Frequently Asked Questions

Applications Open: February (date TBA)

Applications Close: April 17 at 11:59 PM IDLW (UTC−12:00) Finalists Announced: July 2 Winners Announced: September

*All dates in 2026

One of the ways that Climate Curve's prizes, including the Climate Curve Prize: Methane,  are unique and wonderful is that we accept applications from a broad range of innovators and climate thinkers, ranging from those elevating tried and true traditional solutions to those pursuing new high-tech frontiers. Whether you are an entrepreneur/startup, a university research group, a government disrupting policy-as-usual, a non-profit or community leader, or an intrapreneur at a large company or organization, we want to hear about the best initiatives to mitigate methane emissions, speed up the diffusion of best practices through social, cultural and financial mechanisms, or transform methane emissions monitoring and reporting to accelerate mitigation action. We want to activate and accelerate methane emissions solutions from many different corners of the world and voices.

It can be hard for a project or pilot program in a single location to be competitive. However, if a single installation or local project is an incremental component of a broader strategy, of a scale that can compete with programs delivering a broader application, or will be scalable in the future, it may be competitive. You must be able to answer; why does your local or single-installation project have the potential to be transformative beyond its current use?

Applicants can contact Climate Curve with questions regarding their application by emailing prizes@climatecurve.org. To protect the integrity of the scoring process and the prize, applicants should not communicate directly with Analysts, Judges, Advisory Council Members, Board Members, or Climate Curve staff regarding their application.

No. The scoring matrix is kept confidential.

If you apply for the prize and do not win, you are encouraged to re-apply if the prize is offered in future years, so long as your project is still active or you submit another project that you believe is a better fit for the prize.

Only check additional categories on your application if you feel that your solution can show a tangible impact to emissions mitigation and/or MRV across multiple categories. It is useful for our team to know whether your solution applies to one or multiple categories, but more categories are not always better if they are not relevant to your solution and its impact.

No. Applications that are not complete will not be considered. We need you to answer all questions as thoroughly and accurately as possible.

While we accept and encourage applications from around the world, we believe that the accurate translation of responses is critical and best left to you, the applicant, and the translation resources available to you. This eliminates any risk of inaccurate or improper translations. If you choose to submit a video as an optional attachment to your application and wish to provide it in your own language, we will happily accept it with English subtitles.

Yes, however, please read the information on the categories, application, and FAQ in detail. The Climate Curve Prize: Methane is a much more specific prize than the Keeling Curve Prize. Make sure that your application falls within the scope of solutions sought in this prize and that you have relevant answers to all of the questions in this application.

The Climate Curve Prize: Methane welcomes and encourages applications from all over the world where Climate Curve distributes funds. The Climate Curve Prize: Methane is obligated to follow U.S. laws and regulations in accordance with sanctions enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The United States currently has comprehensive sanctions on Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and specific regions of Ukraine (Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk), which broadly prohibit transactions. Additionally, the US has targeted sanctions on countries like Belarus, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela, along with many others, which restrict specific activities like exports or financial dealings.Transactions with any person on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN List) are also prohibited. The list of sanctioned countries is not static and changes depending on US foreign policy, so it's best to check the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) website (ofac.treasury.gov) for the most current information on U.S. sanctions programs and the SDN list.

You can find more information about this conversion on the Energy Information Administration or EPA pages.

To prevent any unwarranted access or disclosure of private application information, all Climate Curve Prize: Methane staff, analysts, judges, Advisory Council members, and relevant partners sign confidentiality and conflict of interest agreements. Per the prize eligibility and requirements, Climate Curve reserves the right to disseminate information about your project at its discretion. 

Climate Curve uses the assistance of AI to determine which applications meet our basic eligibility and thorough completion high quality criteria. However, we ensure that our AI tools are closed loop and not feeding information back into public models. This is the only point in the evaluative process where we use AI tools. Your privacy and data protection are important to us and your information will not be fed back into a public model.

Climate Curve and the Global Methane Hub (GMH) launched the Climate Curve Prize: Methane, the first-ever global prize to catalyze and accelerate solutions for reducing methane emissions across the food, agriculture, and waste sectors. Building upon the framework and success of the Keeling Curve Prize, this new prize elevates solutions to address the critical challenge of methane reduction, beginning with agriculture and waste.

As with the KCP, we aim to accelerate and celebrate these solutions by honoring the very best methane emissions mitigation actions worldwide and enhancing their efforts. We do this by providing not only financial resources, but exposure, promotion, and a supporting network to elevate their success.

Sixty percent of methane emissions come from the food system, yet agriculture and waste see very little investment compared to oil & gas. Partially as a result of that, solutions for reducing agriculture & waste methane are typically less cost effective, when they exist at all - thus requiring more attention and resources to accelerate their impact.

The Climate Curve Prize: Methane is a program of Climate Curve (formerly known as the Global Warming Mitigation Project), a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

The Climate Curve Prize: Methane is currently funded through the Global Methane Hub for its inaugural year. If you are interested in supporting this year's prize events or sponsoring the prize in future years, please contact us. It takes a global village to ratchet up this momentum on methane!