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After 6,000 hours of research, we found these evidence-backed, cost-effective organizations that can maximize the impact of your climate donations. What can I do about climate change? With COP27 freshly in the books, efforts by governments to address climate change are ramping up. At the same time, climate impacts are more salient than ever, as hurricanes and floods wreak havoc across the globe with alarming frequency. What can an average person do? At Giving Green, we believe individual actions matter, especially when they contribute to systemic change: changing the laws, norms, and systems that cause unsustainable emissions. And donating to high-impact climate nonprofits that work to change the systems can be one of the most impactful individual actions on climate change. Giving Green is a guide for individuals and businesses to make effective climate giving decisions, and we believe there are more opportunities for smart, effective climate giving than ever. With the recent passage of the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, the biggest climate bill in the US and arguably the world) and increasingly promising green technologies, a rapidly-growing community of climate donors are poised to have a meaningful and lasting impact. Our scientific, transparent, and actionable recommendations provide everyday people with the information and confidence they need to make highly impactful climate donations. Giving Green’s top climate nonprofit recommendations This year, we have partnered with Giving What We Can to facilitate donations to all five of our top climate nonprofits. You can give to any or all of our top nonprofits here. In alphabetical order: Clean Air Task Force Government policies in the US and abroad represent high-leverage opportunities to establish and support new norms at a scale that nonprofits and the private sector could never achieve alone. Clean Air Task Force has an impressive track record shaping and ensuring the passage of large-scale policies and agreements such as the Inflation Reduction Act and Global Methane Pledge, as well as continually supporting the global scale-up of emerging technologies such as carbon capture and zero-carbon liquid fuels. For more information, see our Clean Air Task Force recommendation summary. Evergreen Collaborative The Inflation Reduction Act includes $369 billion in climate provisions, an enormous sum whose impact depends on the details of implementation. Evergreen Collaborative successfully advocated for many pieces of the IRA and is now shifting focus to making sure that corporations, states, and the Biden Administration take full advantage of new policy provisions. We think Evergreen’s nimble makeup, connections to governors’ offices, and targeted focus on specific states could result in big impacts in the years ahead. For more information, see our Evergreen Collaborative recommendation summary. Good Energy Collective Wind and solar power are now competitive pieces of the green electricity puzzle, but they can’t do it alone. A new era of low-carbon “advanced” nuclear reactors promises a safer, cheaper, and more scalable complement to renewable energy than traditional nuclear power. Good Energy Collective engages with US communities and politicians to ensure there’s broad support for advanced nuclear power. For more information, see our Good Energy Collective recommendation summary. The Good Food Institute Livestock production is responsible for at least 10% of global emissions – livestock belch methane, require substantial (often deforested) grazing land, and contribute to general supply chain emissions. Despite this large footprint, there has been relatively little government effort to meaningfully reduce agricultural emissions. The Good Food Institute seeks to make alternative proteins (e.g., plant-based burgers) competitive with conventional proteins (e.g., beef), which we believe could reduce livestock consumption. We think the Good Food Institute’s thoughtful approach to scientific research, industry partnerships, and government advocacy increases the likelihood of alternative proteins going mainstream. For more information, see our The Good Food Institute recommendation summary. Industrious Labs Heavy industries like steel and cement are the literal building blocks of the global economy. They also account for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, but have received very little attention from government or philanthropy. Industrious Labs is a new organization dedicated to helping global heavy industry go green. In collaboration with partner organizations, Industrious Labs advocates to corporations to make low-carbon commitments, and applies legal and political pressure to governments to ensure there’s regulation and public funding to speed up the transition. For more information, see our Industrious Labs recommendation summary. Our Recommendations for Businesses While we think that donating to our top climate nonprofits is the most effective way to deploy money to fight climate change, we know that giving to policy advocacy is likely infeasible for most businesses. Our white paper outlines various high-impact corporate climate strategies that businesses can adopt, either through making investments in decarbonizing their own operations or donating to impactful organizations. Our specific recommendations for businesses include making catalytic investments in carbon removal though the Frontier or Milkywire funds, buying carbon removal from Mash Makes, Charm Industrial, or Climeworks, or buying high-quality carbon offsets from Tradewater or BURN. Our research Over the past year, we spent around 6,000 hours finding and evaluating highly cost-effective climate nonprofits. We analyzed policy papers and academic publications; interviewed experts in academia, policy, and philanthropy; examined organizations’ finances and reports; and spoke with organization representatives. We used our findings to assess each organization’s theory of change and ability to absorb additional funding. We also built cost-effectiveness analysis models to roughly estimate how much an additional donated dollar might reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For more information, see our 2022 updates to Giving Green's approach and recommendations. Support Giving Green’s operations As a nonprofit organization, we rely on donations to continue our research into top climate organizations and keep our findings public. We are grateful for the support of climate donors who believe in high-impact climate action and evidence-based giving advice. If you share our mission of making high-impact climate giving easier, for everyone, you can make a tax-deductible donation to Giving Green here. Questions? Want to collaborate? Please reach out to us.

