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4 Corners Carbon Coalition
Overview
The Giving Green Fund plans to award a grant to the 4 Corners Carbon Coalition (4CCC), a platform for local communities to drive real-world, community-anchored carbon dioxide removal projects (CDR) together. This is one of a series of ecosystem grants supporting foundational work to unlock innovative policy approaches for durable CDR demand.
4CCC falls within our philanthropic strategy of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Please see Giving Green’s deep dive report on CDR for more information, including risks and potential co-benefits, recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties.
Last updated: October 2024
What is the 4 Corners Carbon Coalition (4CCC)?
The 4 Corner Carbon Coalition (4CCC) was an initiative formerly administered by Boulder County’s Office of Climate Action and Sustainability that has transitioned to being fiscally sponsored by the nonprofit Terraset. 4CCC was launched in 2021 as a partnership between local governments in the Four Corners region of the US (i.e., Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah). Each local government had independently acknowledged that they would need CDR to support decarbonization goals and eventually realized they could have more impact by working as a collective. 4CCC is technology-neutral and prioritizes pathways that can store carbon for 100+ years; deliver economic, social, and ecological benefits; have the potential to scale in the members’ region(s); and do not harm or burden communities. Projects supported by the coalition are selected by a committee of local advisors from participating communities with input from a panel of CDR experts.
What are we funding at 4CCC, and how could it help scale demand for CDR?
Our funding will support 4CCC’s first program expansion outside of the Four Corners region. It will launch a new project in New York’s Hudson Valley to demonstrate the potential economic and ecological benefits of using biochar as a soil amendment on farmlands. In this instance, the campaign will be led by a coalition of civil society organizations – 4CCC, Sustainable Hudson Valley, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension. Funds will be used to support the utilization of biochar on 10 to 15 farms located in the 10 counties that make up the Hudson Valley region. Each awarded farm, selected through a competitive proposal process, will deploy biochar on one acre of working farmland in spring 2025, and participate in a 24-month impact study and evaluation led by Cornell Cooperative Extention to measure impact. The Hudson Valley is a strategic location between Albany and New York City, making it home to, or easily reachable by, many state-level policymakers.
4CCC will coordinate with advocacy partners who are preparing a bill to be introduced during the 2025 New York legislative session that incentivizes working-lands-based CDR methods, including biochar. 4CCC and its partners plan to promote this project to policymakers and the general public through earned media, educational events, and site tours.
Community-driven projects and subnational policies can build political will and unlock economic opportunities and unexplored applications for CDR. We think local initiatives such as 4CCC can help to lay the groundwork to scale CDR through a portfolio of different policy vehicles into which CDR demand can be embedded and for which economic and ecological co-benefits may be more directly valued.
Why do we think 4CCC will use this funding well?
4CCC successfully implemented projects and influenced state-level legislation in its first program iteration in the Four Corners region. Its initial campaign funded four catalytic grants for projects integrating CDR and concrete. During this campaign, Colorado’s Carbon Management Act was up for consideration, and advocates for the bill referenced and directed attention to Boulder County’s involvement in 4CCC to demonstrate local economic opportunities and public support. Its current campaign in the region is selecting projects that integrate CDR and liability biomass. Based on this evidence, we think 4CCC will be able to replicate its success and impact in its new program, contextualized in the Hudson Valley.
Giving Green believes that additional climate donations are likely to be most impactful when directed to our top nonprofits. For a number of reasons, we may choose to recommend grants to other organizations for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. We are highlighting this grant to offer transparency to donors to the Giving Green Fund as well as to provide a resource for donors who are particularly interested in this impact strategy. This is a nonpartisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.