Nicolai (Nico) Phocas serves as our Climate & Energy Lead, collaborating with partner organizations to calculate their carbon emission inventories and supporting Climate Out initiatives. He comes to Climate Hawai‘i through KUPU and was featured on KHON2’s Empowered Hawai‘i in a segment highlighting inspiring young minds addressing our planet’s most pressing issues. During his academic career, he conducted research on the correlations between seasonal sea temperatures and wave height, as well as fluctuations in subsurface densities by measuring variations in the Earth’s gravitational field.

Nico was born and raised on the east side of O’ahu, where he attended Le Jardin Academy. He later relocated to Thailand, where his parents held leadership roles in environmental policy for South East Asia with the US Embassy. He graduated with honors and received an International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma from the International School Bangkok. Nico recently earned a B.S. in Earth Sciences from UH Mānoa, with the objective of applying his technical environmental expertise in the business and legislative sectors.