What we learned during the 2022 giving season 2022 was a year of growth for Giving Green. We doubled our team, added three new top recommendations, and developed a comprehensive strategy for businesses looking to take their climate action to the next level. But as excited as we are about the positive impact we believe this growth will unlock, we are constantly on the lookout for ways we can improve our research. At the start of 2023, we took a step back to identify ways we can do better. Three review meetings, four spreadsheets, and 19,000 words later, we have a few ideas about ways we want to improve.[1] See below for three examples. Early-stage prioritization In 2022, we published an overview of the steps we take and the criteria we use to prioritize our research. However, we think our overview was overly simplistic and did not provide enough insight into topics we actually looked into.[2] For example, we think our deep dive on nuclear power made a reasonable case for why support efforts could be highly cost-effective, but did not provide any explanation of why we thought it was more promising than similar geothermal efforts, or whether we even looked into geothermal at all. To help address this, we are creating a public-facing dashboard that will share more detail on how we prioritize topics and what we have considered. This embodies our values of transparency and collaboration, and we are hopeful it will help others better understand and engage with us on our process.[3] Cost-effectiveness analyses We often use cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) as an input into our assessment of cost-effectiveness. However, many of the opportunities we view as most promising also have highly uncertain inputs.[4] Because of this, many of our CEAs primarily served as a way to (a) identify the parameters that affect how much a donation might reduce climate change and (b) assess whether it is plausible that a donation could be highly cost-effective.[5] For example, our Good Food Institute CEA helped us delineate two pathways by which the Good Food Institute might accelerate alternative protein innovation, and estimate that it’s possible a donation is within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider for a top recommendation.[6] One of our core values is truth-seeking.[7] A CEA is one of the many tools in our toolbox, but we want to see whether it is possible to make it more useful. We are speaking with academics, researchers, and other organizations to consider ways to reframe our CEAs and/or increase the accuracy of inputs. We also plan to make revisions to how we are communicating about when and how we use CEAs, in order to help readers better understand what we can (and cannot) learn from them. External feedback We are a small team that relies heavily on the expertise of others to guide our focus and critique our work. In the second half of 2022, alone, we had around 110 calls with various climate researchers, foundations, and organizations.[8] However, we were not always methodic about when we sought feedback, from whom we sought feedback, and how we weighted that feedback relative to other inputs. Though we think it is important to remain flexible, we are drafting guidelines to help increase the consistency of our approach to feedback.[9] We also plan to introduce a more formal external review step for our flagship research products.[10] As part of our commitment to our value of humility, we are especially keen to ensure we receive a diversity of feedback and proactively engage with stakeholders who may have different or contrary views to our own.[11] It is all uphill from here Identifying issues is much simpler than crafting solutions, but we are excited for what lies ahead and look forward to improving our research to maximize our impact. If you have any questions or comments, we are always open to feedback. Otherwise, stay tuned for more! Endnotes [1] Actual meeting count is probably higher, but we include here any research meeting in which we specifically focused on reviewing our 2022 research process and products. Spreadsheets included compilations for content-specific/general issues and content-specific/general improvement ideas. The 19,000 word count is based on the content of the four spreadsheets. [2] For example, our six-step “funnel” process describes the most formal and methodical way in which we initially seek to identify promising funding opportunities. In practice, we also use other approaches to add opportunities to our pipeline, such as speaking with climate philanthropists or reviewing new academic publications. [3] See About Giving Green, “Our values” section. [4] We think this is most likely the case for two main reasons: (1) many climate funders explicitly or implicitly value certainty in their giving decisions, so this means less-certain funding opportunities are relatively underfunded; and (2) we think some of the most promising pathways to scale (e.g., policy influence and technology innovation) are also inherently difficult to assess due to their long and complicated causal paths. [5] We use rough benchmarks as a way to compare the cost-effectiveness of different giving opportunities. As a loose benchmark for our top recommendations, we use Clean Air Task Force (CATF), a climate policy organization we currently include as one of our top recommendations. We think it may cost CATF around $1 per ton of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas avoided/removed, and that it serves as a useful benchmark due to its relatively affordable and calculable effects. However, this cost-effectiveness estimate includes subjective guess parameters and should not be taken literally. Instead, we use this benchmark to assess whether a giving opportunity could plausibly be within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider for a top recommendation. As a heuristic, we consider an opportunity if its estimated cost-effectiveness is within an order of magnitude of $1/tCO2e (i.e., less than $10/tCO2e). For additional information, see our CATF report. [6] Pathways: see [published] Good Food Institute (GFI) CEA, 2022-09-14, rows 10-14. Top recommendation cost-effectiveness: We use rough benchmarks as a way to compare the cost-effectiveness of different giving opportunities. As a loose benchmark for our top recommendations, we use Clean Air Task Force (CATF), a climate policy organization we currently include as one of our top recommendations. We think it may cost CATF around $1 per ton of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas avoided/removed, and that it serves as a useful benchmark due to its relatively affordable and calculable effects. However, this cost-effectiveness estimate includes subjective guess parameters and should not be taken literally. Instead, we use this benchmark to assess whether a giving opportunity could plausibly be within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider for a top recommendation. As a heuristic, we consider an opportunity if its estimated cost-effectiveness is within an order of magnitude of $1/tCO2e (i.e., less than $10/tCO2e). For additional information, see our CATF report. [7] See About Giving Green, “Our values” section. [8] Estimate based on counting internal date-stamped call note files. [9] These guidelines include suggestions for when to seek external feedback, who to ask for external feedback, and the types of questions/feedback we should expect to value from different inputs. [10] For example, we may have a professor specializing in grid technology review a deep dive report on long-term energy storage. We may also formalize the ways in which we ask Giving Green advisors for input. [11] See About Giving Green, “Our values” section.

