Search Results

Top climate nonprofits for donors GIVE TODAY Giving Green's Top Nonprofits: 2024-2025 Clean Air Task Force Having had a successful track record of pushing for climate solutions in the US, Clean Air Task Force (CATF) is now going global. By identifying barriers to technology deployment, engaging with stakeholders, and advocating for supportive policies, CATF aims to speed up the growth of low-carbon technologies to reduce emissions broadly and quickly. We are particularly impressed that CATF has built momentum for areas of innovation that need more funding support, such as superhot rock geothermal energy, zero-carbon fuels, and the decarbonization of aviation and maritime shipping. OUR RESEARCH Future Cleantech Architects For hard-to-abate sectors like heavy industry and aviation, we do not yet have the tools to reach net zero. Future Cleantech Architects works across technical research & policy engagement to advance innovation in critical areas often neglected by funders and governments. We were impressed by Future Cleantech Architect’s depth of in-house expertise and evidence of its meaningful influence on EU climate policy. OUR RESEARCH 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. The Good Food Institute (GFI) seeks to make alternative proteins as affordable and delicious as conventional products. It pushes for more government funding for research, fights for fair labeling, and helps cultivated meat get to market. We thi nk GFI is a powerhouse in supporting alternative proteins, with impressive wins under its belt. OUR RESEARCH Industrious Labs Heavy industries like steel and cement are the building blocks of the global economy, accounting for one-third of greenhouse gas emissions. Industrious Labs runs comprehensive campaigns to decarbonize specific industries, targeting corporate actors and governments alike. Critically, through coalition building, regranting, and training, it is scaling advocacy well beyond its own organization. We are excited about Industrious Labs’ actionable, industry-specific strategies and the strength of its leadership team. OUR RESEARCH Opportunity Green Aviation and maritime shipping are challenging sectors to decarbonize and have not received much support from philanthropy in the past. Opportunity Green pushes for ambitious regulations, promotes clean fuels, encourages companies to adopt greener fleets, and works to reduce demand for air travel. We are especially excited about Opportunity Green’s efforts to elevate climate vulnerable countries in policy discussions, as we think this could improve the inclusivity of the process and the ambition level of policies. OUR RESEARCH Project InnerSpace Deep underground, the Earth’s crust holds abundant heat that can supply renewable, carbon-free heat and reliable, on-demand electricity. Project InnerSpace is fast-tracking next-generation technologies that can make geothermal energy available worldwide. It has a bold plan to reduce financial risks for new geothermal projects, making geothermal energy cheaper and more accessible, especially in densely populated areas in the Global South. OUR RESEARCH GIVE TODAY How we find effective climate charities Systems change To address the drivers of climate change, we need to change the rules of the game. Our research focuses on giving strategies that take a bold, systemic approach to lowering emissions, such as through crafting strong climate policy, advancing clean technologies, shaping markets, and changing norms. Our research shows that giving opportunities that focus on systems change can be an order of magnitude more effective than the best direct emissions reductions projects, such as carbon offsets. Scale, feasibility, and funding need We use three broad criteria to assess the promise of an approach: scale (how big a problem is it?), feasibility (how hard is it to address?), and funding need (how much would more donations help?). How we find effective climate nonprofits We follow a five-step research process: identify impact strategies, assess impact strategies, longlist potential organizations, evaluate specific funding opportunities, and publish recommendations. Read more ab out how we find top climate change charities .

Charm Industrial // BACK This recommendation was last updated in November 2022, with pricing details updated in May 2023. It may no longer be accurate, both with respect to the evidence it presents and our assessment of the evidence. We do not have plans to update this recommendation in the foreseeable future as we have paused our work assessing direct carbon removal and offset projects. Questions and comments are welcome. Giving Green believes that donating to our top recommendations is likely to be the most impactful giving strategy for supporting climate action. However, we recognize that contributing to policy advocacy (as most of these recommendations do) may not be tenable for all donors, especially businesses. Taking this into consideration, we recommend Charm Industrial specifically for businesses given its focus on carbon removal and more direct alignment with corporate net-zero ambitions. We believe Charm Industrial to be a high-impact option, but we are unsure of the extent to which its cost-effectiveness approaches that of our top recommendations. Overview of Charm Industrial Mechanism Causality Project Additionality Marginal Additionality Permanence Cost Co-benefits and potential adverse effects Conclusion Overview of Charm Industrial Charm Industrial is a US-based company that converts agriculture residues into bio-oil through a process known as fast pyrolysis. Charm collects agriculture residues (such as corn stover and wheat straw) from farmers in Kansas, as well as forestry operators and wildlife prevention organizations in California. [1] These are fed into a pyrolysis unit and heated at very high temperatures (> 500° C) in the absence of oxygen for a matter of seconds, creating bio-oil. Instead of slowly decomposing and releasing greenhouse gases, the bio-oil locks up the carbon from the original biomass and is injected into EPA-regulated wells, sinking to the bottom of the geological formation where it remains for thousands or millions of years. Charm’s business model is currently entirely dependent on the sale of removals to individual and corporate buyers. The company uses these funds to build small, mobile pyrolysis units at its factory in San Francisco or purchase pyrolysis units that can be deployed near farms or in forestry settings where agriculture or forestry residues are collected. Charm’s theory of change is that using modular, distributed pyrolysis units instead of centralized biomass processing plants can help drive down capital and transportation costs over time. Lower costs would make this technology more affordable in combating climate change, and make biomass residues economically accessible for use. The use of biomass feedstocks as a climate mitigation strategy has traditionally been associated with using biomass for energy production (bioenergy). However, as interest in removals has increased and the cost of