Hosts Lindsay Levin, Dorcas Naishorua and David Biello speak at Session 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2025 on June 16, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Callie Giovanna / TED)
TED Countdown Summit 2025 takes place against the backdrop of a fast-moving climate crisis and an energy transition that’s fully underway. On day 1, a remarkable line-up of speakers, spanning sectors and geographies, gathered to put a thumb on the scale and tip the world in the right direction. Here are some key takeaways from day 1:
James Irungu Mwangi speaks at Session 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2025 on June 16, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Callie Giovanna / TED)
The clean energy era will be an age of radical abundance. Renewables entrepreneur Matt Tilleard tears down the old narrative of energy as a zero-sum game, showing how the renewable revolution is shifting power from those who hoard fuel to those who innovate and deploy technology. He makes the case that renewable tech will become too plentiful for any OPEC-style chokehold, so power will be shared instead of controlled. Clean energy visionary Lei Zhang picks up this thread in the Gobi desert, home to one of the world’s largest green hydrogen projects, exploring how this and other barren landscapes hold more energy reserves than the world consumes today. “Where others see emptiness, I see abundance,” he says. James Irungu Mwangi, founder and CEO of Africa Climate Ventures, completes the vision by showcasing how Africa’s young workforce is already turning waste biomass and sunshine into jobs, food security and scalable carbon removal — proving climate action can pay today and supercharge growth tomorrow.
Josephine Waweru speaks at Session 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2025 on June 16, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Callie Giovanna / TED)
Sustainable relationships with nature create opportunity and address climate challenges, at every scale. At the local level, Kenyan farmer Josephine Waweru demonstrates how small-scale technological solutions like solar-powered irrigation can transform individual farms and lives in the face of climate uncertainty. At the national level, civic entrepreneur Ilona Szabó de Carvalho advocates for an economic paradigm that values standing forests over cleared land, creating “nature superpowers” through bioeconomies and innovative financial mechanisms. Both Waweru and Carvalho emphasize that nature-aligned economies outperform destructive practices.
Nada Majdalani speaks at Session 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2025 on June 16, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Callie Giovanna / TED)
Environmental peace-building is the most realistic path to peace. Amid the bombs falling in the Middle East, another threat silently multiplies: climate change. Nada Majdalani, the director of EcoPeace Middle East in Palestine, shares how her organization is bringing together Jordanians, Palestinians and Israelis through a vision of environmental peace-building. She shows why tapping into the region’s natural resources (like abundant sunshine) can unlock shared energy solutions that foster economic interdependence and cooperation, not conflict.
Al Gore speaks at Session 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2025 on June 16, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Callie Giovanna / TED)
Climate action is unstoppable — and “climate realism” is a myth. Nobel Laureate Al Gore thoroughly dismantles the fossil fuel industry’s misleading narrative of “climate realism,” which aims to discredit climate goals, distort public perception and maintain the destructive status quo. Ticking through the current state of the climate crisis, Gore highlights the clear signs of progress, like the plummeting cost of solar energy and the surging adoption of electric vehicles, while calling on us all to reject fossil-fueled defeatism. “Political will itself is a renewable resource — so let’s renew it,” he says.
Turkana Sessions performs at Session 1 of TED Countdown Summit 2025 on June 16, 2025, in Nairobi, Kenya. (Photo: Callie Giovanna / TED)