While CDR will be crucial in the long term, firms working toward net-zero, now, need to work toward reducing emissions. By Daniel Stein & Na’im Merchant Mar. 30, 2022 In this piece by Giving Green's director, Dan Stein, and the researcher behind our 2021 carbon removal recommendations, Na'im Merchant, we share the findings of our research into the carbon offset market: namely that there aren't enough good offsets to go around, making net-zero a "distant ambition" for most companies. There is wide agreement among policy makers that in addition to reducing our ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will eventually play an important role in solving the climate crisis. This means removing already-emitted carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, and CDR includes everything from natural processes—like using soils and trees to absorb CO2—to more technical, engineered solutions like deploying direct air capture machines that suck CO2 out of the air. More recently, companies such as Microsoft and Swiss Re have been drawn to CDR as a way to more credibly meet their net-zero goals. The reasoning is simple: A traditional carbon offset only prevents additional CO2 from entering the atmosphere (instead of removing already-emitted CO2). As a result, since it does not physically undo the emissions of the purchaser, there is no quantity of traditional offsets that can, at scale, get the world to net-zero. A world with carbon emissions can only be net-zero with CDR. For this reason, interest in CDR has been rapidly rising. When the Science-based Targets Initiative (SBTI) launched the world’s first corporate standards on achieving net-zero by 2050, they required companies halve their greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and reduce emissions by 90 percent by 2050, and recommended CDR for the balance. Similarly, Oxford University’s Principles for Net-Zero Aligned Offsetting recommends that companies prioritize reducing emissions, but where offsetting was needed, to shift away from traditional offsets to CDR. Globally, the IPCC anticipates that CDR will play a critical role in achieving Paris Agreement targets, estimating billions of tons per year will need to be removed by midcentury to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. At present, however, the CDR market is still nascent. McKinsey estimates voluntary carbon markets will grow as much as 15-fold to $50 billion by 2030, but Forest Trends estimates that only 10 percent of available offsets support CDR projects, with the balance supporting traditional emissions reduction projects. More to the point, there is significant variability in the cost, quality, and societal implications of these emerging solutions. And while many smart people are studying the technological, financial, policy, and societal implications of engineered CDR solutions, we are still years away from finalD answers. Over the last two years, Giving Green—a nonprofit dedicated to identifying the best ways donors can address climate change—has researched a variety of CDR pathways to identify the most effective CDR solutions that are currently available for purchase. Our conclusion: There is an extremely limited supply of reliable, permanent carbon removal available, and what exists is extremely expensive. Therefore, it’s unrealistic for most companies to achieve true net-zero using carbon removal in the short term. Read the full piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review here.

Introduction Australia’s emissions reduction targets and policies are not in line with its responsibility to address the climate crisis. Australia is a major emitter and the world’s third largest fossil fuel exporter (and number one for coal and gas exports). There has been a distinct lack of climate policy leadership at a federal level since the election of the Liberal-National Coalition Government in 2013. The majority of Australians want the Government to do more to address climate change, but aren’t sure what they can do about it. Australia has well over one hundred organisations working to accelerate climate action, and Giving Green is helping donors discern where to direct their support to have the greatest impact. Research process Our research has focussed on organisations that are trying to improve climate policy in Australia. Effective policy has consistently proven to be a key driver of the technological, human, business and industry behaviour changes needed to address the climate crisis. The Giving Green Australia: 2021 Research Process details how we identified the highest impact organisations working to improve climate policy in Australia. The process involved expert interviews, an expert survey, focus groups, and desk research. We focused on organisations using three key approaches that our research determined are the highest priority for delivering policy change: Insider advocacy: lobbying and other forms of insider influence designed to change government policy from within; Outsider advocacy: applying external pressure to change government policy; and Changing the story: identifying and scaling messages and messengers that increase pro-climate literacy, concern and behaviour change. We narrowed the list further by considering which organisations could have the most impact with extra funding. In general, we believe that smaller organisations can make the most use of the marginal dollar, and therefore we excluded large organisations that we believed were effective but also well-funded. The three organisations we have recommended received the highest number of nominations by the 52 climate policy experts we surveyed, have demonstrated their effectiveness in impacting climate policy, and would deliver substantial returns from additional marginal investment. Our recommendations We are pleased to recommend the following organisations (in alphabetical order): Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE): an independent think-tank which promotes net zero pathways to unlock economic opportunities for emissions-intensive industries and regional communities. BZE’s ideas are already gaining traction with regional communities, emissions-intensive industries, and state and federal governments from both sides of politics. For more information, please see our BZE overview and deep dive. Farmers for Climate Action (FCA): organises farmers, graziers and agriculturalists to lead climate solutions on-farm and advocate together for stronger climate policy. Despite being a relatively new organisation, FCA has proven to have significant influence on climate policies at the state and federal level. For more information, please review our FCA overview and deep dive. Original Power: supports Australia's indigenous communities to protect their cultural heritage, challenge fossil fuel developments (if this is what communities decide), and ensure a just transition to renewables that brings benefits to indigenous communities. For more information, please review our Original Power overview and deep dive. We have not prioritised our top organisations because it is difficult to rank highly-promising organisations and their work against one another with a high degree of precision. Our recommended organisations also use different theories of change for shifting climate policy, which each have evidence-based arguments for their assumptions. Rather than taking a stand on which of these theories of change is most likely to hold, we provide donation options across different types of organisation. Giving to support Giving Green’s operations As a nonprofit organisation, Giving Green relies on donations from its readers. If you appreciate our research and would like to support our operations, you can donate to us here. Donations to Giving Green help us grow as an organisation and support our research and communications Questions? Want to collaborate? Please reach out at givinggreen@idinsight.org. Recommendations produced in partnership with Australian Ethical Foundation and The Life You Can Save.