other renewable energy technologies like solar and wind have decreased, more emphasis has been placed on the carbon value of biomass and the potential for long-term storage. This pathway is known as biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS). Its proponents believe it will play an important role in global efforts to achieve net-zero emissions, and that it has global potential to capture and store 2.5 gigatons of CO 2 annually by mid-century. Having sequestered thousands of tons of carbon to date, Charm is a pioneer in actively demonstrating how to scale up this important climate mitigation pathway responsibly and sustainably. Mechanism Giving Green views the bio-oil production process as removed emissions, though we acknowledge this can be a gray area depending on which parts of the process are considered. As crops grow, they draw carbon out of the atmosphere and store it in their biomass. Charm’s process intercepts agricultural residues left behind after harvest before the biomass can decompose and re-emit carbon, heating the residue to create a highly stable product called bio-oil. As this cycle is a carbon-negative process, resulting in less CO 2 in the atmosphere overall, we consider these emissions as removed rather than avoided. Causality High causality. Charm collects agriculture residues that would have otherwise been left on the field and broken down by microorganisms. This process of decomposition would return some of the nutrients from the residues back into the soil, but would have also resulted in the release of greenhouse gases including CO 2 and nitrous oxide. Heating up these agriculture residues through fast pyrolysis locks much of this carbon into place in the form of bio-oil, which is then injected into EPA-regulated injection wells. Heating up biomass through the process of pyrolysis creates an end product that is much more difficult for bacteria and microbes to break down, resulting in lower CO 2 emissions. The carbon content of the bio-oil that is injected underground is easily measurable, making it possible to accurately quantify carbon reductions because of the process. Project Additionality High project additionality. Charm’s only revenue stream is from the sale of carbon removals to individual and corporate buyers. Unlike other companies that convert biomass into biochar or bio-oil through pyrolysis, the company does not sell the end product for commercial uses. While the fast pyrolysis process also produces a small amount of biochar, this is returned to the field for the nutrient value and is not included as part of the purchasable removals. Based on our research and conversations with Charm, there is a strong case that the bio-oil would not be produced and injected into wells without revenues from the sale of removals. Compared to conventional fuels, bio-oil has a lower energy density and higher viscosity and easily hardens on contact with air. In the absence of additional refining, these properties make it a poor substitute for conventional fossil fuels. Charm has determined that bio-oil has potentially greater value as a carbon store than an energy carrier and has therefore pursued a commercialization path that depends entirely on revenues from the sale of removals. This may change in the future, as the cost of the process comes down. The company is hopeful that once the price reaches $250/ton of CO 2 , the company may be eligible for revenues from federal 45Q and state LCFS incentives and crediting systems. At the <$100/ton range, the company expects to be exploring commercial use cases, like the production of industrial syngas or iron for use in steelmaking. For the foreseeable future, we assess Charm’s process as high project additionality. Marginal Additionality High marginal additionality. According to the company, a single pyrolysis unit is approximately the size of a shipping container. One of these units can capture (as bio-oil) the equivalent of several thousand tons of CO 2 annually. Charm’s revenue from the sale of removals will go toward operational costs and the procurement of these pyrolysis units that are small and mobile enough to be moved along the boundary of farmlands, reducing the costs associated with transporting biomass feedstock. [2] We consider this to be a modular system that lends itself well to high marginal additionality. Charm was able to walk us through how new removal revenues contribute to procurement and deployment of new pyrolysis units that become increasingly mobile and cost-effective over time. Permanence High Permanence. The bio-oil produced through Charm’s pyrolysis process is more stable than the original biomass. This is true for other products created through pyrolysis like biochar. However, biochar is typically applied to soils, where it undergoes complex interactions with soil microbes and other microorganisms and is further affected by environmental conditions and soil properties. This makes it difficult to measure real-world biochar decomposition rates – and, in turn, the permanence or durability of carbon fixed to the biochar. Charm has attempted to avoid this problem by injecting the resulting bio-oil into EPA-regulated injection wells. Injection wells are “used to place fluids underground into porous geologic formations”. Charm claims that the highly viscous bio-oil sinks to the bottom of the well and solidifies over time, eliminating any chance that the carbon locked in the bio-oil could be re-released into the atmosphere. The wells used are regulated by the EPA under the Underground Injection Control program to ensure that injection activities do not endanger underground sources of drinking water. The over 680,000 injection wells in the United States have a number of uses including disposing of brine generated during oil production, disposal of other liquid wastes, and storing carbon dioxide. These wells must be rigorously separated from underground sources of drinking water; once filled, they are capped by an impermeable cap rock called the “confining layer.” Charm has conducted initial studies comparing bio-oil before and after injection that demonstrate the bio-oil solidifies within 48 hours. Testing and monitoring programmes are currently underway for in-field bio-oil solidification; Charm will share these results once available. [3] Given the high stability of bio-oil relative to existing biomass, and the sinking of bio-oil thousands of feet below the surface, we assess permanence as high. We also note that Charm is working with Carbon Direct and EcoEngineers to create a bio-oil sequestration protocol [4] to develop life cycle analyses, carbon management, and monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) standards for bio-oil projects on the voluntary and regulatory carbon markets. Cost When considering the price per ton of CO 2 removed, Charm does not seem to be among the most cost-effective options on the voluntary carbon market: it currently costs hundreds of dollars per ton, depending on the purchaser's commitment duration, to remove a ton of CO 2 through Charm. However, we believe that comparing costs