Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems Announces Leadership Transition

Kelly Adams (left) transitions to Chair of the Board and Doug Hudson (right) is appointed CEO

Today, we’re excited to share an important leadership transition announcement that reflects our commitment to scaling our mission and driving clean energy solutions: Doug Hudson has been appointed CEO, while Kelly Adams transitions to Chair of the Board.

This leadership transition comes at a pivotal time for ATS. After five transformative years as CEO, Kelly Adams will now focus on long-term strategy, building industry partnerships, and advancing ATS’ vision for global impact. As Chair of the Board, Kelly will continue to play a vital role in guiding our company’s growth and ensuring we maximize the potential of our groundbreaking technology.

Reflecting on this shift, Kelly shared:

"Winning The Earthshot Prize has been a transformative milestone for ATS, reinforcing the impact of our technology in reshaping the future of energy. This transition allows me to focus on the strategic vision of ATS while ensuring we have the right leadership in place to scale our clean energy solutions worldwide. Doug's leadership and strategic insights make him the ideal person to guide ATS into its next phase of growth. "

Doug Hudson joins ATS with an impressive background, bringing over 20 years of experience in corporate strategy, technology governance, and organizational transformation. His leadership has already made waves across the tech and energy sectors. Before joining ATS, Doug built the security advisory services program at Coalfire, consulting international enterprises on cyber strategy, advised Fortune 100 companies during his tenure at Accenture and developed the Public Sector Group at Orca Security, launching Orca’s go-to-market in the Federal space.

For Doug, this new role is more than a career move—it’s a mission.

"Joining ATS at such a pivotal moment—on the heels of winning The Earthshot Prize—is both an honor an an opportunity," said Doug. "I look forward to building on the company's extraordinary success and helping shape the future of clean energy innovation."

Doug’s credentials, which include a Master of Applied Science in Information Security from Denver University and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Iowa, underscore his expertise in driving complex technological advancements.

As ATS looks to the future, we remain laser-focused on accelerating our mission of converting industrial waste heat into clean electricity. With Doug leading the charge and Kelly guiding our strategy, ATS is well-positioned to scale our impact and deliver cutting-edge energy solutions worldwide.

Scaling F.O.A.K. Pathways: Catalytic Capital is the Gear Needed to Unlock Clean Energy Innovation

Kelly Adams ice climbing in the Canadian Rockies

By Kelly Adams -

As an ice climber, I’ve learned that success isn’t just about physical endurance or mental focus—it’s about having the right gear and pathfinding with precision. Scaling vertical sheets of ice requires trust in your tools and the knowledge that every step, however small, is critical. This same principle applies to scaling climate solutions. Game-changing innovations—like those recognized by The Earthshot Prize—require more than vision and hard work. They need catalytic capital: the financial tools and support that help turn needed, viable clean energy innovation into world-changing solutions.

Today, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Our power grids are being pushed to their limits, struggling to keep up with surging demand from a data-driven, AI-powered economy. Brownouts and energy shortages are becoming the new normal. At the same time, further straining resilience, around the world, people are grappling with the impacts of climate change. Electricity is critical to quality of life and we have to do everything we can to optimize its use. It’s no longer a question of if we need to act—it’s how quickly we can scale solutions that protect both people and the planet while strengthening our energy infrastructure for a resilient and sustainable future.

Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS), the company I’ve led for the last five years has developed a technology that transforms industrial waste heat into clean electricity. This clean energy innovation has the potential to reduce millions of tonnes of CO₂ annually while providing businesses with a revenue-positive solution to electricity. 

Often first-of-a-kind (FOAK) solutions like ATS are considered a risk because there is no comparable in the marketplace. We have been working to break down these barriers by using the momentum of being a winner of The Earthshot Prize, demonstrating our technology’s viability with the U.S. Department of Energy, and securing a purchase order from the world’s largest cement manufacturer. Leading with cement, we are also developing use cases with AI data centers and other industrial sectors such as steel. Now, we are looking for the right financial partners to commercially scale ATS and unlock its impact potential.