Like many among us, I strongly believe that fighting the climate crisis is the defining challenge of my generation. We all want to do something, but it’s easy to fall into helplessness. There are long lists of potential solutions, but really, what can I do to make a difference? Giving Green, an initiative of IDinsight, is here to answer that question. Giving Green’s mission is to help individuals and organizations effectively direct their money and time toward fighting the global climate crisis. We founders are motivated by our shared experience working to figure out “what works” in public policy, and the philosophy of Effective Altruism, which encourages people to contribute to causes that can do the most good possible. Approaching the climate crisis from this lens, we were surprised how difficult it was to figure out which climate solutions actually worked, and how individuals and organizations could support them. Giving Green provides is a highly-researched set of recommendations that we think represents the best bets for individuals, foundations, and businesses looking to fight climate change. Our product is uniquely transparent, independent, and actionable. All of our processes, research, and reasoning are available online, and all of our recommendations are organizations that you can support today. At Giving Green, we believe that supporting effective organizations is one of the most important ways that individuals can make a difference on climate change. While individual actions, like driving electric cars or skipping a flight, can have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions, we should also be going beyond our personal “carbon footprint”, and look towards more systemic ways of reducing emissions. Giving Green provides actionable advice on how to do that. Giving Green is now out of Beta, with a brand new website! So, how does the Giving Green approach our work? The set of climate solutions is huge, with different organizations working on different aspects of the problem. With a small team, we concentrated our research on certain sectors. In 2020, we focused our recommendations on US national-level policy and carbon offsets. In 2021, we intend to expand our scope of research. Policy change represents the type of large-scale, systemic solution needed to make a big dent in emissions. We decided to focus on US national policy change since the US is the world’s second-largest emitter, and our current team (of primarily Americans) have a better understanding of US policy than that of other places. For our US policy recommendations, our team first decided to focus on recommending organizations using one of two change tactics: “insider” policy advocacy and activism. We detail the decision to focus on these tactics in our document How We Determined Our 2020 Research Priorities. We reviewed both approaches to policy-change in detail and we report our findings in sector overview documents focused on insider policy advocacy and activism. We then shortlisted organizations we thought were especially promising, conducted comprehensive deep dives on a smaller set, and ended up with two recommendations. We’ll go into more detail on the specific recommendations in our next post. Figuring out how to change policy, is, to put it lightly, controversial, so we adopt a “multiple theories-of-change” approach. What we mean by this is that there are many different theories about what specific kinds of policies would be most politically feasible and have the biggest impact on changing the course of climate change. For example, in the US, some people think the best way to push forward climate policy is through solutions that have (theoretical) bipartisan appeal, such as a carbon tax. Others disagree, and instead support comprehensive regulation and investment platforms associated with the left, such the Green New Deal. Still others believe that policies focusing on investment in technology are key. Instead of making a judgement call that one theory of change is correct, we instead recommend best-in-class organizations that adopt a variety of different (yet evidence-backed) approaches. By doing so, we are able to create a portfolio of recommendations that together are highly likely to move US policy in the right direction. You can read more details about our methodology for formulating our policy change recommendations here. We also realize that some people and businesses are more interested in funding highly certain, short-term projects to prevent a specific amount of emissions. These solutions are frequently called carbon offsets. Although we reject the idea that people or businesses should purchase offsets to undo the damage of their personal actions, in the best case, carbon offsets can provide donation opportunities that give high certainty of reduced emissions in the short term. We believe that working toward systemic policy change is more effective than purchasing offsets, but acknowledge that there is demand for high-certainty solutions, so hope to direct buyers of offsets toward those that are the most reliable. To recommend offsets, we first conducted research into nine prominent offset sectors (such as forest conservation and direct air capture), then reviewed specific organizations in promising sectors. We searched for projects that scored highly on our five key criteria: causality, project-level additionality, marginal additionality, permanence, and co-benefits. We recommend three high-quality offsets, which we’ll describe in our next post. You can read about our methodology for recommending offsets here. We believe that Giving Green is fulfilling an important role, connecting donors to organizations that are effectively fighting climate change. Our work, however, is far from over. Going forward, we plan to keep conducting detailed research, adding to our list of recommendations. We also hope to add new research topics on areas like private sector investment, and global policy. We’re still learning and growing, and hope to continue refining our product so it meets the needs of people looking to make a difference to the climate crisis and our collective future. Read our next post, where we explain our recommendations in more detail. Questions? Want to collaborate? Reach out at givinggreen@idinsight.org. Available to read here on IDinsight's blog.

In this blog post, the Giving Green team introduces its recommendations for the 2020 Giving Season. Our recommendations during this season focus on organizations seeking to shift US national climate policy, as well as recommendations for carbon offsets. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to check our first post in this series, where we introduce Giving Green and discuss our approach. The following recommendations aren’t meant to be exhaustive, and just because one organization is not included on this list does not mean we won’t later recommend it. In fact, we hope to spend more time in the future doing more research and adding to this list. For now, our team is presenting the recommendations we have prepared for 2020, and we hope to significantly build upon this work going forward. So without further ado, here are our recommendations for 2020: Policy-change organizations Below are our recommendations for those interested in supporting policy-change organizations. Sunrise Movement Educational Fund The Sunrise Movement Education Fund is the 501(c)(3) organizational branch of the Sunrise Movement, a US youth climate activist organization that works to generate political support for an ambitious set of policy goals that include significantly decarbonizing the US economy and investing in public works programs. To do this, the group targets individual politicians to build support for adopting more aggressive policy action to address climate change. At the same