directly can be misleading and that the true value of purchasing a removal from Charm extends beyond the tons removed. Investing in Charm offers long term durability (10,000+ years) of stored carbon as well as support for the development of carbon removal technology and markets. Much of Charm’s cost is associated with the development and deployment of pyrolysis units and the transportation of biomass feedstock to pyrolysis units. The company expects that removal purchases made today will help mass-manufacture pyrolysis units to reduce unit costs, capitalize on internal supply chain efficiencies, and reduce biomass transportation costs by developing and deploying more mobile pyrolysis units. While current costs are high, the company has a roadmap for bringing costs down in the coming years. Co-benefits and potential adverse effects High co-benefits. Charm has identified multiple co-benefit streams: wildfire reduction, abandoned well leak prevention, and economic benefits to local communities. While there could be the risk of leakage associated with bio-oil storage, we believe that this is unlikely. [5] The company also aims to reduce the risk of wildfire by strategically collecting forest slash to minimize forest fuel load. Reducing the frequency and intensity of wildfires also increases air quality, which has flow-on impacts to the health of the local communities. [6] There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells across the US slowly leaking toxic chemicals and methane. Charm can utilize these wells for bio-oil storage and then permanently cap them while actively engaging with local environmental justice communities in the area. [7] Further, Charm's technology provides employment and additional income for farmers, forest managers, and fuel injection operators, bringing direct benefits to groups who might otherwise be opposed to aggressive climate action. [8] A share of the purchase price also goes towards third parties, such as farmers or fuel injection operators. [9] We have identified one potential adverse effect. It is important to note the potential risks with the structural integrity or leakage of injection wells. However, the bio-oil is expected to solidify shortly after injection into its storage point thousands of feet below water tables. The EPA has determined risks to be low, and far more buoyant materials including CO 2 gas have been injected into geologic formations for decades without issue. We therefore believe that risks associated with injecting bio-oils must be monitored, but are not disqualifying in any way. Conclusion Charm has developed and is beginning to scale up a process that can measurably and permanently keep CO 2 from agriculture and forest residues from entering the atmosphere. It avoids some of the permanence and additionality concerns associated with biochar providers. It has made the purchase process streamlined for purchasers of removals, and is currently working on a public dashboard to further improve transparency. The company's process is measurable, additional, and permanent. The only drawbacks are its current price and the need for more data on the solidification of bio-oil in injection wells. We have determined that supporting Charm Industrial at this juncture can have a significant effect on scaling up its climate mitigation solution by reducing costs and helping improve its technology. More broadly, this can help shape a relatively new climate mitigation pathway. You can pre-purchase removals from Charm Industrial on its website with expected fulfillment by 2026 (at time of writing). We thank Peter Reinhardt, CEO of Charm Industrial, and Harris Cohn, Sales Lead at Charm Industrial, for the conversations that informed this document. Endnotes [1] “operating in forestry areas and utility wildfire operation in California.” Charm Industrial call notes, 2022-10-27; “Charm will…help reduce the intensity and scale of wildfires.” Charm, 2022. [2] “Funding goes towards operations, as well as the new modular pyrolysis machines.” Charm Industrial call notes, 2022-10-27 [3] “We have a petroleum engineer to design testing and monitoring programmes and will share results when available.” Charm Industrial call notes, 2022-10-27 [4] A new proto-protocol for bio-oil sequestration. https://www.carbon-direct.com/insights/a-new-proto-protocol-for-bio-oil-sequestration [5] See “Community Benefits” section. Charm, 2022 . [6] See “Taming Wildfires” subheading. Charm, 2022 . [7] See “Fixing Abandoned Wells” subheading. Charm, 2022 . [8] See “Economic Opportunities for Agricultural and Rural Communities” and “A Just Transition For Energy Communities” subheadings. Charm, 2022 . [9] Email correspondence with Charm Industrial, 2023-05-04

Fuel Efficient Cookstoves // BACK This report was last updated in November 2020. It may no longer be accurate, both with respect to the evidence it presents and our assessment of the evidence. We may revise this report in the future, depending on our research capacity and research priorities. Questions and comments are welcome. Summary Adoption of fuel-efficient cookstoves can decrease household fuel use and therefore carbon emissions. There are a wide variety of cookstove offsets on the market, using different technologies in different contexts. Although the methodology used to certify these projects ensures that they make a reasonable case for offsetting emissions, it also requires strong assumptions around stove use and changes in cooking behavior. The impact evaluation literature shows highly mixed results. Some randomized control trials (RCTs) show cookstoves having strong effects on fuel usage while others show null effects. We do not feel comfortable recommending cookstove offsets in general, as the RCT literature shows that the required assumptions are frequently not satisfied. We would recommend offset projects similar to those that have shown strong results in a rigorous evaluation, such as the recent work by Berkouwer and Dean. Given this RCT, we recommend offsets generated by the the manufacturer of the cookstoves studied in that paper, BURN. Cookstoves as a carbon offset In theory, clean cookstoves appear to be a good way for donors to achieve emissions reductions while also improving the lives of poor households. Many poor households in the developing world cook over an open fire, which is not energy efficient and results in household smoke. Myriad cookstove technologies promise improved fuel efficiency. This leads to fewer CO2 emissions, as well as improved indoor air quality and savings on fuel costs. Revenue from offsets can be used to subsidize cookstove distribution or even to give them away for free. However, clean cookstove projects have a mixed record of success. Many have used technologies that were not well-suited to local conditions, leading to stove malfunctions and limited usage. Whether a cookstove project is truly offsetting emissions depends on the details of the specific project. Mechanism Use of fuel-efficient cookstoves is considered emissions avoidance . The greater emissions from the use of a less efficient method, such