Innovation Initiative: Grantee Spotlight

Grantee spotlight: Innovation Initiative

The Giving Green Fund plans to award a grant to the Innovation Initiative (I2) to support its policy campaigns on innovation reform and clean firm power generation. The Innovation Initiative is a program of the Clean Economy Project, a nonpartisan strategic collaborative working to strengthen the U.S. government’s role in advancing clean energy innovation, infrastructure, and markets.

Innovation Initiative’s work falls within our philanthropic strategy of unleashing clean energy in the U.S. Please see Giving Green’s strategy report for more information, including recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, and key uncertainties.

Last updated: October 2025

What is the Innovation Initiative?

The Innovation Initiative is a U.S. nonpartisan strategic collaborative working to strengthen the U.S. government’s role in advancing clean energy innovation, infrastructure, and markets. The Innovation Initiative was founded in 2025 by former staff of Breakthrough Energy and operates as part of the Clean Economy Project.

The organization develops long-term clean energy strategies to coordinate different stakeholder groups, design new policies, and advocate for policy enactment.

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

We are providing the Innovation Initiative with funding to help continue their efforts in innovation policy and clean firm power.

• Innovation system reform: The Innovation Initiative will leverage external experts to co-design reform blueprints that make the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) more effective at delivering innovation support.
• Clean firm power generation: The Innovation Initiative will integrate multiple energy technologies into a coherent case for 24/7 clean power while building and strengthening the ecosystem of experts and advocates working in this space. The Innovation Initiative manages the Clean Firm Power Initiative (CFPI). 

Giving Green’s financial support will be used for paying staff, in-person convenings, engaging subject-matter experts, and commission research and analysis. Together this will support the innovation of new technologies and the deployment of clean firm technologies that are necessary to decarbonizing the U.S. grid. This funding may also be used to support the innovation initiative’s work on electricity market reform focused on removing barriers to clean energy deployment.

Why do we think the Innovation Initiative will use this funding well?

In our strategy report on unleashing clean energy in the U.S., we identified advocating for opening new sources of financing, developing demand support, and supporting RD&D and innovation for clean firm power as promising substrategies. We believe that the Innovation Initiative’s proposed work is well-aligned with these strategies.

As members of the former Breakthrough Energy policy team, the Innovation Initiative team has a seven-year track record of making energy innovation policy a mainstream issue in the climate agenda and progressing clean firm technologies. Despite being a new organization, we have confidence that the Innovation Initiative will be able to successfully progress policy changes in support of innovation reform and clean firm power deployment.

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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