time, they have built a movement of youth who care about climate change and work to pressure political leaders to take significant climate action. We specifically recommend donations to their Education Fund, which is focused on building and training the Sunrise Movements’ network of activists. Besides donating, the Sunrise Movement Education Fund is always looking for volunteers to join their local hubs or start a new one. Take a look at our detailed recommendation for the Sunrise Movement Education Fund and deep dive into the Sunrise Movement. Our team is impressed by the Sunrise Movement Education Fund’s track record to date. From humble beginnings just a few years ago, the movement’s leaders built a large-scale climate activist organization that has shaped the policy conversation around climate in the United States. They’ve been highly effective at growing their membership and at getting politicians and political candidates to support their policy positions. Working with the broader movement, Sunrise Movement Education Fund played a central role in building a strong coalition of politicians, activists, and researchers to coalesce around a policy framework generally known as “Standards, Investment, and Justice”. This framework has been adopted by the House Select Committee on Climate Change and is integrated into the incoming Biden administration’s climate plan. Working together with its affiliates, Sunrise Movement Education Fund has helped push forward climate policy discussions, putting them front and center during the 2020 elections. Our research also revealed some potential risks that may affect the Sunrise Movement’s overall effectiveness. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, some, but not all, commentators have suggested that the “radical” policy positions espoused by the Sunrise Movement may have hurt the electoral prospects of politicians who supported them. In addition, the movement’s highly diffuse structure may be a liability, as different geographic units of the movement sometimes appear less coordinated than others. While acknowledging these risks, we believe that the track record and potential of the Sunrise Movement Education Fund outweighs these challenges. The Sunrise Movement Education Fund is one of the most effective climate activist organizations we have reviewed. Clean Air Task Force The Clean Air Task Force (CATF) is a US-based organization that uses insider advocacy and research to push forward legislative and regulatory changes aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They advocate for policies that tend to be supported by center-right voices in the climate movement, such as promoting investment in carbon capture and storage, and technological innovation for clean energy. CATF works on a different theory of change than the Sunrise Movement, supporting more incremental policies that can garner bipartisan support. Their team is made up of climate and policy experts and their focus is on blending rigorous research with policy advocacy. Read our recommendation here. Our team is impressed by CATF’s strong track record of successfully advocating for impactful policy. In addition, we noted that CATF tends to work on policy issues that receive relatively less attention from other organizations, giving them a unique niche. CATF has an established track record, including: Establishing pollution controls on the power sector under the Clean Air Act 1996–2006 and afterwards Catalyzing the national diesel clean-up campaign from 2003–12, which led to multiple pieces of related legislation at the local, state, and national levels Advocating successfully for multiple methane reduction regulations from 2009 to present. Detailed research on CATF completed by Founders Pledge also establishes that CATF could productively make use of additional funds. We have some reservations about CATF. In particular, we note that CATF has worked on controversial policies such as the 45Q tax credit for carbon capture, storage, and utilization which can lead to captured carbon being sold to fossil-fuel companies for use in increasing oil production. Supporters of these technological approaches to climate policy contend that such arrangements, which benefit fossil-fuel companies, help create markets for crucial technological innovation. Detractors claim that any climate-change policy that benefits fossil fuel companies, who lobby heavily against regulation, is unlikely to lead to systemic change. Despite these reservations, we believe CATF has a strong track record across multiple policy areas. CATF is one of the most effective advocates for technological innovation and emissions regulation at the federal level. Should you donate to the Sunrise Movement Education Fund or CATF? There’s enough uncertainty about any policy progress that we don’t have the ability to rank one organization over the other. They work on very different theories of change, and we encourage donors to give to the one they find most compelling, or even better, hedge by donating to both. Offsets In addition to recommending policy-change organizations, we make recommendations for those looking to purchase offsets in the carbon market. Although they are frequently marketed this way, we at Giving Green reject the notion that people or businesses should spend time calculating their “carbon footprint” and offset their emissions. The climate crisis is too big to restrict our philanthropic scope to our own emissions, and offsets are not reliable enough to wash away our sins. You can read more about how the offset market works and its flaws here. Overall, we think that philanthropists can likely have a larger impact by directing their donations to initiatives working for systemic change, like our US policy recommendations. That being said, good carbon offsets can provide attractive donation opportunities to people looking for ways to reduce GHGs in the short term, with a high degree of certainty. And they are necessary for businesses who have made pledges of “carbon-neutrality.” We recommend three carbon offset projects that we believe are among the most reliable in the market, rated according to our framework: Climeworks Climeworks directly captures carbon from the air and stores it deep in the ground. Climeworks turns carbon into rocks that you can actually see, and their offsets offer the highest level of certainty on the market. Also, purchasing their offsets supports frontier carbon capture technology. This type of technology will likely be an important part of the climate solution in the future, but needs to improve to be viable at scale. The downside is that at the moment, Climeworks’ offsets are very expensive per unit of avoided emissions. Tradewater Tradewater seeks out and destroys “super pollutants” that cause high amounts of warming in small quantities. These substances (such as refrigerants) are generally not produced anymore, but still exist in large stockpiles and are leaking into the atmosphere. We believe Tradewater’s offsets are of very high quality and provide good value for money. Burn Burn designs, manufactures, and distributes a line of improved cookstoves in East Africa that use less fuel than traditional cooking methods. Although cookstoves have a mixed record, Burn’s effects on emissions in real-world have been proven in a rigorous randomized controlled trial. Additionally, Burn stoves provide significant fuel savings for poor families. Burn offsets help reduce emissions while also helping the poor, for a rare win-win. We hope that these recommendations will be useful as you enter this Giving Season! We at Giving Green will remain at work, researching new strategies to fight the climate crisis. Questions? Want to collaborate? Please reach out at givinggreen@idinsight.org. Available to read here on IDinsight's blog.