as an open fire, are avoided, and the offset can be credited with the difference in emissions between the two methods. Causality Efficient cookstoves result in decreased emissions by decreasing the amount of fuel (generally wood) a household uses for cooking. This causal mechanism is theoretically valid, but in practice, even the introduction of stoves that are mechanically superior will not result in reductions in fuel usage, due to variations in human behavior. Certifiers such as the Gold Standard use a specific methodology to calculate emissions reductions from cookstove projects. We base our assessment off of the Gold Standard methodology, but to the best of our understanding, the methodology of the other certifiers is roughly similar. Their calculation relies on a standard model which takes into account the baseline value of fuel usage, the efficiency of the stove, and pre-determined conversion factors of wood to emissions to calculate emissions reductions. It also includes corrections for some human behavior elements, such as the fraction of households who continue to use the less efficient stoves and the fraction of cooking that continues to be conducted on the old stoves. Key model parameters, such as whether households are still using the more efficient stoves, need to be continually verified by a third party in order for carbon credits to be issued. Overall, we have three main concerns with cookstove certification methods: There is no actual measurement of fuel usage. While this is understandably difficult to measure, it would provide an indication of the magnitude of avoided CO2. Without this data, we have to rely on strong assumptions about usage of the stove and its efficiency in real-world conditions. Additionally, the offset certifiers assume that energy demand stays constant, even though the stove drastically decreases the price of cooking by reducing fuel needed. There is no comparison group. Offset certifiers estimate a reduction of fuel usage compared to the households’ fuel use prior to cookstove distribution. Thus, we must make the strong assumption that the level of wood consumption would have stayed constant in absence of the cookstoves. This may not be true if cooking practices are changing over time for other reasons, such as decreasing availability of foraged wood. Verification data is collected by recipients of offset funds. Verification surveys in the field are contracted by the project developers. They have a strong incentive to show that stoves are being used. Given that certification methodologies rely on a number of questionable assumptions, we next ask whether these are validated in the academic literature. Fortunately, a number of high-quality RCTs on improved cooking technology have been conducted in a number of contexts. RCTs are the gold standard in determining causality. If these studies generally find that stove usage remains high and wood usage decreases, they make a strong case for cookstoves meaningfully reducing emissions. Unfortunately, the results of these studies are mixed. Certainly, some show positive results. For instance, Bensch and Peters (2015) conduct an RCT of improved cookstoves in Senegal and indeed find large decreases in firewood usage. But they also find that 27% of meals are still cooked on traditional stoves in the treatment group a year after distribution, which is higher than the assumptions we see in many offset projects. Berkouwer and Dean (2019) find that improved cookstoves in Kenya lead to reductions in fuel expenditure by 40%, close to the manufacturer’s claims of 50% reduction, and that these effects persist for 18 months after the cookstoves’ adoption. On the other hand, Hanna et al (2016) find no change in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a cookstove project in India, primarily due to dis-adoption of the stoves. Aung et al (2013) find no change in fuel usage for a cookstove project that received emissions credits in India. Beltramo and Levine (2013) also find no effect of an improved cookstove on fuel usage in Senegal. Due to the strong assumptions that must be made in the certification process and the mixed results in the RCT literature, we do not feel like we can confidently recommend cookstove offset projects unless causality has been validated with a high-quality impact evaluation. Project-level additionality There are many different types of cookstove projects, and the details of the implementing organization(s) are important in determining project-level additionality. Many cookstove projects sell their stoves, so offsets are not strictly necessary to ensure stove distribution. In these cases, the organization may have a valid business model without offsets, and therefore the offsets would not satisfy project-level additionality. In some markets, it might be necessary to sell the stoves at a subsidy, which would make offsets more additional. Also, some projects distribute stoves for free. These types of projects would not survive without offsets, and would have the strongest claim to project-level additionality. Marginal additionality In theory, a cookstove project should be able to satisfy marginal additionality. For projects that distribute stoves for free, an additional offset sold can provide funding to distribute an additional stove. For projects that sell stoves, offsets can be used to decrease prices, therefore increasing the total amount of cookstoves sold. As shown in Berkouwer and Dean (2019), the demand for cookstoves increases sharply as costs are lowered. Permanence If cookstoves avoid emissions from biomass burned as fuel, these gains could be short-lived if the biomass later burns down in a fire. However, in general, emissions avoided due to stoves being more fuel-efficient are avoided permanently. Co-benefits Improved cookstoves can deliver benefits to their owners apart from lowered GHGs. Households with an efficient cookstove save time and money that would otherwise be spent gathering and purchasing fuel. Improved cookstoves result in less indoor smoke, improving the health of family members, especially of women and children. Both economic and health benefits rely on the same mechanism as reduced GHG emissions: using less fuel. Therefore, if stoves are effective in reducing households’ use of fuels, they are likely to provide co-benefits. Assessment of cookstove projects Our main concern with cookstove offsets is that cookstove projects do not always result in lowered fuel usage by households. Therefore, the key input into our recommendations would be a clear indication that a particular offset project actually decreases household fuel usage in its real-world setting. We recommend BURN due to strong evidence of this real-world decrease in Berkouwer and Dean (2019). This study showed reductions in actual fuel use of a similar magnitude to reductions predicted by the efficiency of the stove, which is a key assumption made in the offset certification process that is rarely validated in the RCT literature. We would also feel confident recommending additional offset projects supported by a strong impact evaluation, or projects that are similar enough to BURN stoves such that we believe that the results in Berkouwer and Dean (2019) apply. References Aung, Ther W., et al. "Health and climate-relevant pollutant concentrations from a carbon-finance approved cookstove intervention in rural India." Environmental science & technology 50.13 (2016): 7228-7238. Berkouwer, Susanna and Joshua Dean. “Credit and attention in the adoption of profitable energy efficient technologies in Kenya.” Mimeo, 2019 Beltramo, Theresa, and David I. Levine. "The effect of solar ovens on fuel use, emissions and health: results from a randomised controlled trial." Journal of Development Effectiveness 5.2 (2013): 178-207. Bensch, Gunther, and Jörg Peters. "The intensive margin of technology adoption–Experimental evidence on improved cooking stoves in rural Senegal." Journal of health economics 42 (2015): 44-63. Hanna, Rema, Esther Duflo, and Michael Greenstone. "Up in smoke: the influence of household behavior on the long-run impact of improved cooking stoves." