A searchable list of 37 climate communities, funders, open-source networks and code repositories, for anyone building or backing climate work with AI.
Last updated 29 Sep 202637 results
Where to find people who have already solved what you are stuck on.
A global climate community of about 38,000 members, run with a large volunteer team. It offers Slack channels, expert office hours, events and mentorship programs. Joining starts with a membership form.
Grew out of the My Climate Journey podcast. About 3,500 members in more than 50 countries, weighted toward founders and operators, with roughly half exploring startup ideas. Membership is by application.
Started in 2021 as an MCJ volunteer program that matched 80 experienced operators with 68 climate startups as advisors, investors and hires. It now runs at climatedraft.org as a beta site for finding climate tech companies to join, advise or back. Aimed at experienced professionals who are not yet working in climate full time.
The research and practitioner community for machine learning applied to climate. It runs workshops at the major ML conferences, a community platform for finding collaborators, an annual virtual summer school, and the innovation grants listed under funding.
A community-driven initiative, run by the prototypes Community in Germany and recognized as a Digital Public Good. It finds, lists and analyses open source projects across climate, energy, biodiversity and natural resources.
The Linux Foundation's home for open source in the energy transition. More than eighty member organizations, including utilities, grid operators and Google, back over thirty-five projects on grid modeling, forecasting, EV charging and substations.
Collects good first issues from climate and sustainability repositories, filterable by category and language, so you can find a first open source contribution. There is a Discord for newcomers.
A job board and company directory for climate tech. It lists more than 8,000 open roles from over 400 companies, so it doubles as a map of who is hiring and what they are building.
A community of practice for tech workers with more than 10,000 members, joined through a short form for its Slack. It has a weekly newsletter, bi-weekly member pairing and a responsible AI series, none of which need code or a repo.
Grants, accelerators and investors for climate projects, grouped by what the project is. Funders back climate outcomes, organizations and research.
An accelerator for tech nonprofits, with unrestricted funding and mentorship on both product and nonprofit management. It requires a nonprofit business model and an MVP that already exists. Projects still building a first version should plan for a later window.
Grants for free and open source work that strengthens the open internet, open to individuals as well as organizations, so an independent builder can apply alone. Open calls run back to back, with themed funds such as Restack. AI projects are generally excluded from Restack, so read the fund text before you write a proposal.
German government money for maintaining open digital base technology such as libraries, package managers and encryption tools. It is unlikely to fit: projects must cost more than EUR 50,000, prototypes are not funded, and user-facing applications are not currently supported. It is listed so you can rule it out quickly.
A free six-week hybrid program for people using AI to build for social impact in the United States, with a $10,000 grant toward AI tools and product work. It is aimed at founders with an MVP and no external users yet, and a nonprofit does not need to be registered. It is a lighter first step before the full Fast Forward accelerator.
A nonprofit investor that has backed more than 160 climate companies and 100 projects. Its Strategy Track covers pre-seed and seed companies building traction, and its D-SAFE is a financing tool for pre-development costs on first projects. It invests in for-profit companies that already have an operating prototype, so it suits a later stage.
An eighteen-month virtual accelerator that connects climate startups with corporate partners, investors and mentors, run with RMI. It focuses on hardtech such as energy storage, renewables, carbon capture, materials and building efficiency, and wants a working prototype and a for-profit team. A software or AI-only project will usually be a poor fit.
Grants of up to $150,000 for a year of work on AI applied to climate, with awardees publishing open datasets and code. No call is open and the program page lists none planned, so use it as background for now. The most recent announced round funded 12 projects from more than 400 submissions across 78 countries, $1.7M in total.
A major funder of climate science through six virtual institutes, including the Virtual Institute for the Carbon Cycle, which received a $45M award. Schmidt Sciences does not accept unsolicited proposals and posts specific open calls for research institutions. Individual builders cannot apply directly.
A $100M challenge for AI applied to climate and nature. Phase I gave 24 organizations $50,000 each, and in October 2025 fifteen of them received Phase II grants of up to $2M over two years. Only nonprofits and academic institutions could apply, the application window closed in August 2024, and no new call is announced. It shows what a funded AI-for-climate project looks like.
Networks, foundations and registries where climate open source projects find contributors, funding and recognition.
Relaunched in 2025 with GitHub, it lists beginner-friendly good first issues from a database of about 2,500 vetted climate and sustainability projects. Use it to find a project to help with, or to get yours listed so contributors can find it.
A directory and analysis of open source projects across climate, energy, biodiversity and natural resources, with an analytics page and CSV exports. Getting your project listed helps people find it.
The Linux Foundation's neutral home for open source energy software, standards and data. It has more than eighty member organizations and over thirty-five projects, and offers a route from one person's repo to software a grid operator can adopt.
A registry and standard for digital public goods, covering open source software, open data, open AI systems and open content. The registry lists 255 certified goods, and there is a DPGs for Climate Action collection. Certification is a credential that funders and governments recognize.
Transparent fiscal hosting for open source projects, through Open Source Collective, a US nonprofit fiscal host. If your tool attracts contributors and you need somewhere for money to legally live without incorporating, Open Collective is a common choice. Fiscal hosts typically charge 4-10 percent.
The lowest-friction way to accept ongoing support for maintenance. For most maintainers it is a small supplement that helps justify the hours maintenance takes.
CCAI runs a community forum, a member directory, workshops and innovation grants for people working on machine learning and climate. It is a research network first, so it suits people who want collaborators and co-authors.
A nonprofit building open source and open data forecasting tools for renewable grids, including solar and demand forecasting used by Britain's grid operator. Its GitHub organization has repos that ask for volunteers, and shows commits through August 2026.
A Linux Foundation nonprofit that publishes standards such as the Software Carbon Intensity spec (with an AI version ratified in December 2025) and free courses on green software. Good for learning how the field measures software emissions before you build anything.
Well-run open source climate projects to learn from: how they document, structure their config and onboard contributors. Each was checked for recent commits and an open source license.
The open data parsers behind grid carbon intensity for electricity systems around the world. It has over four thousand stars and is actively maintained. Study its contributor onboarding: it is a large, live project where a stranger can still make a first contribution.
Energy system modeling and optimization, used across academia and industry. Its documentation is a good model for explaining a technically deep project.
Simulating the performance of photovoltaic systems. Its documentation is widely treated as a reference for scientific Python, so it is a good one to imitate if your tool needs to be trusted by people who did not build it.
Climate risk and adaptation modeling out of ETH Zurich. Research code that moved into wider use, with the documentation and structure that move required.
A single interface to electricity grid data across many independent operators, each with its own API. If your project combines many messy sources into one format, study how this does it.
Converts weather data into renewable energy potentials. It does one thing and stays within that scope, a useful counterexample if your project keeps growing.
Open Climate Fix's implementation of graph neural network weather forecasting. An example of reproducing recent research in the open, with the paper and code side by side.
Open Climate Fix's open solar forecast. The commercial Quartz Solar service from the same charity runs in the control room of Britain's National Energy System Operator, where OCF reports it halved solar forecast error. Study how a nonprofit keeps an open repository alongside a production service.
Short-term energy forecasting developed with Dutch grid operator Alliander and now hosted at LF Energy, with grid operators, vendors and researchers contributing. An internal tool that was opened up, with governance and a community built around it.
The repository behind the directory. It has over 2,500 stars and is essentially a well-maintained list. Keeping a list current counts as a contribution.