Contributors Authors: Dan Stein (Co-Founder at Giving Green, Chief Economist at IDInsight), Kim Huynh (Climate Scientist at Giving Green) Editors: Emily Thai (Manager at Giving Green) To join the conversation around this post, head to the EA Forum. Who we are and why we’re writing this post Background on Giving Green Hi all! We are Giving Green, an initiative incubated at IDinsight that aims to guide donations towards evidence-based climate change projects. As stated in a previous EA forum post. Our goal is to improve the impact of climate donations by providing the field with more evidence and by actively pushing donors to make better donation decisions. While climate change can be a contentious (and well liked) issue within the EA community, we are planning to avoid the debate on “is climate change an existential risk?” or “is climate change a cost-effective topic area?” and instead focus our efforts on making the billions of dollars flowing into climate change more effective. Why we’re back on the EA Forum We are posting an update on our work into insider and outsider policy advocacy on climate change to (1) provide a preview of our 2021 research strategy and (2) encourage feedback and discussion within the EA community. This work is partially funded by a grant from the EA Infrastructure Fund. The main purpose of this grant was to improve our policy research and recommendations, as our previous recommendations (particularly around activism) received a good amount of discussion and criticism in a previous post. We hope that by engaging the EA community in a series of posts as our research continues, we’ll be able to integrate feedback and raise the level of rigor of our work. We welcome feedback from the EA community on our process and methods. Specifically, we plan to improve “outsider policy advocacy” by (1) strengthening our understanding of activism’s theory of change, (2) making our reasoning more transparent (3) investigating whether activism could lead to both positive and negative outcomes, and (4) integrating quantitative modeling into our approach when appropriate. Preview of our 2021 research strategy Our focus on US policy In our research, we focused on US policy for reasons of expertise and scale: Expertise – Our team is most familiar with US climate policy and we wanted to put our expertise towards our comparative advantage. We’ve heard in numerous expert conversations that 2021-22 are key years for passing climate policy in the US; Founders Pledge investigates these dynamics in more depth. Scale – The US is among the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters in total volume and also has one of the world’s highest rates of greenhouse gas emissions per capita. We therefore focus on US national-level climate policy because we believe that successful efforts to shift US climate policy could lead to high levels of avoided greenhouse gas emissions, both directly through US policy and through global spillovers. We recognize the importance of state-level policy, global policy, and policy in other high-emitting countries (e.g. China and India) in reducing total emissions. Although we would like to eventually expand the scope of our policy research, we have not yet prioritized this given the small size of our current research team. Main policy tools for affecting climate change We believe that the main policy tools for affecting climate change can be divided into five categories with some overlap: insider policy advocacy, outsider policy advocacy, influencing elections, litigation, and communications. We previously ranked these methods by their potential impact, likelihood of success, and need for more funding (the Importance, Tractability, and Neglectedness framework). We still believe that insider and outsider policy advocacy are the most promising avenues and therefore focus on these tactics in this year’s research. When we speak of policy advocacy, we refer to efforts to influence legislative or regulatory action such as through lobbying or organizing protests. Insiders use tactics related to connections and experience in policy making (e.g., think tanks, lobbyists) while outsiders apply pressure through civil society and other democratic practices (e.g., activist groups). It is very common for funders to insist on a portfolio approach, utilizing both insider and outsider tactics to affect policy. While we agree that both tactics are likely necessary to push policy change, we aim to look for the most effective uses of money on the margin. This consists of either type of strategy or both. Insider policy advocacy Overview Insiders with connections and experience in the policymaking process can advocate for effective climate change policy by influencing legislators. Tactics include policy research, one-on-one lobbying with decision-makers, and direct policy support (e.g., creating or editing policy proposals and draft legislation). Examples of climate insiders include the “Big Greens” such as Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the Sierra Club, and the World Resources Institute (WRI). Smaller climate insiders include Carbon180 and the Clean Air Task Force. Insiders also fit along different parts of the political spectrum from the left (Evergreen Action) to the center-right (Niskanen Center). Angles where insider political advocacy could be ineffective The Big Greens are exceptionally well-funded. Notably, the most recent 990 forms of EDF, NRDC, and WRI from 2019 and 2020 each report a total revenue greater than $185M. Additionally, these three organizations each received $100M from the Bezos Earth Fund in 2020. Although total revenue is a weak proxy to determine the marginal value of additional contributions, these large budgets and recent gifts suggest that these prominent environmental organizations are already front of mind for many donors and that EA-aligned donors may have a higher marginal impact elsewhere. Additionally, most of the Big Greens have a wide environmental agenda. Given the number of environmental causes the Big Greens support, it is plausible that a donation to the Big Greens could be used to support a cause other than removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (e.g., improving access to clean drinking water). Angles where insider political advocacy could be effective Nonetheless, there are still angles where insider political advocacy could still be effective. This includes (1) organizations that are especially focused and influential with important lawmakers and (2) organizations that concentrate on important, neglected policy issues. Organizations that are influential with important lawmakers Some insider organizations limit the scope of their work to climate change action and are influential with important lawmakers. For instance, one organization we are considering is Evergreen Action, a new organization borne out of the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Governor Jay Inslee. It has close connections with the Biden administration (one of its founders is now the Chief of Staff for Biden’s Office of Domestic Policy) as well as progressive congressional lawmakers. Evergreen targets its efforts towards climate change and therefore has a narrower environmental agenda than the Big Greens. It mobilizes support for more aggressive climate change policy by advocating its climate action plan for federal lawmakers. Organizations that focus on important, neglected policy issues Clean Air Task Force, Carbon180, and Rewiring America are three different organizations that focus on neglected policies. They effect change by producing research, drafting laws, and lobbying for these specific policies to be passed. These actions work together to draw attention to a cause and shape legislative agendas. For example, widely disseminated research can lead legislators or regulators to take action they would not otherwise take and help establish a “common sense” around a particular policy issue. Draft