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 8.1 (2016): 80-114. https://givinggreen.earth/carbon-offsets-research/burn https://givinggreen.earth/carbon-offsets-research/burn

Refrigerants // BACK This report was last updated in November 2022. The previous version of this report was last updated in February 2022 and focused solely on ozone-depleting substances. Summary Overview Mechanism Causality Conversion of refrigerants into less harmful substances Establishing the counterfactual of refrigerant release into the atmosphere Demonstrating minimal leakage by ensuring that the destruction of refrigerants does not lead to more production of harmful gases Accounting for the carbon footprint of the removal activities Project-level and marginal additionality Permanence Co-Benefits Cost-Effectiveness Bottom Line / Next Steps Summary When certain gases used as refrigerants enter the atmosphere, they can warm the earth at a rate orders of magnitude above carbon dioxide (CO 2 ). Although the production and use of many of these gases is banned or being phased out under the Montreal Protocol, large quantities of refrigerants still exist in appliances or stockpiles. If these gases are not properly disposed of, most will eventually leak or be released into the atmosphere. Organizations can find and destroy these gases, generating emissions credits in the process. We find refrigerant destruction offsets to be among the most credible on the market. We currently recommend one refrigerant-destroying organization, Tradewater , which sells offsets directly from its website. Overview Although CO 2 is the most well-known greenhouse gas (GHG), other substances released into the atmosphere by human activity also contribute to climate change. Some of the most powerful warming gases come from refrigerants and foams that can have up to 10,000 times the warming effect of CO 2 . These include chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are sometimes found in aerosols, refrigerators, and air conditioners. The subset of these substances that deplete the ozone layer are frequently described as Ozone Depleting Substances (ODS). Production of these chemicals is either banned or being phased out under the universally ratified Montreal Protocol, including the Kigali Amendment. But large quantities still exist, and the use of pre-existing refrigerants is not banned in most countries. If not destroyed, refrigerants will continue to leak from appliances and storage containers, entering the atmosphere and adding to global warming. In theory, refrigerant destruction is a good fit for carbon offsetting. Refrigerant destruction has no commercial value, so it is unlikely to occur in the absence of further government regulation, philanthropic donations, or carbon offsets. At this time, plenty of existing refrigerants still need to be found and destroyed; according to Project Drawdown , refrigerant management has a “net lifetime cost” of ~$622 billion. [1] Because refrigerant destruction projects can be ramped up semi-linearly with funding – i.e. they do not require large upfront capital investments but instead utilize a certain amount of funds per unit of refrigerant destroyed – revenue from selling offsets from a previous project can easily be reinvested into future refrigerant destruction. Mechanism Refrigerant destruction projects are considered emissions avoidance , as they prevent emissions that would have occurred had the ODS leaked into the atmosphere. Causality In order to determine the causality of refrigerant destruction projects, we must consider the following: Are refrigerants successfully converted into less harmful substances? Would refrigerants have been released into the atmosphere in the counterfactual? Does destruction of refrigerants lead to additional production of harmful gases to replace the refrigerants? What is the carbon footprint of the destruction activities? We tackle each in more detail below" Conversion of refrigerants into less harmful substances Refrigerant destruction projects reduce GHGs by incinerating the refrigerant gases. While measuring the exact amount of gases destroyed is straightforward, converting this into the amount of CO 2 -equivalent gas removed requires understanding the “global warming potential” (GWP) of both the refrigerant and the byproducts of refrigerant incineration. Although there is considerable debate around the exact impact of specific gases, a table of GWP has been established by the IPCC . [2] Depending on the gas being destroyed, incinerating refrigerants can lead to thousands of times less warming over a hundred years than simply letting the gases escape. Establishing the counterfactual of refrigerant release into the atmosphere If not destroyed, would refrigerants have been sequestered indefinitely in canisters and appliances, or would they leak into the atmosphere and cause warming? Even under the best conditions, many refrigerant storage containers will slowly leak, and improper maintenance or end-of-life disposal of appliances can result in complete release. Offset certifiers have standard assumptions for leakage over time. For instance, the Verra protocol allows projects to claim 100% of destruction to be additional when refrigerants are recovered from appliances at their end-of-life, and 25% when they are recovered from canisters that could be sold into the market and or sit unused in a warehouse. We believe these are reasonably conservative assumptions and accept them for offset projects that we analyze. Demonstrating minimal leakage by ensuring that the destruction of refrigerants does not lead to more production of harmful gases We may worry that destroying refrigerants might cause similar chemicals to be produced to meet the demand for this type of gas. The production and consumption of many refrigerants is either banned or must be phased out in all countries under the Montreal Protocol [3] and subsequent Kigali Amendment. [4] While this implies that the production of these gases must decrease, destroyed refrigerants might be replaced