hybrid architectures paired with advances in electricity, hydrogen, or other zero-emissions fuels.

• · Ultra-High-Speed Ground Transport: This moonshot would develop ultra-high-speed ground systems like hyperloop or maglev rail to provide long-distance passenger transport at aircraft-level speeds with a fraction of the emissions while avoiding airport congestion.

Buildings sector

The buildings we work and live in compose roughly a quarter of energy-related emissions worldwide, and once built, lock in emissions for decades due to the slow capital stock turnover of appliances and structures themselves. Since total global building space could grow 15 percent by 2030, we need to change how we build and operate the places we live and work. The Atlas identifies 7.7 gigatons of emissions at stake in the buildings sector, including these five moonshots

• Carbon-Negative Building Shells: This moonshot could empower our buildings to actively remove carbon dioxide through carbon-negative shells that use exterior coatings and surface materials to remove or capture emissions through mineralization, photocatalysis, or bio-based processes.

• Superior Structural Materials: This moonshot would obviate the need for emissions-intensive steel and cement through entirely new classes of structural materials — engineered composites, bio-based alternatives, or advanced ceramics — that can match or surpass steel and cement in strength, durability, and cost.

• Advanced Air Management: This moonshot would slash building energy demand by replacing energy-intensive and inefficient HVAC systems with ultra-efficient filtration, carbon dioxide scrubbers, and air quality systems that recycle indoor air instead of constantly replacing it.

• DC Building Systems: This moonshot would cut inefficiency in modern appliances, lighting, and electronics that rely on alternating current which waste energy through constant conversions. Instead, DC building systems could enable seamless integration with rooftop solar, battery storage, and electric vehicles or even plug directly into the existing AC grid.

• Clean Refrigerants: This moonshot would develop entirely new classes of ultra-low-emission, high-efficiency refrigerants that eliminate leakage impacts and boost system performance to cut the impact of air conditioning, one of the fastest-growing drivers of building energy demand.