John Foye remembers what sparked his passion for finding solutions to climate change. Backpacking in Utah’s Uinta Mountains with high school friends one day, they came across a patch of forest that had been clear-cut. While deforestation was not a problem in Utah, the sight of an area almost entirely stripped of trees left a profound mark on Foye.

It led him to start a student solar club and found an energy technology startup, Invisergy, before he had even finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania.

Trees remain at the heart of Foye’s work. His new venture, Working Trees, helps U.S. ranchers plant trees across the land on which their livestock graze, something known as silvopasture. Because trees remove carbon from the atmosphere by turning it into biomass through photosynthesis, farmers can generate carbon credits, which they then sell to companies that need to buy offsets to meet their climate commitments.

“It was eye-opening for me to see what the first kilowatt hour does for a family, a business, and a mini-economy.”

 …