2025 Air Central Texas Awards
The Air Central Texas Awards celebrate the positive contributions of organizations and individuals to regional air quality in Central Texas. Our goal is to recognize the great work happening across the region and to inspire future actions that support the region’s ongoing air quality planning efforts.
This year, the Air Central Texas award categories included:
- Air Central Texas Outstanding Organization Award - recognizes an activity by an organization that helps reduce local air pollution past year.
- Air Central Texas Media Award - recognizes exceptional media coverage of air quality or air quality issues within the past year.
- Air Central Texas Environmental Education Award - recognizes an individual or organization that has exhibited exceptional leadership in air quality education over the past year.
- Air Aware Student Leadership Award - recognizes a student who has had a significant and lasting impact on Central Texas air quality in their community.
2025 Award Winners
The Clean Air Coalition, a CAPCOG policy planning committee consisting of elected officials from the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos Metropolitan Statistical Area, recognized the following 2025 Air Central Texas Award recipients:
2025 Air Central Texas Outstanding Organization Award
City of Austin - Aviation, City of Austin - Austin Energy, City of Kyle and Travis County received the 2025 Air Central Texas Outstanding Organization Award for their exceptional electric vehicle (EV) peer mentoring support during Central Texas Clean Cities' Fleet Manager Roundtable. Their willingness to share time and experience with other Central Texas organizations has been invaluable in helping them adopt EVs.
2025 Air Central Texas Media Award
Mose Buchele, KUT News – Senior Correspondent, Energy & Environment, received the 2025 Air Central Texas Media Award for his media coverage of air quality and air quality issues in 2025. His coverage of a Saharan dust plume's impact on region's air quality and the region's overall ozone and fine dust levels kept the public informed and interested in learning more about the pollutants.
2025 Air Aware Student Leadership Award
Elyse Kratchman, a University of Texas student, received the 2025 Air Aware Student Leadership Award for her voluntary efforts in retooling and enhancing Clean Air Force of Central Texas's social media outlets, which led to a significant increase in engagement with their education and outreach programs.
2025 Air Central Texas Environmental Education Award
Arianna Colasanti & Alicia Kim, Navarro High School science teachers, received the 2025 Air Central Texas Environmental Education Award for leading their Green Teams at Navarro High School in monitoring their air quality daily and flying color-coded flags in their courtyard based on the air quality. These efforts raise awareness on local air quality and the direct impacts that cause changes to it.
2025 Bill Gill Central Texas Air Quality Leadership Award
Darien Clary, Director of Sustainability, Energy & Environment at Austin Independent School District (AISD) also received the 2025 Bill Gill Central Texas Air Quality Leadership Award at CAPCOG's December General Assembly meeting for her work in leading and supporting initiatives that reduce emissions, educate the community and advance clean technologies within the school district.
Past Recipients
The 2024 Air Central Texas Awards recognized SPEER, Chikage Windler, CREAM, and Adele Noel. Learn more about past recipients.
