The Wilkes Center for Climate Science & Policy at the University of Utah announced that Solidec is the winner of the $250,000 Wilkes Climate Innovation Prize for 2026.
Wilkes Center Managing Director Fielding Norton announced the award from Explorers Club in New York City during a collaborative event with XPRIZE during New York Climate Week.
"Winning the Wilkes Climate Innovation Prize means a great deal to our team, and we are thrilled to join the Wilkes community," said Ryan DuChanois, founder and CEO of Solidec. "The award will help us deploy our chemical generation systems with our early customers, producing low-carbon chemicals on site for buyers who currently have them trucked in."
Revolutionizing essential industrial chemical production
Solidec aims to disrupt the conventional and centralized $300 billion chemical logistics market for chemical manufacturing that is heavily reliant on fossil energy for production and vulnerable to transportation hazards and costs. The November 2025 ammonia release in Mississippi that forced emergency evacuations is one of many examples of hazardous chemical accidents that pose serious public health and environmental threats from the country's centralized chemical infrastructure.
Solidec is pioneering a decentralized manufacturing model that is now possible through advances in electrochemistry, renewable electricity, automation, AI and digital connectivity. The manufacturing of hydrogen peroxide, an important oxidizing agent and disinfectant for many major industries, is one area where Solidec is innovating. While conventional production uses an energy-intensive anthraquinone process, newer electrochemical methods can use only air, water and electricity but typically produce dilute, impure peroxide requiring costly downstream separation.
Solidec's reactor, on the other hand, addresses this bottleneck by using a solid electrolyte to produce pure, concentrated chemicals in a single step, eliminating post-separation processing. Their platform can be adapted with selective electrocatalysts to produce chemicals including hydrogen peroxide, formic acid, acetic acid, syngas and ethanol, with potential applications extending to carbon capture, wastewater treatment, mining and battery recycling.
"Solidec was the strongest integrated candidate among our top four prize candidates," said Fielding Norton, managing director of the Wilkes Center. "They have been proving that they're ready to scale to larger commercial operations from successful pilots. They are an ideal fit for Wilkes Prize funding, and we're thrilled to support their climate solution."
Forging a climate innovation ecosystem
The 2026 Wilkes Climate Innovation Prize supports top global ideas for combating climate change. Beyond awarding a single winner each year, the Wilkes Center is building an "innovation ecosystem" to support high-potential solutions poised to make measurable progress toward real-world, practical solutions.
Solidec was selected from nine finalists out of 504 total submissions. An interactive world map shows where the applications originated.
The Wilkes Center is recognizing Gyre Energy and WoodSyn as runners up for the prize, and awarding FABUMIN an Honorable Mention.
Gyre Energy combines physics-based AI, thermal energy storage, and automated controls to reduce cooling costs and energy consumption for cold storage, data centers, and buildings. WoodSyn develops biogenic construction composites that use wood-wool cement technology to transform restoration timber into durable, carbon-storing building materials. FABUMIN is a circular food-tech company that transforms legume cooking water, or aquafaba, into a functional plant-based powder that can replace egg ingredients in applications and reduce water waste, costs, and environmental impacts.
The Wilkes Prize supports solutions with potential impact but uncertainty remains significant and traditional funding or adoption pathways are limited. Eligible solutions can be technological, policy-driven, operational, financial, or hybrid.
A panel of expert judges evaluated finalists on climate-system impact and relevance; plausibility and clarity; differentiation and quality of insight; clear co-benefits; and team expertise and organizational capability.