with other substances that also have warming effects when released into the atmosphere. Accounting for the carbon footprint of the removal activities Finding and incinerating refrigerants can require travel and shipping which, in turn, can lead to CO 2 emissions. However, these life cycle emissions are generally taken into account by the offset certifier when calculating the total emissions reduced. Project-level and marginal additionality There is no other market for refrigerant destruction. Additionality is much more straightforward to establish for refrigerant projects than for other carbon offset sectors. Most countries do not have any regulations on the use and destruction of existing refrigerants, even if production of many refrigerants is banned or being phased out under the Montreal Protocol. Since no market exists for the destruction of these gases apart from the carbon offset market, refrigerant destruction projects have to rely on offsets to survive. Permanence When refrigerants are destroyed, their contributions to warming can be permanently avoided or reduced. The outcome depends on the specific destruction process a project uses as well as which byproducts are produced as a result. Refrigerant destruction byproducts can range from substances like sodium chloride (table salt), sodium fluoride , [5] and water, which have no further warming potential, to gases like carbon monoxide, which may have almost double the warming potential of carbon dioxide. Nonetheless, given that even in the latter case, the byproducts will still have a much lower warming potential than the original refrigerant, [6] we consider refrigerant destruction to be an effective method for durably reducing climate change. Co-Benefits Refrigerant destruction projects do not generally offer any co-benefits, but preventing certain ODS refrigerants from escaping into the atmosphere can prevent damage to the ozone layer. Cost-Effectiveness Giving Green recommends one organization selling refrigerant destruction offsets to the public, Tradewater. We investigate its cost effectiveness in our Tradewater recommendation . Bottom Line / Next Steps We find refrigerant destruction carbon offsets to be one of the more compelling types of carbon offsets available. We have found two refrigerant destruction projects that offer credits, Recoolit and Tradewater . Recoolit is a startup based in Indonesia that works with technicians to collect refrigerants from air conditioners during maintenance or replacement. Each batch of collected refrigerants are tested to verify global warming potential before being incinerated, and the entire process is tracked digitally to ensure transparency. Given that Recoolit is offering only pilot-stage credits at a relatively high price of ~$75/ton of CO 2 e, we do not include it in our recommendations at present. However, we would be interested to investigate Recoolit as it expands and becomes more price-competitive. Currently the only refrigerant destruction project we recommend is Tradewater. For more information, see our Tradewater recommendation . Endnotes [1] “Although some revenue can be generated from resale of recovered refrigerant gases, the costs to establish and operate recovery, destruction, and leak avoidance systems outweigh the financial benefit—meaning that refrigerant management, as modeled, would incur a net lifetime cost of US$622.73 billion.” https://drawdown.org/solutions/refrigerant-management [2] “Human-made PFCs, HFCs and SF6 are very effective absorbers of infrared radiation, so that even small amounts of these gases contribute significantly to the RF of the climate system.” Changes in atmospheric constituents and radiative forcing. IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-chapter2-1.pdf [3] Montreal Protocol. https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%201522/volume-1522-i-26369-english.pdf [4] Kigali Amendment. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/CN/2016/CN.872.2016-Eng.pdf [5] “ The refrigerant is fed into the arc at a controlled rate. At these temperatures, the refrigerant molecule is broken down into its individual atoms - hydrogen, fluorine, carbon and (in some cases) chlorine.” https://www.refrigerantrecovery.co.nz/destroying-refrigerants/ [6] GHG Global warming potentials, California Air Resources Board. https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/ghg-gwps

We find high-impact climate initiatives. You can turbocharge them. I want my gift to support… Top Nonprofits & Giving Green Fund DONATE NOW Giving Green’s research DONATE NOW I’m not sure - what’s the difference? LEARN MORE GG Fund Climate nonprofit recommendations Top Nonprofits: Give to directly advance climate action Highest impact: Donate to the Giving Green Fund The Giving Green Fund offers a convenient way for you to support several high-impact climate strategies with a single transaction. The Fund enables us to allocate your gift to where it will have the most impact, even as the climate landscape evolves. This is why we believe donating to the Giving Green Fund is our highest-impact giving option. DONATE TO THE GIVING GREEN FUND By check/mail Please note that all checks should be addressed to IDinsight Inc, with a memo indicating use for Giving Green. Address: IDinsight, P.O. Box 689, San Francisco, CA 94104-0689 By bank transfer Please contact us for transfer details. We especially encourage reaching out for gifts over $1000, so that we can minimize processing fees and maximize the impact of your gift. Other ways to give To dedicate your gift to a loved one or to start your own fundraiser for Giving Green, please visit this page. To give tax-efficiently from Australia, the Netherlands, or the UK, give through Giving What We Can. Direct Support Top Nonprofits directly Read more about why we recommend these organizations here . Giving Green is only offering an opinion on the activities of these charitable organizations and not on the activities of any other affiliated entity. By check/mail Please note that all checks should be addressed to IDinsight Inc, with a memo indicating use for Giving Green. Address: IDinsight, P.O. Box 689, San Francisco, CA 94104-0689 By bank transfer Please contact us for transfer details. We especially encourage reaching out for gifts over $1000, so that we can minimize processing fees and maximize the impact of your gift. Other ways to give To dedicate your gift to a loved one or to start your own fundraiser for Giving Green, please visit this page. To give tax-efficiently from Australia, the Netherlands, or the UK, give through Giving What We Can. Giving Green’s research: Support our work to make high-impact climate giving easier Your donations to Giving Green’s research help us produce high-impact climate giving recommendations, and introduce them to more high-impact climate donors like you. Giving Green is a project incubated by IDinsight , a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the US. We receive no funding from and have no formal relationship with any of the organizations we study or recommend. By check/mail Please note that