Canadian entrepreneur Stephen Lake has been named to the TIME100 Climate, a global list recognizing influential leaders driving business action on climate change.
As governments have retreated from climate-focused legislation in 2025, TIME notes that business leaders are increasingly stepping up to fill the void. Around the world, innovators, executives, and researchers are accelerating the transition to a low-carbon future — and Lake is among them.
Lake is the co-founder and CEO of Jetson, a Vancouver-based startup making home electrification more affordable and accessible. The company has developed technology that cuts the cost of heat pump installation roughly in half by streamlining assessments and eliminating unnecessary markups. In September, Jetson launched its Jetson Air system — billed as the industry’s first fully integrated smart home heat pump platform.
“The biggest thing governments could do is stop spending billions on subsidies and incentives that prop up fossil fuels at a low cost, and instead start investing that money in clean energy initiatives, such as residential electric heating and cooling,” Lake told TIME. “If the easiest and most affordable choice for a family or business is also the climate-smart one, people will naturally make that switch.”
This marks Lake’s second major recognition from TIME this year. Earlier in October, Jetson Air was named one of the Best Inventions of 2025 for tackling one of the biggest barriers to heat pump adoption — high installation costs — by leveraging remote project assessments and completing installs in a single day.
Lake, previously known as the co-founder of North, the Canadian smart-glasses startup acquired by Google, is once again putting Canadian innovation on the global stage — this time in the fight against climate change.