Open source takes on climate tech from ocean to grid

Environmental sustainability has become a core driver of open source development. Two organizations show how far that work can reach — one building AI tools to identify marine life from underwater imagery, the other crowdfunding solar installations in the Global South where renewable investments deliver outsized carbon reductions.

FathomNet: Bringing AI to ocean monitoring

At the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), principal engineer Kakani Katija heads FathomNet, an initiative focused on monitoring biological systems in the ocean at scale. As climate-driven changes push new blue economy and blue energy projects into marine environments, researchers need better tools for understanding how existing biological communities will respond.

FathomNet aims to provide the labeled dataset needed to unlock AI-powered ocean observation — a critical resource for future conservation, exploration, and discovery work.

To grow that dataset, MBARI is turning to a broader community of contributors. Later this year, the institute will launch FathomVerse, a mobile game that pushes machine-generated imagery proposals to players who identify what the images show. Community consensus labels are then pushed back to FathomNet.

The approach tackles a real supply problem: relatively few experts can identify an animal to species or genus level from imagery, but far more people — from ocean enthusiasts to those with a marine biology background — can produce labels of real research value. Players receive in-game training and both instant and delayed feedback on their accuracy against community consensus.

Headshot photograph of Kakani Katija. She is standing on a beach with the ocean visible behind her.

Open data as a democratizing force

Within the oceanographic community, data has historically been siloed by the institutions with access to advanced robotics and research vessels. By making datasets public and adhering to FAIR data principles, FathomNet hopes to democratize access to ocean research.

The broader cultural shift toward open data in this field is still in transition, Katija says. Many researchers remain hesitant to commit their datasets to open pipelines. However, FathomVerse is designed to demonstrate the engagement and value that open contributions can create — potentially helping push hesitant groups across the threshold.

Early enthusiasm from the game's beta testers (>1,000 unique players) centers on what Katija describes as the "positive use of AI." Testers respond well to the transparency around data sourcing, intended use, and the conservation mission — a contrast with more extractive AI applications.

Renewables.org: Crowdfunding solar with measurable impact

Renewables.org uses an online investing model to finance solar projects across India and Africa. The nonprofit targets these regions because they offer the highest carbon impact per dollar — several times greater than comparable U.S.-based investments. The organization has funded about a dozen distributed solar projects so far.

Their model lowers the barrier for individual participation: Anyone can purchase a $25 panel share from the organization's website. The investment is repaid monthly over five years at 42 cents per month. Recipients can either withdraw repayments or reinvest them to subsidize additional panel purchases.

Headshot photograph of Lassor Feasley, a man with short dark hair wearing a tan sweater over a black collared shirt.

The concept builds on experience from Kiva.org, where one of Renewables.org's founding board members, Premal Shah, helped build the microfinance platform. Climate and sustainability investments were consistently among the most in-demand categories in that community, and Renewables.org has recruited many of its early users from Kiva's climate-focused groups.

Prioritizing transparency through open source

Before launching, Renewables.org recognized that its audience demands significant transparency — a key driver for its open source approach. The organization's impact calculation methodology, which estimates ROI per dollar, is built on three data points:

  1. Carbon intensity of non-U.S. projects compared to typical U.S. equivalents, usually two to three times higher.
  2. Sunshine availability, roughly 20% higher per year.
  3. Watts built per dollar, two to three times more than in the States.

The combined effect is roughly five times the carbon impact per dollar versus U.S. installations.

Renewables.org publishes the methodology in open source, reasoning that trust is built through transparency — and that community input may lead to better impact measurement. Scott Schwartz, CTO, notes the organization is assessing additional open datasets like electricity maps for integration into their platform, while currently drawing solar irradiation data from OpenWeather's API. They plan to add API-first design for site functionality as they scale.

Headshot photograph of Scott Schwartz, who is wearing a white collared shirt under a grey blazer jacket. He is smiling and standing underneath a palm tree.

The pairing of planetary monitoring with distributed clean energy finance illustrates how far open infrastructure has already reached. The repositories, datasets, and tools are public and growing, supported by an active contributor base interested in making both climate resilience and renewable deployment more explicit, transparent, and measurable.