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Table of contents
Background
When we launched the Giving Green Fund in 2022, we initially focused on recommending timely grants to our Top Nonprofit recommendations based on their specific funding needs. We’ve since expanded our approach to include growth and ecosystem grants to promising organizations, as outlined in our previous blog post. With huge thanks to an anonymous gift we received in early 2024, we intend to recommend allocations totaling at least $10M USD by the end of this year.
In this post, we outline the priorities we have set for the Giving Green Fund in 2024, to be clear about our decision-making process and indicate the types of levers we might recommend funding this year. We invite organizations working in our prioritized impact areas to connect with us and we invite feedback on our approach.
Systems change and pulling multiple levers
To match the immensity of climate change, we believe mitigation requires a holistic strategy and deep societal transformation. Therefore, we focus on systems change instead of incremental action, and a portfolio of options instead of a single agenda. By focusing on these, we believe our high-level strategy and evidence-based approach gives donors more “bang for their buck” in the fight against climate change.
Our focus on systems change: We categorize systems change interventions as ones with high potential for scale but perhaps a more uncertain or longer path to impact. Major interventions include policy advocacy, technology development, and market shaping, which all overlap with one another. Together, these interventions have and will continue to influence the adoption rate of new, greener technologies over existing, highly-polluting ones. For example, these have been the levers that have helped solar photovoltaic and battery technologies rapidly drop in price.[1]
Our portfolio approach: We support diverse impact areas because there is no single solution to climate change. Tackling climate change requires various tools to address different sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, the uncertainty of systems change makes multiple approaches necessary if we want to increase our chances of success.
Giving Green’s prioritized impact areas
As part of our research process, we evaluate impact areas on the basis of scale, feasibility, and funding need. Based on our 2024 assessments, we have prioritized finding promising new funding opportunities in the following impact areas:
Industrial decarbonization
Decreasing livestock emissions
Carbon removal
Supporting the energy transition in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)
Nuclear power
Solar geoengineering governance and coordination
We note that this list of prioritized impact areas is preliminary and we may not support funding new opportunities in all these areas. Additionally, shipping and aviation and next-generation geothermal technologies are still priorities for us. However, we do not plan to recommend additional grants in those impact areas outside of our current top recommendations, due to capacity constraints and the recency of our previous work in these areas. We plan to re-evaluate these impact areas in 2025.
Honing in on our prioritized impact areas, we are interested in considering grants that address the challenges and levers described below.
Industrial decarbonization
Challenge: Heavy industries like steel and cement are the literal building blocks of the global economy. Heavy industry accounts for around one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, but has received very little attention from government or philanthropy.
What we’re interested in exploring: We are interested in organizations working to reduce emission in industrial sectors, and are open to a variety of potential mechanisms. We will prioritize actions working on systems change and will consider global impacts of any organizations.
Example levers:
Building adequate demand for low-carbon products.
Developing a supportive regulatory framework.
Transition assistance that facilitates a switch to low-carbon production.
Decreasing livestock emissions
Challenge: Livestock production is responsible for ~15% of global emissions – some livestock belch methane, require substantial (often deforested) grazing land, and contribute to general supply chain emissions.[2]
What we’re interested in exploring: We are interested in organizations that work to reduce some demand for high-emitting livestock products. We are also interested in organizations addressing direct methane emissions from livestock (enteric methane), which we think has been relatively neglected.
Example levers:
Research, industry, and policy support for alternative proteins.
Policy advocacy for pricing agricultural emissions, such as the development of an agricultural emissions trading scheme.
Research and policy support for reducing enteric methane emissions.
Carbon removal
Challenge: To reach mid-century climate goals, it is estimated that we will need to remove 10 billion tons of CO2 per year by 2050 to account for residual emissions.[3] However, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is far from ready to meet this demand, and there remains a need for policy and regulatory structures to scale this work.
What we’re interested in exploring: We believe it's important to ensure civil society engagement matches private interest and investment in CDR. Supporting nonprofits can be valuable, as they can focus on tasks that industry might neglect, such as developing standards and protocols, policy advocacy, and ecosystem building.
Example levers include:
High-level strategies for government and international policies.
Local policies and projects to build grassroots support for CDR.
Increased global engagement, especially in LMICs.
Supporting the energy transition in LMICs
Challenge: We have identified India and Indonesia as focus countries because they are currently among the world’s top ten emitters and emissions in these fossil-fuel-dependent countries are expected to rise under business-as-usual.[4] If market barriers to carbon-free electricity production remain in place, the power sector will likely remain a major source of emissions as the countries’ total generation climbs. Demand for space cooling is also expected to soar in both countries as outside temperatures increase.[5] Inefficient air conditioners impact emissions and can strain the power grid, while lack of access to cooling adversely affects human health and wellbeing.
What we’re interested in exploring: Our team is broadly interested in supporting organizations that can help enable a clean energy transition, such as through increasing renewables or improving energy efficiency, while ensuring energy access.
Example levers:
Developing energy transition plans and advocating for supportive and additive climate policies.
Supporting private sector investment in zero-carbon technologies.
Support for clean cooling, such as supporting building designs that reduce the need for mechanical cooling and making highly-efficient air conditioners that are already on the market more affordable.
