Apply for a Climate Leadership Award

2024 Award Categories

Please visit each award page for more information and to apply.

Individual Leadership Award: The Individual Leadership Award recognizes individuals exemplifying extraordinary leadership in leading their organizations’ response to climate change and through engagement of their peers and partners.

Innovative Partnership Award: The award for innovative partnerships recognizes organizations working collaboratively on leading edge climate initiatives that are above and beyond business-as-usual. Partnerships that are candidates for recognition should be composed primarily of stakeholder institutions from government, non-profit, academia, and/or the private sector that have collectively established objectives to measurably address greenhouse gas reduction goals and/or adaptation and resilience activities. 

Organizational Leadership Award: Recognizes organizations that not only have their own comprehensive greenhouse gas inventories and aggressive emissions reduction goals, but also exemplify extraordinary leadership in their internal response to climate change, and engagement of their internal stakeholders (employees, executive leadership, Board of Directors, etc.), peers, and partners. The Organizational Leadership Award highlights exceptional commitment, initiatives, performance, and outcomes focused on scopes 1 and 2.

Value Chain Leadership Award (NEW 2024 category): Recognizes organizations that have their own comprehensive greenhouse gas inventories and aggressive emissions reduction goals and demonstrate they are at the leading edge of managing greenhouse gas emissions in their organizational value chains. The Value Chain Leadership Award highlights exceptional commitment, initiatives, performance, and outcomes focused on scope 3 emissions.

Eligibility for 2024 Awards

Applicants for all categories of the Climate Leadership Awards program must meet the following criteria as well as any additional eligibility requirements specified within each category.

 

  1. Applicants must have significant operations in the United States. Given the global nature of climate change, the majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions do not have to occur in the United States.
  2. Leadership activities must have taken place between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2023. However, applications may also refer to actions that commenced before that time and continued into the application period and the length of time an action has been in practice, or which explains how that prior activity served as a foundation for ongoing and more current activities.
  3. Applications and applicants may be reviewed and evaluated for environmental, civil rights, and/or financial improprieties. An application may be denied if the applicant/organization is found to be in serious violation of environmental regulations, civil rights, or financial impropriety by the CLA Steering Committee. Where areas of concern are identified, additional follow up may be conducted.

Application Process

The application period will close on January 12, 2024. Application forms are available on the corresponding category web pages for each category. Applicants are required to submit their application online via the CLA SmarterSelect portal. Please complete the form specific to the awards category to which you are applying and submit it with the required supplemental information online.

Applicants are requested to review the step-by-step instructions on the category pages linked to below.

Any questions can be sent to [email protected]

Completed reference forms for the Individual Leadership, Organizational Leadership, and Value Chain Leadership categories should be submitted by the applicant along with their application form in the SmarterSelect Application Portal.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

View our frequently asked questions and answers for the 2024 Climate Leadership Awards. You can also watch our informational webinar from October 4th, 2023.