Prince William's Earthshot Prize Finalists Announced: Meet the Changemakers Repairing Our Planet

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Prince William's Earthshot Prize finalist roster has arrived!

On Friday, the Prince of Wales' prestigious environmental award released the list of 15 innovators in the running for the five Earthshot categories this year. Over 1,000 solutions were submitted for the second Earthshot cycle — a 30% leap from last year. The winners will be announced during a glittering awards ceremony in Boston this December, which Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton are set to attend.

The prize ceremony will be held at MGM Music Hall at Fenway, next to the iconic Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox — who helped the prince announce Boston as the host city in July!

The five winners will receive $1 million grants to scale and accelerate their project's goals, plus support from the Earthshot network for help along the way. The 15 changemakers reached the penultimate round of the contest process after a rigorous screening and advisory panel review. The winners will ultimately be selected by the Earthshot Prize Council, comprised of members including Prince William, Queen Rania of Jordan, Cate Blanchett, Sir David Attenborough, Indra Nooyi, Jack Ma and more.

In a statement shared with PEOPLE, Prince William said, "The innovators, leaders, and visionaries that make up our 2022 Earthshot Finalists prove there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future of our planet. They are directing their time, energy, and talent towards bold solutions with the power to not only solve our planet's greatest environmental challenges, but to create healthier, more prosperous, and more sustainable communities for generations to come."

RELATED: Earthshot Prize Winner Recalls 'Amazing Conversation' with William, Kate, King Charles and Camilla 

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"I am so excited to celebrate these fifteen Finalists and see the five Winners of The Earthshot Prize announced in Boston – the hometown of President John F. Kennedy, who shared The Earthshot Prize's belief that seemingly impossible goals are within reach if we only harness the limitless power of innovation, human ingenuity, and urgent optimism," he added.

Across five critical categories, the finalists are:

Protect and Restore Nature

Desert Agricultural Transformation (China): A team transforming the barren desert into farmable land through "desert soilization," greatly increasing crop yields with affordability and efficiency.

Kheyti Greenhouse in a Box (India): A startup supporting farmers with Greenhouse-in-a-Box and related training to yield fruitful harvests with fewer pesticides and protection against the elements.

Hutan (Malaysia): A research and conservation organization engaging the community to protect endangered orangutans and other wildlife for a more harmonious coexistence and greener future.

Clean Our Air

Mukuru Clean Stoves (Kenya): A female-founded startup that distributes cleaner-burning stoves to the women of Kenya, a safer and more sustainable alternative to charcoal.

Earthshot Prize Awards

PEOPLE exclusively spoke with Charlot Magayi, founder and CEO of Mukuru Clean Stoves, who said she's most excited to bring her idea to the world stage to help women and families.

"Women are the ones who are most impacted by household air pollution and energy poverty on the continent [of Africa]. So being able to empower them to distribute a solution that helps prevent that, mitigate the risks of climate change, but also keep their children safe, is very exciting for me," she says. "For me, that's the most important part of it."

Whatever the outcome is at the awards ceremony, Magayi adds that she's thrilled she and her team have made it this far.

"I feel like even if we do not win, the validation and the platform that Earthshot provides is going to ensure that we do get there by attracting us to the partners that we've been looking for for years," she explains. "I really do want to win, but even if I don't get the top prize, it gives me a platform that we're going to be able to leverage to get the financing and the resources that we need to scale our business."

The Ampd Enertainer (Hong Kong): An electric battery energy storage system powering construction sites (one of the largest drivers of air pollution and among the most difficult to decarbonize) without the key need for fossil fuels.

Roam (Kenya): A group producing electric vehicles in Africa, making the petrol alternative accessible with more affordable motorcycles and buses in the fast-growing economy of Kenya.

RELATED: Earthshot Prize Winner Reveals How Prince William Is 'Leading from the Heart' Through Awards

Earthshot Prize Awards

Revive Our Oceans

SeaForester (Portugal): A breakthrough tool using "green gravel" to grow seaweed and restore undersea forests, helping revive marine ecosystems.

The Great Bubble Barrier (Netherlands): An innovative technology that pumps out a curtain of bubbles, pushing harmful plastics to the water's surface for waste collection before it can pollute the seas.

Indigenous Women of the Great Barrier Reef (Australia): A network of indigenous women trained as rangers to protect critical ecosystems on land and sea, wedding 60,000 years of traditional knowledge with the latest scientific advances.

Build a Waste-Free World

Notpla Hard Material (United Kingdom): A seaweed and plant-based alternative to single-use plastic packaging, excitingly reducing landfill and ocean waste.

City of Amerstrdam Circular Economy (Netherlands): A city-wide commitment to creating a circular economy by 2050, eradicating waste and celebrating recycling.

Fleather (India): Cleaning the holy Ganges river of floral waste and transforming the byproduct into floral leather, a clean alternative to animal or plastic varieties.

Earthshot Prize Awards

PEOPLE chatted with Ankit Agarwal, founder of Phool, the company behind Fleather, who said that the "warmth" of the Earthshot team since being named as a finalist has made all the difference.

"It's very comforting because doing what we do sometimes gets very lonely. So I feel it's like an extended family that we've got," he says of the new community.

Agarwal added that what he most admires about the Prince of Wales launching the Earthshot Prize is that he did it in the first place.

"It speaks so much about leadership and what the youth today needs and what the future generations need," he says. "Thinking about leading the planet in a better way than what we have inherited it, it's just sheer leadership."

Fix Our Climate

Low Carbon Materials (United Kingdom): A new material designed to reduce CO2 emissions across construction zones and make concrete blocks carbon-zero.

Lanzatech (USA): A circular technology that recycles carbon pollution into sustainable fuels and products.

44.01 (Oman): A new technique to convert CO2 into rock through fast-tracked mineralization, pulling carbon dioxide from the air safely and permanently.

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RELATED: Earthshot Prize CEO Says Prince William 'Only Gets More Ambitious' Each Year: 'He Really Cares'

Inspired by President Kennedy's iconic Moonshot mission to land a man on the moon, Prince William launched the Earthshot Prize in October 2020 to incentivize environmental change and help repair the planet over the next decade. With optimistic urgency, the Earthshot vision believes that human ingenuity can make the planet a cleaner, safer place by 2030.

At the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit in New York City in September, Earthshot CEO Hannah Jones told PEOPLE that the future monarch is most energized about seeing the finalists succeed.

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"The big thing that drives him is the finalists," she explained of her experience with working with the royal. "There's not a conversation where the first thing isn't, 'But how are they doing? Are they okay? Are you looking after them? Are you making sure that they're being successful?' I love that about him. He's really focused on them and making sure that the gift of this platform is one that really helps them move into being exponential in their impact in the world."