legislation can lead to direct policy creation while lobbying draws attention to a particular issue. As an example, the Clean Air Task Force advocates for public policies that will enact pollution regulations and invest in improved energy technologies. It conducts research on climate policy and runs campaigns to encourage policy support for neglected-low carbon technologies. Notably, Founder’s Pledge, which has focused its Climate Change Fund on advocating for innovation in neglected low-carbon technology, have recommended both the Clean Air Task Force and Carbon180. Room for more funding As a whole, we believe that insider policy advocacy is not especially neglected given the substantial total revenues that organizations such as the Big Greens report. However, there are smaller organizations that would likely benefit from increased funding. Outsider policy advocacy Overview Outsiders, such as activist groups, put pressure on people in power and increase issue visibility, which could influence elections and the legislative agenda. Their aims can include the following: Influencing people in power – Activists influence climate policy by targeting people currently in power, and try to make climate change a greater political priority. One mechanism of influence is to change the range of policies considered politically acceptable to a mainstream audience (the “Overton window”). Changing the political fortunes of those in power – Activists can change the political fortunes of those in power by generating support for alternative pro-climate candidates or fending off challengers during the electoral process. Common tactics by outsiders include citizen lobbying, protests, marches, and phone banking. Examples of climate outsiders include well-known organizations such as 350.org, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, Extinction Rebellion, Fridays for Future, the Green New Deal Network, and the Sunrise Movement. It also includes environmental justice organizations such as the Climate Justice Alliance and the Indigenous Environmental Network. Angles where outsider political advocacy could be ineffective Many organizations working on outsider policy advocacy do not have a strong connection to politics or a theory of change that directly ties their actions to policy wins. Instead, they advocate for climate change action by increasing “awareness” of climate change as an issue. However, awareness is difficult to quantify and we are skeptical of its impact on influencing policy and ultimately reducing GHGs in the atmosphere. Additionally, awareness does not appear to be a barrier to climate action; many people have likely heard the climate change narrative even if they do not believe in it. To become change agents on climate, these people would also need to form an opinion on climate change, develop motivation to take action on their opinion, and eventually wield political influence via collective action. Simple awareness-raising campaigns therefore tend to be ineffective because they do not link awareness to action. Angles where outsider political advocacy could be effective We believe that a more effective approach involves well-organized movements that tie people power to political influence and specific policy demands. In 2020, we recommended the Sunrise Movement Education Fund because it has a track record of success in movement building, and we believed it had the potential to have real policy influence. We are currently reviewing this recommendation in light of additional information and the changing political landscape, and will provide an update by the end of 2021. Room for more funding We find it likely that outsider policy advocacy has room for more funding, compared to insider advocacy. For example, according to a 2017 report on social movement theory and climate activism, the space for outsider policy advocacy is relatively small and has relatively few actors. In addition, many organizations reported total revenues in 2019 that were about an order of magnitude lower than what the Big Greens reported. Although this space has certainly grown in terms of participants and donations over the past few years given the increased attention on climate activism, we find it likely that outsider groups still have room for more funding based on the nature of their work. In general, activism requires a greater number of participants to be effective; it seems likely that its impact may therefore grow proportionately with funding, which could be used to support organizations’ capacity-building and grassroots efforts. Conclusion and next steps We believe that the strategies of both insider and outsider policy advocacy can be effective, and intend to search for “best-in-class” organizations in each category to consider for recommendations. In our research moving forward, we would like to answer questions such as the following: How do best-in-class outsider organizations compare to best-in-class insider organizations in reducing GHGs in the atmosphere? Within the constraints of uncertainty we face, will we be able to rank on strategy as “better” than the other? How does timing play into the calculation? Is it possible that “insider” orgs cause more short-term, measurable change while “outsider” orgs slowly work towards larger systems change? Although we strongly believe that our research will involve a considerable amount of uncertainty, we aim to use quantitative modeling to answer parts of our research questions in order to make our assumptions clear and our reasoning transparent to our audience. When we believe that quantitative modeling is not possible, we will share our attempts at modeling, explain our reasoning for why a model is not possible, provide a more qualitative answer (if possible), and encourage further feedback from climate experts and the EA community. Again, we welcome your thoughts and suggestions on our work, and we will be posting more updates as the work evolves. If you would like to get in touch with us directly, please email us at givinggreen@idinsight.org. Source: Effective Altruism Forum

What we did: Carbon offsets fund projects that supposedly provide a verifiable reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Most offsets are avoidance offsets, which avoid future GHG emissions. Increasingly, carbon removals, which remove existing GHGs from the atmosphere, are gaining prominence both as a form of offsetting and as a climate technology in their own right. Our carbon offset and removal recommendations are designed for businesses and other organizations aiming to meet net zero goals. We encourage individuals to maximize their impact, not just offset their own emissions, and we believe that donors will have more impact by supporting policy change. However, we acknowledge that net-zero commitments can drive private-sector funding to emissions-reducing projects. In line with net-zero goals, our assessments prioritize certainty in emissions reductions over total impact generated. We search for a causal and verifiable link between the purchase of a carbon credit and decreased atmospheric GHGs within a few years. What we did in 2021 to arrive at these recommendations: We updated and expanded our overviews of different types of offsets, including: Major updates to our overviews on forestry and direct air capture Adding research on biochar/bio-oil (or biomass carbon removal) and purchasing emissions credits from cap-and-trade markets We re-assessed our 2020 recommendations by updating our research and developing new cost-effectiveness models of their work. We dove more deeply into the world of carbon removal offsets, analyzing the set of organizations that participated in the procurement processes of Microsoft, Shopify, and Stripe. We used data from research nonprofit CarbonPlan to narrow a list of over 200 projects to the 22 most promising. Of those, we found six providers who provided accessible purchase options and conducted a deeper assessment of