Catalyst Awards
The GEC Catalyst Awards seek to inspire innovation in the design, manufacture and use of technology to advance sustainability globally. GEC provides two Catalyst Awards. The first is “Catalyzing Impact at Scale,” which recognizes organizations that have achieved a large-scale sustainability impact due to their design, manufacture and/or use of IT. The second is “Catalyzing Disruptive Innovation,” which recognizes organizations that have designed cutting-edge technologies or used technology in such a way that, if adopted widely, could lead to exponential sustainability gains.
Each year the Catalyst Awards focus on a different theme.
Opportunities for Recognition
The GEC Catalyst Awards provide an international platform to recognize sustainability achievements related to electronics. The awards serve as endorsement from independent and esteemed experts, who help select the winners. Additionally, GEC promotes winners to spotlight their accomplishments to thousands of colleagues in the field. GEC Catalyst Awards finalists and winners will be showcased via:
- Featuring the GEC Catalyst Award winners as part of the GEC’s webinar series, “Technology’s Role in Conserving and Protective Our Natural World,” with the webinar recording available online
- Promotion by GEC to multiple industry and procurement associations interested in application of technology (e.g. sensors, unmanned aerial vehicles or drones used for conservation, etc)
- Promotion by the GEC on website, and in social media, relevant press releases, and newsletters
Past Winners
2019 Catalyst Awards Winners
In 2019 the GEC Catalyst Awards recognized innovation in the design, manufacture, use, reuse and recycling of sensors to advance sustainability in cities and communities globally.

Winner Catalyzing Impact at Scale
City of Antibes, France
The City of Antibes, a coastal resort town in France, has a population of 80,000 residents that balloons to more than 200,000 people during the summer. The City’s water supply is a critical component to its tourism economy, and with a distribution network of 315 kilometers and more than 40,000 sections, it wanted to increase the security and economic viability of the system. To increase Antibes’ resilience, it partnered with SIGFOX, SAP, and VEOLIA to digitize its water distribution system. With 2,000 sensors, and with a technology leveraging a majority of existing assets and the capability to mix them with new sensors on a low-power IoT network embedded with end-to-end security, the city was able to create a more economically viable, sustainable, and safe water distribution system. This solution helps Antibes to anticipate breakdowns, optimize maintenance schedules, and plan for future infrastructure investments. As a result, the citizens of Antibes pay less than half the national price of water in France.

Winner Disruptive Innovation
Fend Incorporated
Cyber-attacks within the energy and utilities industries cost an average of $13.2 million per year. Fend’s data diode brings much-needed cybersecurity to the sensors and IoT devices that have the potential to help make our cities smarter, efficient, and resilient. The hardware gets real-time industrial equipment data where it needs to go with a class of cybersecurity technology once reserved for nuclear power plants and the military. The data diodes send data in only one direction, so attackers cannot physically penetrate the network connection, send malware, penetrate corporate information networks, or use legacy equipment as a backdoor for ransomware. Fend’s solution requires no patches, uses less than 2 watts when in operation, is designed to last for years, and is constructed to be easily disassembled into its recyclable components at the end of its life. Fend’s data diodes can be installed rapidly at cities across the world, providing a strong cybersecurity defense for smart cities anywhere.
2019 Catalyst Awards Honorees

Aclima

CAPA Strategies, LLC

City and County of Denver’s Department of Public Health & Environment

Human Oriented Products Ubiquitous

City of Portland, Oregon

Seametrics Inc.

Virginia Institute of Marine Science
2019 Catalyst Awards Finalists

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

International Telecommunication Union

Intelligent Environments Laboratory, The University of Texas at Austin

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, ENERGY STAR Smart Home Energy Management Systems
Residential buildings account for 20% of U.S. energy use, making it an ideal sector for energy savings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) ENERGY STAR Smart Home Energy Management Systems (SHEMS) program developed the first national effort to define and recognize smart home systems that manage and reduce energy use by offering a combined package of service algorithms, user interfaces, occupancy sensors, and controlled devices. EPA has developed a specification to generate immediately available energy savings through the deployment of a voluntary national recognition standard. EPA intends to use the data collected over a statistically significant period to develop a single performance metric that objectively compares the energy performance of different SHEMS services, which will enable the agency to define energy saving targets in future specifications without prescribing strategies or technologies.