Nuclear power
Challenge: We think nuclear power can play an important part in decarbonization because it provides consistent, carbon-free energy with a small land footprint. As part of a diverse energy portfolio, it can complement other energy sources, such as wind and solar. Our theory of change is that support for US-based nuclear innovation may help spread advanced nuclear reactors worldwide by reducing costs, providing a model for other countries, and enabling technology transfer. For this to happen, the US must show strong domestic demand and become a major exporter of these technologies. To achieve this, nuclear energy costs must be competitive with other low-carbon options, but currently, there is a stalemate between nuclear vendors and domestic buyers.[6] Additionally, vendors face numerous barriers in global markets.[7]
What we’re interested in exploring: We are interested in efforts that could help derisk early projects and accelerate private sector commitment, especially for innovative designs. We are also broadly interested in efforts that could help boost domestic demand for nuclear power to help build a case for nuclear globally.
Example levers:
Policy advocacy for efforts that would help derisk early projects (e.g., building an orderbook by aggregating demand, cost overrun insurance, financial assistance).
Community engagement to ensure and maintain a social license to operate.
Solar geoengineering governance and coordination
Challenge: Solar geoengineering aims to manage warming by either reflecting more sunlight away from the Earth or reducing the trapping of outgoing thermal radiation. Because research and interest in solar geoengineering are increasing, we believe there is a strong need for governance and coordination that minimizes its risks and prioritizes climate-vulnerable countries in discussion.[8]
What we’re interested in exploring: We are interested in organizations conducting research that is deeply engaged with wider questions around the societal and environmental impacts of solar geoengineering. Additionally, given the environmental justice concerns surrounding decision-making processes for solar geoengineering, we’re also interested in organizations that work on international coordination.
Example levers:
Establishing regulations and standards of good practice to ensure high-quality research that avoids harm to humans and the environment.
Capacity-building to involve climate-vulnerable countries in solar geoengineering governance.
Additional thoughts:
We think progress on solar geoengineering, even when it comes from well-meaning organizations, could pose a moral hazard by undermining progress on climate change mitigation. Given our uncertainties and concerns around solar geoengineering, we think we should only fund solar geoengineering governance and coordination if we think there is strong evidence to suggest that funding solar geoengineering governance is likely to increase the safety of solar geoengineering research and reduce the risk of moral hazard.
How you can take effective climate action
If you’re interested in helping us implement our strategy, here are a couple of ways you can take climate action, effectively:
Donate to climate nonprofits: You can donate to the Giving Green Fund, which regrants to highly effective giving opportunities identified by our team, with no management fees. Alternatively, you can donate directly to any of our top nonprofits.
Support Giving Green’s research: Each year, the Giving Green team spends thousands of hours to find and fund effective climate charities. We do not take any cut of donations to our recommendations, so we rely on generous donors to fund our research and communications efforts. Historically, every dollar donated to Giving Green’s operations has been converted into $11 of additional donations to high-impact climate charities. Support our work to be a climate impact multiplier.
Questions? Want to collaborate? Regardless of where you are along your climate journey, we would love to hear from you. Contact us here.
Endnotes
1. Gavlak et al (2018) “Evaluating the causes of cost reduction in photovoltaic modules”
2. “In short, livestock production appears to contribute about 11%–17% of global greenhouse gas emissions, when using the most recent GWP-100 values, though there remains great uncertainty in much of the underlying data such as methane emissions from enteric fermentation, CO2 emissions from grazing land, or land-use change caused by animal agriculture.” https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/food-agriculture-environment/livestock-dont-contribute-14-5-of-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions
3. “Recent analyses of economically optimal solutions to the climate problem have concluded that NETs will play as significant a role as any mitigation technology, with perhaps 10 Gt/y CO2 of negative emissions needed approximately at midcentury and 20 Gt/y CO2 by the century’s end.”
4. Current emissions: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-share-of-co2-emissions?tab=table.
5. “By 2050, around 2/3 of the world’s households could have an air conditioner. China, India and Indonesia will together account for half of the total number.” https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-cooling
6. “However, the nuclear industry today is at a commercial stalemate between potential customers and investments in the nuclear industrial base needed for deployment—putting decarbonization goals at risk. Utilities and other potential customers recognize the need for nuclear power, but perceived risks of uncontrolled cost overrun and project abandonment have limited committed orders for new reactors.” https://liftoff.energy.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/20230320-Liftoff-Advanced-Nuclear-vPUB.pdf
7. “However, a number of potential barriers exist for U.S. vendors in global markets, such as a complicated set of rules to market and sell nuclear products internationally, increased competition among nations, and potential expansion of nuclear reactors into newcomer countries that may lack effective government, industry, and societal frameworks to support the facilities. These potential barriers (some of which U.S. vendors have little control over) include development of regulatory oversight capabilities, financing mechanisms that provide market advantages to non-U.S. vendors, management of the fuel cycle, expanded transportation networks for nuclear materials, and education and outreach to local communities that may house reactors.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2023. Laying the Foundation for New and Advanced Nuclear Reactors in the United States. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/26630.
8. Increase in research and interest: “Historically, the topic of SG has been deeply controversial in the climate change community, with extreme hesitancy and taboo surrounding both scientific and governance engagement in the field. While there is still reticence, major institutions and organizations with strong influence are showing signs of a major shift in perception, activity, and interest over the last two to three years. Research efforts are starting to expand, there has been a significant increase in focus on SG governance—both domestically and globally, and press coverage is mounting.” https://kleinmanenergy.upenn.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/KCEP-Digest-59-Solar-Geoengineering.pdf