During her first State of the State address on Jan. 9, 2023, Gov. Katie Hobbs announced the re-establishing of the Governor’s Energy Office under a new moniker: the Governor’s Office of Resiliency, with a focus on water, energy and land use solutions. Climate-related challenges are affecting the state, and Hobbs stresses that “we are in a critical moment where we must be unified.” Public policy has an important role to play, but so does technological innovation. Arizona is home to a growing climate tech ecosystem that leverages human ingenuity to reduce and slow the effects of climate change through the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using direct air capture technology.  

“This issue does not stop at state or international borders,” Hobbs says. “We will all thrive together in the future, or we will all be left with the catastrophic results of our failures.”