all checks should be addressed to IDinsight Inc, with a memo indicating use for Giving Green. Address: IDinsight, P.O. Box 689, San Francisco, CA 94104-0689 By bank transfer Please contact us for transfer details. We especially encourage reaching out for gifts over $1000, so that we can minimize processing fees and maximize the impact of your gift. Other ways to give To dedicate your gift to a loved one or to start your own fundraiser for Giving Green, please visit this page. To give tax-efficiently from Australia, the Netherlands, or the UK, give through Giving What We Can. GG Operations Difference I’m not sure—what’s the difference? Our Top Nonprofits are climate charities that directly work on advancing the systemic change we need to halt the climate crisis. If you want your gift to support work like: Successfully advocating for air quality regulations in Southern California that direct food manufacturers to shift to zero-emissions ovens ( Industrious Labs ) Providing expert guidance helping to shape the US Environmental Protection Agency’s newly proposed regulations on carbon emissions from power plants ( Clean Air Task Force ) Conducting technical analyses to identify the most promising pathways to electrifying high-temperature industrial processes, and the policies that can support them ( Future Cleantech Architects ) …then give to our Top Nonprofits, through the Giving Green Fund or directly through each nonprofit. Supporting Giving Green means supporting the team behind this website. We conduct comprehensive research into the climate landscape to find organizations that we think are doing high-impact work on climate change. If you want your gift to support work like: Thousands of hours of research to find organizations where your dollar will make a real difference for the climate Communications campaigns that raise millions of dollars for these high-impact nonprofits Keeping this guide public and available for anyone who wants to give to climate charitie s …then we humbly ask you to support our work here at Giving Green. Top Nonprofits & Giving Green Fund DONATE NOW Giving Green’s research DONATE NOW

Geothermal Energy // BACK This report was last updated in December 2023. Download the report here, or read the full text below. Geothermal Energy .pdf Download PDF • 5.91MB Table of contents Summary What is geothermal energy? Geothermal energy can be harnessed for carbon-free electricity and heat. Access to geothermal energy is geology-dependent and varies world-wide. How could geothermal energy reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Geothermal energy can help enable a clean energy transition. Technology improvements can unlock more geothermal energy. Philanthropic support for next-generation geothermal technologies: theory of change Examining the assumptions behind our theory of change What is geothermal energy’s comparative cost profile? Is there room for more funding? How does federal funding for the geothermal sector compare to other sectors? How could philanthropic dollars catalyze additional investment? Are there major co-benefits or adverse effects? Co-benefits Adverse effects Key uncertainties and open questions Bottom line / next steps Acknowledgements Endnotes Summary What is geothermal energy? Geothermal energy is heat generated deep within the Earth through natural geophysical processes. It can be used for heating and electricity generation. Geothermal power plants can supply consistent baseload power throughout the day, and some new types of geothermal power plants can potentially provide flexible, dispatchable generation and energy storage. How could geothermal energy reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Geothermal energy can supply carbon-free heat and electricity in place of burning fossil fuels. As a source of clean firm power, geothermal can complement wind and solar power and help diversify clean energy portfolios. We think an energy portfolio that includes geothermal energy provides a more feasible path to net-zero emissions than one based on intermittent renewables alone. Philanthropic support for geothermal energy - theory of change: We believe that supporting nonprofit organizations focused on next-generation geothermal technologies–such as enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) and advanced geothermal systems (AGS)–could be promising for expanding applications of geothermal energy globally. For example, we think philanthropic support for geothermal innovation could reduce risks for companies, catalyze more funding from traditional financing mechanisms, accelerate learning-by-doing, and drive down costs faster than the counterfactual. What is geothermal energy’s comparative cost profile? This report does not contain a quantitative cost-effectiveness model, though we hope to release one in the future. Instead, we did a comparative analysis with nuclear advocacy by comparing estimates for the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for EGS and small modular reactors (SMRs) in 2050 against each other. We think EGS technologies could become more cost-competitive than SMRs in the future, but given the (1) overlapping cost estimates and (2) our belief that baseload power sources also need to be diversified, especially given that nuclear may work in contexts where geothermal does not and vice versa, we are not strongly convinced that we should persuade donors to support one technology over the other. Is there room for more funding? Historically, geothermal innovation has received low funding from the private sector because of its high capital costs and risks. Although there has been growing interest in geothermal energy, we think philanthropic support remains additional. Are there major co-benefits or adverse effects? Co-benefits include geothermal power plants’ smaller land footprint compared to other generating technologies, improved air quality compared to continued fossil fuel usage, and job opportunities for former fossil fuel workers. Adverse effects include risks of contaminated groundwater and induced seismicity for some types of geothermal systems. Key uncertainties and open questions: There is uncertainty on how quickly the cost of next-generation geothermal technologies will decrease with increased production. We are also concerned about potential conflicts of interest arising from the oil and gas industry's involvement in scaling geothermal. Bottom line / next steps: We believe increased deployment of next-generation geothermal technologies holds promise in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and requires additional funding. As part of our 2023 research process, we closely examined nonprofit organizations that support geothermal innovation, which could enhance its expansion in the US and abroad. We think the following approaches used by nonprofits are especially promising for expanding geothermal globally: (1) advocating for policies that support geothermal energy research, development, and deployment in the US; (2) de-risking early-stage deployment of next-generation technologies to spur additional investment. Ultimately, we classified Project Innerspace and Clean Air Task Force , both advocates of geothermal technologies, as top recommendations in 2023. What is geothermal energy? Geothermal energy can be harnessed for carbon-free electricity and heat. Geothermal energy, or heat generated within the Earth, can heat reservoirs of water at great depths below the Earth’s surface.