Testing a new method to prevent lightning-caused megafires.
Sam Goldman is an experienced social entrepreneur that is passionate about scaling climate solutions. Sam has an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria in Biology and Environmental Studies and was part of the first class to take the Design for Extreme Affordability course at the Stanford d.school while completing his MBA. It was at Stanford he co-founded d.light, a solar energy company that has since sold over 28 million products and impacted 176 million people. Sam spent 17 years at d.light as CEO and President and has been named Social Entrepreneur of the Year by Schwab Foundation, World's Top 30 Social Entrepreneurs by Forbes and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Sam was the Executive CRD Lead at Rethink Climate (formerly Innovative Breakthrough Energy Technologies), a venture studio for high impact climate solutions, when he co-founded Skyward and became CEO.
Sam now resides in British Columbia, Canada and has a personal interest in conservation in the region. While seeking his next high impact opportunity to reduce climate emissions, he met with the authors of a recent report on Catalyzing Carbon Dioxide Removal at Scale, which clearly pointed to wildfires as the largest near term opportunity. Last year, 18 million hectares of Canada burned, representing 5% of its forests (the size of Washington state). The climate impacts of large wildfires are huge: emissions from Canada's wildfires last year represented 85% of India’s annual emissions and reversed nearly 25% of the world’s largest carbon sink, the ocean. In 2023, Canadian taxpayers paid $9 billion, including on health-related impacts, to fight wildfires. Most of this money goes to mitigation once fires are started and very little goes into prevention. While last year’s fires were unusual in scale and scope, experts predict that such megafires will become the new normal.
Current fire suppression policies are no longer sufficient in today’s environment; they must be coupled with new tools that can prevent fires before they start. About 60% of wildfires are caused by lightning, yet 93% of the burn area of Canada’s fires last year was from lightning-caused fires. Fires that are human-caused tend to be closer to human activity and development and are often detected and put out more quickly. As Sam started investigating potential methods to suppress lightning, the Skyward team found research from the 1960s, 1970s, and early 2000’s showing that various military materials and exercises would purposefully and accidentally stop lightning. The Skyward team leveraged this research to work with the University of British Columbia and PhD’s from US universities like MIT, to understand what materials they would use for proof-of-concept and settled on an inert substance consisting of aluminum covered glass fibers, which is regularly used in military operations to intercept and confuse enemy radar and can also dis-charge clouds. The US and Canadian governments and military had conducted various studies, as had a few universities, which found these materials to be safe for humans, animals, land, and water.
Incubated at Rethink Climate, Sam is launching Skyward Wildfire Technologies to test and deploy a new solution to lighting suppression in order to decrease the immediate risks of megafires, while enabling other mitigation strategies such as fuel and forest management to make progress. With the emergence of drone technology, machine learning, and AI capabilities, Skyward is aiming to target probable lightning strikes in high risk wildfire areas using both manned and unmanned aerial vehicles – and ultimately, reduce the climate and environmental damage from mega wildfires. Sam and the team have already secured a partnership with Alberta Wildfire and have begun initial deployments, with early promising results. If the pilots are successful, Skyward will have introduced a new approach to preventing wildfires and built a venture to support its implementation in Canada and beyond. There is also the possibility of optimizing suppression materials and to explore alternative and biodegradable materials.
UP’s award will support Sam’s work with Skyward to test and deploy a novel technology for lightning suppression and, if successful, build partnerships across the public and private sector.
Learn more about Sam Goldman and Skyward Wildfire Technologies here.
Sam Goldman is an experienced social entrepreneur that is passionate about scaling climate solutions. Sam has an undergraduate degree from the University of Victoria in Biology and Environmental Studies and was part of the first class to take the Design for Extreme Affordability course at the Stanford d.school while completing his MBA. It was at Stanford he co-founded d.light, a solar energy company that has since sold over 28 million products and impacted 176 million people. Sam spent 17 years at d.light as CEO and President and has been named Social Entrepreneur of the Year by Schwab Foundation, World's Top 30 Social Entrepreneurs by Forbes and a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Sam was the Executive CRD Lead at Rethink Climate (formerly Innovative Breakthrough Energy Technologies), a venture studio for high impact climate solutions, when he co-founded Skyward and became CEO.
Sam now resides in British Columbia, Canada and has a personal interest in conservation in the region. While seeking his next high impact opportunity to reduce climate emissions, he met with the authors of a recent report on Catalyzing Carbon Dioxide Removal at Scale, which clearly pointed to wildfires as the largest near term opportunity. Last year, 18 million hectares of Canada burned, representing 5% of its forests (the size of Washington state). The climate impacts of large wildfires are huge: emissions from Canada's wildfires last year represented 85% of India’s annual emissions and reversed nearly 25% of the world’s largest carbon sink, the ocean. In 2023, Canadian taxpayers paid $9 billion, including on health-related impacts, to fight wildfires. Most of this money goes to mitigation once fires are started and very little goes into prevention. While last year’s fires were unusual in scale and scope, experts predict that such megafires will become the new normal.
Current fire suppression policies are no longer sufficient in today’s environment; they must be coupled with new tools that can prevent fires before they start. About 60% of wildfires are caused by lightning, yet 93% of the burn area of Canada’s fires last year was from lightning-caused fires. Fires that are human-caused tend to be closer to human activity and development and are often detected and put out more quickly. As Sam started investigating potential methods to suppress lightning, the Skyward team found research from the 1960s, 1970s, and early 2000’s showing that various military materials and exercises would purposefully and accidentally stop lightning. The Skyward team leveraged this research to work with the University of British Columbia and PhD’s from US universities like MIT, to understand what materials they would use for proof-of-concept and settled on an inert substance consisting of aluminum covered glass fibers, which is regularly used in military operations to intercept and confuse enemy radar and can also dis-charge clouds. The US and Canadian governments and military had conducted various studies, as had a few universities, which found these materials to be safe for humans, animals, land, and water.
Incubated at Rethink Climate, Sam is launching Skyward Wildfire Technologies to test and deploy a new solution to lighting suppression in order to decrease the immediate risks of megafires, while enabling other mitigation strategies such as fuel and forest management to make progress. With the emergence of drone technology, machine learning, and AI capabilities, Skyward is aiming to target probable lightning strikes in high risk wildfire areas using both manned and unmanned aerial vehicles – and ultimately, reduce the climate and environmental damage from mega wildfires. Sam and the team have already secured a partnership with Alberta Wildfire and have begun initial deployments, with early promising results. If the pilots are successful, Skyward will have introduced a new approach to preventing wildfires and built a venture to support its implementation in Canada and beyond. There is also the possibility of optimizing suppression materials and to explore alternative and biodegradable materials.
UP’s award will support Sam’s work with Skyward to test and deploy a novel technology for lightning suppression and, if successful, build partnerships across the public and private sector.
Learn more about Sam Goldman and Skyward Wildfire Technologies here.