Catalytic capital bridges the gap for solutions that are novel and hold high potential, but which have not yet been deployed at full commercial scale. It provides funding where traditional investors fear to tread, enabling companies to overcome early hurdles and build the momentum needed to attract growth capital. Just like a climber needs ropes, ice axes, and crampons to ascend safely, clean tech innovators need  impact investors and other partners in the financial world such as governments and philanthropic organizations to provide the financial tools that allow them to scale.

At The Earthshot Prize Awards, Prince William emphasized the need to "scale up" the ingenious solutions created by this year’s finalists, urging all of us to support the visionaries driving climate innovation.

Clean tech solutions like ours at ATS are not just concepts—they're real, proven, and capable of transforming industries and reducing emissions at scale. However, without catalytic capital, their potential remains locked away. At the scale of our species, we cannot continue to be this energy inefficient to maintain our way of life. We have to learn to do more with less. Energy will constrain the quality of life if we don’t radically shift our thinking of what’s possible and our ability to finance it. 

Investors, governments, and philanthropic leaders must embrace this challenge with us to ensure that the clean energy solutions we need now and in the future exist. The path ahead of us is challenging, but by working together, and developing our tool sets, we can redefine what’s possible.

The time to act is now.

AI’s Energy Dilemma: A $500 Billion Investment & The Urgent Need for Data Center Efficiency

The recently announced $500 billion Stargate Project, a joint venture between OpenAI, Softbank, Oracle, and MGX, aims to accelerate the development of AI infrastructure in the United States to enhance OpenAI’s computing capabilities and secure American leadership in artificial intelligence. While this ambitious investment underscores AI’s role in shaping the future and driving innovation, it also raises pressing questions: How will we power this AI-driven future without exacerbating energy inefficiencies? Can we build data centers that are not only bigger but also smarter, greener, and more cost efficient?  

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), data centers currently consume approximately 1% to 1.5% of global electricity (Source), but this figure is projected to skyrocket to 23% by 2030 as AI adoption accelerates (Source). 

AI workloads require vast amounts of energy, generating massive heat as they process and train large-scale models. Cooling these systems currently accounts for up to 40% of a data center’s energy consumption, with much of this energy lost as waste heat (source). Traditional cooling systems, which rely on energy-intensive chillers, not only consume significant electricity but also contribute to high carbon emissions. With the global energy demand expected to rise sharply, this current model is unsustainable.

Unlocking a New Energy Model: Waste Heat to Electricity

ATS is redefining data center sustainability with its breakthrough technology that converts waste heat into clean electricity, enabling a significant change in energy usage for data centers. 

Instead of allowing this immense energy to dissipate unused, ATS captures it and reinvests it—reducing reliance on external power grids and lowering carbon footprints.

Here’s how the system works:

• Heat-to-Electricity Conversion: ATS’ patented technology captures waste heat from high-density data centers and transforms it into electricity, creating a self-sustaining energy cycle.

• Integrated Cooling Efficiency: The process of heat conversion naturally lowers temperatures, often eliminating the need for energy-intensive chillers.

• Sustainability at Scale: By reinvesting heat as clean energy, ATS empowers data center operators to achieve energy neutrality without sacrificing performance.

Doug Hudson, President of ATS Energy, aptly summarized the impact: “Our solutions allow operators to harness the immense heat generated by modern AI data centers and reinvest it as clean energy. It’s not just smarter; it’s greener and more sustainable.”

Building the Future Sustainably

The future of AI depends not just on building bigger data centers but on building smarter ones. Programs like Stargate provide a unique opportunity to redefine what’s possible in data center design. By embracing technologies like ATS heat-to-electricity solutions, we can:

• Reduce Energy Consumption: Lower reliance on external power grids through efficient heat recovery

• Boost Cooling Efficiency: Leverage natural cooling processes to reduce operational costs and energy usage

• Support Net-Zero Goals: Build infrastructure that aligns with long-term sustainability targets

The rapid growth of AI offers unprecedented opportunities—but it also demands unprecedented responsibility. As projects like Stargate push the boundaries of what’s possible in AI infrastructure, the question isn’t just how much we can build, but it also needs to be how intelligently and sustainably we can do it. ATS’ groundbreaking heat-to-electricity technology represents more than an energy solution; it’s a blueprint for the future of data centers—where efficiency, sustainability, and innovation are inseparable.

The future of AI is being written today. Let’s make sure it’s powered responsibly.