WattTime’s Gavin McCormick Wins 2025 Climate Breakthrough Award to Offer Free Impact Analysis for Carbon Accounting Standards

McCormick’s new initiative is one of five selected for its potential to achieve dramatic gigaton-scale “breakthrough” climate impact. 

Oakland, Calif. — 15 September 2025 — Environmental tech nonprofit WattTime today announced that its cofounder and executive director, Gavin McCormick, has been named a winner of global philanthropy nonprofit Climate Breakthrough’s 2025 Climate Breakthrough Award. Climate Breakthrough recognized McCormick for a new initiative that will offer free impact analysis to any interested government and private sector organizations developing carbon accounting systems.

Climate Breakthrough provides $4 million in multiyear, flexible funding — the largest climate award for individuals — for experienced environmental and social change leaders to develop, launch, and scale new high-impact initiatives that Climate Breakthrough concludes could significantly reduce global annual greenhouse gas emissions. All Climate Breakthrough awards must have the potential to materially change the lives of tens of millions and reduce at least 500 million tons of emissions within ten years of launch. 

Through this new initiative, McCormick and his team will help facilitate groups of independent scientists to provide free impact analysis of potential carbon accounting systems and policies before they are completed. The work will combine McCormick’s prior experience individually conducting such analyses at WattTime and the US Department of Energy, with his current experience in the Climate TRACE coalition facilitating groups of independent experts from many organizations in reaching consensus. 

Climate Breakthrough’s analysis concluded this initiative could exceed 2.9 gigatons of annual pollution reduction by 2036. Such large potential is driven by three trends: 

• The first trend is the rapid growth of many technologies that can either increase or decrease emissions, depending on exactly how they are produced, fueled, and operated. Emerging technologies such as AI, energy storage, direct air capture, hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels, intelligent contrails management, and many others can have very different effects on total global emissions depending on such factors.
  
• Second, there is a growing trend toward global standardization of emissions guidance — guidelines that influence how these technologies are produced, fueled, and used. At both WattTime and Climate TRACE, McCormick and colleagues have received dozens of requests for impact analysis support from initiatives currently developing such guidance.
  
• The third trend is the changing funding landscape:
  
  "When I was at US DOE, we never set an environmental standard without a comparative impact assessment of the different options we were considering,” said McCormick. “But given recent changes in the US federal government, more and more carbon standards are being set by NGOs who don't have those same resources. This new initiative will provide the necessary resources to ensure anyone setting environmental standards can get access to free comparative impact assessments upon request — so they don't have to shoot in the dark."

Many policymakers and standards bodies have expressed particular interest in impact analysis jointly conducted by groups of experts from multiple independent institutions. To that end, the new initiative will focus on metastudies, which review and analyze a set of existing studies to synthesize their findings, that examine varying results and explore where there is — and where there is not — consensus on which options would drive the most impact. 

Climate Breakthrough selected McCormick partly due to his technical expertise, but also his proven ability to gather diverse stakeholders and his exceptional talent for helping different technical communities understand one another.

For a full list of 2025 Awardees, read the Climate Breakthrough announcement here. And connect with the WattTime team by sending a message here.   

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About WattTime:

WattTime is an environmental tech nonprofit that empowers all people, companies, policymakers, and countries to slash emissions and choose cleaner energy. Founded by UC Berkeley researchers, we develop data-driven tools and policies that increase environmental and social good. During the energy transition from a fossil-fueled past to a zero-carbon future, WattTime 'bends the curve' of emissions reductions to realize deeper, faster benefits for people and planet. Learn more at www.WattTime.org. 

Media contact:

Nikki Arnone, Inflection Point Agency for WattTime
nikki@inflectionpointagency.com  

Logan Varsano, Inflection Point Agency for WattTime
logan@inflectionpointagency.com