People – Earthshot Prize Winner Reveals How Prince William Is ‘Leading from the Heart’ Through Awards

Earthshot Prize winners Vaitea Cowan and Sam Teicher tell PEOPLE how the Prince of Wales' encouragement has changed everything for their planet-saving projects

October 4, 2022

Prince William is supporting Earthshot Prize contenders every step of their journey.

The Prince of Wales, 40, is committed to ensuring that winners and finalists of his game-changing environmental prize receive the resources they need long after their contest cycle wraps. While Prince William wasn’t present at the Earthshot Prize Innovation Summit Wednesday, as the royal family continues to mourn the death of Queen Elizabeth, Earthshot 2021 winner Vaitea Cowan tells PEOPLE she’s excited to see him at the upcoming awards ceremony in Boston in December.

“He is such a force of nature and so real, you know? He is absolutely authentic,” Cowan tells PEOPLE of her experience meeting the prince. “I can feel that his passion is as deep as ours and that he is innovating in his own way. I’m ecstatic and so thankful for everything that he’s provided for us,” adding that she also looks forward to seeing the future King “just to update him on all the progress that we’ve made.”

Cowan co-founded Enapter, an energy technology company whose compact AEM electrolyzers transform renewable electricity into green hydrogen with exciting efficiency. She and her team won the inaugural “Fix Our Climate” Earthshot, with the $1 million prize accelerating their goal of building a mass production site, which will now open in Germany in 2023.

Written by Janine Henni

Read the full article