Duke climate leaders honored by Time100

Among those named to the prestigious list are an alumnus leading reforestation efforts in the Amazon and a Ph.D. student advancing groundbreaking research related to energy efficiency.

Peter Fernandez ’06 was named a defender for his work as executive chairman of Mombak, a Brazilian carbon removal company that has brought large swaths of degraded Amazon forest back to life with native trees, while Tyler Norris was named a leader because the research he published at Duke on how data centers consume electricity recast the conventional wisdom about the future of U.S. emissions.

Ferndandez launched Mombak in 2022 with a $100 million reforestation strategy to capture millions of tons of carbon by bringing large swaths of degraded Amazon forest back to life with native tree species. It works with local governments and communities to permanently and legally preserve the land. The company plans to plant 12 forests across roughly 50,000 acres in Brazil—an area about three times the size of Manhattan.

Norris’ work spurred big tech companies to look for new ways to tackle data center power demand. His research found that the impact of limiting data-center demand for a small amount of time—less than a day over the course of a year—would be large enough to add a significant share of planned new data centers without new power plants.

Read more on the Time100 Climate site.