each. We arrived at a recommendation of one company from this list, Charm Industrial. For a full explanation of our method for selecting offsets and removals, please see our Overview of the Voluntary Carbon Markets. We divide our recommendations by mechanism: avoidance of future GHG emissions, or removal of existing atmospheric GHGs. While removals tend to be much more expensive than avoidance-based projects, their permanent impact is much more certain. In addition, developing and scaling carbon removal technologies is critical to stay below 1.5ºC of warming. Supporting removal projects helps work toward not only a net-zero but a net-negative future. (Note that these offset & removal providers are for-profit businesses, and purchases are not tax-deductible.) What we recommend: Our recommendations in removal We currently recommend two carbon removal providers: New for 2021 - Charm Industrial: Agriculture residues are usually left to decompose and release greenhouse gases. Charm Industrial converts agriculture residues into bio-oil, a dense carbon-rich liquid. This bio-oil is injected deep underground, where it remains for thousands of years. Purchasing removal from Charm enables Charm to put more carbon underground and to scale up their bio-oil technology. (Note: Under a strict definition, Charm is an avoidance project. Charm’s process avoids emissions from the decay of crops. However, we consider it akin to a removal because, while Charm is not responsible for growing the crops, the crops do remove carbon from the atmosphere.) Purchase carbon removal from Charm Industrial. Climeworks: Climeworks captures CO2 via their modular direct air capture technology and injects it underground, where it permanently turns into a solid material. Purchasing removal from Climeworks enables Climeworks to remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and supports the development of their frontier technology. Purchase carbon removal from Climeworks. Our recommendations in avoidance We currently recommend two avoidance-based offset providers: BURN Manufacturing: BURN makes and distributes fuel-efficient stoves in Kenya. Their impact on fuel usage and GHG emissions was validated by a randomized controlled trial, which sets it apart from other cookstove providers. Additionally, BURN stove users spend less on fuel, leading to more money for the family. Purchase offsets from BURN. Note that offset purchases are not tax-deductible. Tradewater: Tradewater finds and destroys refrigerants and other gases with warming potentials up to 10,000 times that of carbon dioxide. Priced at $15 per ton of CO2 removed, Tradewater offers one of the most attractive combinations of price and certainty. Purchase offsets from Tradewater. Note that offset purchases are not tax-deductible. Which offsets or removals should a business purchase? If businesses have the flexibility, we recommend that they purchase removals. Removals are much more expensive on a per-ton basis than avoidance-based offsets. This is justified because they accelerate the development of novel climate technology and are far more impactful than they first appear. (See our Climeworks recommendation for a quantitative analysis of this argument.) Both Charm’s and Climeworks’ removal technologies are young enough, and the climate crisis large enough, that supporting the development of both is critical. We do not have a preference between our top two removals providers. Both are on the frontiers of developing critical technologies—in fact, Charm Industrial and Climeworks are the only two providers as of this writing to have completed any commercial carbon removal orders. We should also note that both of our removal providers have limited capacity, and their ability to deliver removals may be delayed if there is too much demand. However, we know that not all businesses are willing to pay large up-front prices to meet their net-zero commitments. When purchasing avoidance-based offsets, we encourage businesses to be skeptical—many have no real impact. We urge businesses to go beyond buying commoditized, low-price outputs, and critically assess whether their offsets are high quality. Our recommendations, BURN and Tradewater, are two avoidance offset providers that create real impact with your money. In BURN’s case, the program actively helps the communities in which they work. We do not have a preference between these two providers; in order to achieve net-zero emissions globally, each and every source of emissions will have to be addressed somehow, including those from cookstoves and refrigerant gases. We look forward to evaluating and recommending more avoidance-based offsets in the future. Giving to support Giving Green’s operations As a nonprofit organization, Giving Green relies on donations from its readers. If you appreciate our research and would like to support our operations, you can donate to us here. Donations to Giving Green help us grow as an organization and support our research and communications. Questions? Want to collaborate? Please reach out at givinggreen@idinsight.org.

Giving Green offers short-term and long-term recommendations. The long term include clean energy research and lobbying national policy and the short term are verifiable decreases in GHG emissions or increase carbon capture. Short-term recommendations seek to cause immediate, verifiable decreases in GHG emissions (or increase carbon capture). Long-term recommendations seek to make bigger, riskier bets with the hope of changing the long-term arc of climate change. These include avenues such as funding clean energy research, or lobbying national policy. Giving Green is trying to look at these markets and provide people with which they feel most comfortable working with and that make the biggest impact. See the original piece - an interview with Giving Green co-founder Dan Stein - here.

Last summer, when we discussed how to make your climate change donations count, our reporting suggested that one of the most effective strategies is donating to political campaigns. But what if you’re not into politics and would rather help out a nonprofit organization instead? Unless you’re a scientist or policy wonk, figuring out who’s actually making a difference can feel like an impossible task. Click here to read the original article on NY Times' website.

Here’s where to donate your money If you’re reading this, chances are you care a lot about fighting climate change, and that’s great. Maybe you’re thinking about making a donation to the cause as you watch wildfires burning in California, ice shelves shattering in the Arctic, and glaciers breaking loose in Antarctica, all at the same time. Climate change is the biggest emergency facing humanity. Our global response to it has been, in a word, pathetic. Over the past decade, our carbon dioxide emissions have actually risen 11 percent. We need to reverse that trend — and fast. The trouble is, it can be genuinely hard to figure out how to direct your money wisely if you want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There’s a glut of environmental organizations out there and a lack of rigorous research on their impacts and cost-effectiveness, though that’s beginning to change with the arrival of new evaluators like Giving Green. Click here to read the full article on Vox.

Dan Stein, the director of Giving Green, agrees that it’s important to fund advocacy with bipartisan appeal - hence Giving Green’s recommendation to donate to Clean Air Task Force. But he also thinks it’s important to fund grassroots activist groups, including those strongly tied to Democrats. “I would push for a two-part strategy, because I think the way policy gets made is through these insider-outsider coalitions,” he said. “You have people with close links in the halls of Congress and to the president, and then you have external pressure that’s forcing the politicians to pay attention to the issue". Click here to read the full article on Vox.