Carbon Removal Standards Initiative: Grantee Spotlight (2025)

Grantee spotlight: Carbon Removal Standards Initiative

The Giving Green Fund plans to award a grant to the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI) for general operational support. CRSI is a US-based nonprofit that provides technical assistance and capacity-building for carbon removal policy, with a focus on quantification and standards.

CRSI’s work falls within our philanthropic strategy of scaling demand for CO₂ removal. Please see Giving Green’s strategy report for more information, including potential risks and co-benefits, recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties.

Last updated: October 2025

What is the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative?

CRSI, founded in 2024 and based in the U.S., aims to accelerate the development and deployment of durable carbon removal by providing expertise on policy and standards. It  gathers and creates CDR quantification resources to make technical information more accessible, provides technical guidance to policymakers, works with standards bodies to write science-backed rules for CDR, and advances research that informs better standards.

What are we funding, and how could it help address climate change?

We are funding CRSI to support its work on developing and shaping standards for CDR outside the context of the carbon market. Given that current demand for CDR is driven by credit-based carbon markets, the development of standards and quantification frameworks has so far largely reflected the needs of buyers and sellers on these markets. However, these tools may not be directly transferable or applicable to more policy-driven approaches, and creating fit-for-purpose standards will help to unlock demand outside of existing market regimes. CRSI works to find carbon removal opportunities inside existing industries and sectors, match these opportunities with regulation or financial incentives, and create standards and monitoring infrastructure to ensure accurate reporting.

CRSI plans to make recommendations for integrating durable carbon removal sinks into existing greenhouse gas accounting schemes, expand its work in sectors such as enhanced weathering and ocean carbon removal, and develop an evaluation framework to assess the potential of opportunities to integrate CDR within existing sectors.

We expect that CRSI’s work will unlock new policy vehicles for CDR and therefore raise future demand for CDR, helping it scale to match the magnitude of hard-to-abate residual emissions.

Why do we think CRSI will use this funding well?

Given that CRSI was launched in 2024, we think it is too early to assess its track record. We are excited about CRSI’s choice to focus on an area that we think holds high potential for impact yet remain underexplored, the experience of its leadership, and its portfolio of projects. We think that CRSI’s previously developed tools, such as its Policy Dashboard, Quantification Resources Database, and Sectoral Integrations Map, are useful resources to grow non-market CDR demand. We also believe that CRSI is becoming a respected player among nonprofits, government bodies, and international organizations working on carbon removal.

Giving Green believes that additional climate donations are likely to be most impactful when directed to our top nonprofits. For several 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.

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