Senior Associate, Rocky Mountain Institute
Ten years ago, Radhika Lalit was invigorated by a new sense of purpose and determination: Instead of helping people adapt to a changing climate, she was going to stop it from happening.
As a Senior Associate with Rocky Mountain Institute, Radhika finds market-based solutions for scaling energy efficiency across the globe. She’s worked on a number of initiatives around clean energy and energy efficiency financing in the U.S. residential and commercial building sectors.
Now, Radhika is leading an international competition – The Global Cooling Prize – that harnesses the power of innovation to develop superefficient and affordable air conditioning solutions for millions of people across the globe. The future holds rising temperatures, bringing with it a greater demand for cooling. And, as populations grow and GDPs and standards of living rise, more than 1.6 billion air-conditioning units are going to enter the market by 2050, which could increase global temperatures by 1.5 degrees.
Radhika is incentivizing innovators from around the world to develop a cooling technology that has 5X less climate impact, which could mitigate 1 degree C of global warming by 2100 and provide millions of people around the world with improved quality of life. She’s calling it, “The Next Cooling Revolution”.
Radhika participates in the EDF Climate Corps network as a Connect platform ambassador and is passionate about mentoring women looking to start their careers in corporate sustainability. Radhika is a graduate of Standford University.