[1] Water or steam from these reservoirs can reach the surface via hot springs or geysers, but most hydrothermal reservoirs are locked at high pressure underground.[2] Geothermal power plants generate electricity by drawing very hot water from these reservoirs to the surface, producing steam that drives turbines to generate electricity.[3] Heat extracted from reservoirs and waste heat from geothermal power plants can provide direct heat for buildings and industrial processes.[4] Geothermal energy is a renewable resource because natural geophysical processes continually replenish extracted heat.[5] Access to geothermal energy is geology-dependent and varies world-wide. Access to geothermal energy depends on local geology. Characteristics that influence geothermal well productivity include the heat source, rock permeability, and fluid flow patterns underground.[6] Temperature also increases with depth in the Earth.[7] Typically, the most active geothermal resources are located near significant tectonic plate boundaries, such as the Ring of Fire, the region outlining the Pacific Ocean.[8] Currently, the United States leads as the greatest producer of geothermal electricity, generating 17 billion kWh in 2021 or approximately 0.4% of its overall electricity production.[9] Indonesia follows closely, producing 16 billion kWh in 2021, about 5% of its total electricity production.[10] Among all nations, Kenya has the greatest percentage (43%) of its electricity generated by geothermal power plants.[11] How could geothermal energy reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Geothermal energy can help enable a clean energy transition. Geothermal energy can provide carbon-free electricity and heat without the need for burning fossil fuels. For example, geothermal power plants can replace coal-fired power plants by offering a continuous and reliable source of electricity.[12] Also, certain types of geothermal power plants can store energy and adjust their output, complementing variable renewable energy sources like wind and solar.[13] Geothermal energy can also provide zero-carbon heat for "hard to decarbonize" industrial processes.[14] In general, we think an energy portfolio that includes geothermal energy provides a more feasible path to net-zero emissions than one based on intermittent renewables alone.[15] Additionally, we think research adjacent to geothermal energy, such as gravity batteries and lithium recovery from geothermal brine, could enhance energy storage technologies.[16] However, we have not thoroughly explored those particular research areas. Technology improvements can unlock more geothermal energy. Geothermal electricity generation is currently dominated by conventional geothermal, or hydrothermal, systems, which are limited to regions with active volcanism or continental plate boundaries.[17] Research, development, demonstration, and deployment (RDD&D) of next-generation geothermal technologies could tap greater amounts of previously inaccessible geothermal energy. For example, enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are man-made geothermal reservoirs created by injecting water deep underground and do not require naturally occurring hydrothermal reservoirs (Figure 1). According to the US Department of Energy (DOE), “With technology improvements, EGS could be engineered cost effectively wherever there is hot rock at accessible depths, enabling economic capture of EGS potential nationwide.”[18] Indeed, there have been research efforts to advance EGS such that geothermal heat can be accessed anywhere in the world.[19] Figure 1: Conceptualization of enhanced geothermal systems ( US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 ) Next-generation geothermal technologies are at different stages of development. The initial focus of EGS RDD&D has been on “in-field” resources within existing conventional geothermal locations (Figure 2). The next stage would likely involve “near-field” resources at the same depth but in less permeable rock.[20] Technology advancements may eventually unlock deep EGS, which offers higher resource potential.[21] Superhot rock geothermal energy, a proposed energy source on the far end of the EGS spectrum, could significantly increase energy extraction and conversion efficiency.[22] According to Altarock Energy, this technology could produce 40-50 MWe of energy per well, compared to 7 MWe per conventional geothermal well and less than 5 MWe per EGS well.[23] Advanced geothermal systems (AGS) are a separate category of closed-loop geothermal wells that recirculate fluid and do not inject water into the ground.[24] We group EGS and AGS technologies together as “next-generation” technologies that are distinct from conventional geothermal technologies. Figure 2: Geothermal resources and applications, delineated within three resource categories: geothermal heat pump, hydrothermal, and enhanced geothermal systems ( US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 ) Next-generation geothermal technologies can increase geothermal’s share of global electricity generation. According to a 2018 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), geothermal energy has the capacity to satisfy approximately 3% of global electricity demand and 5% of heating demand by 2050.[25] In comparison, geothermal power plants accounted for about 0.3% of global electricity generation at the end of 2008.[26] Meanwhile, a DOE report found that technology improvements could increase geothermal power almost 26-fold in the US, reaching 60 GWe of electricity generation by 2050. This would reach 3.7% of total US installed capacity in 2050, and 8.5% of all US electricity generation.[27] We prioritized support for next-generation geothermal technologies over conventional geothermal technologies based on our perception of their difference in scale. Philanthropic support for next-generation geothermal technologies: theory of change We think that scaling next-generation geothermal technologies requires an acceptable policy environment, demonstrated technologies, commercial viability, an acceptable regulatory environment, and a feasible implementation pathway (e.g., community acceptance). From what we’ve observed, nonprofits have addressed these barriers by Advocating for policies supporting geothermal RDD&D in the US, such as increased research funding, optimized permitting timelines, and tax incentives. De-risking the early stages of next-generation geothermal projects to spur additional investment from traditional financing mechanisms. Transferring assets from the oil and gas (O&G) sector, including advocacy for reusing O&G wells, technical assistance for replacing O&G power plants with geothermal, and retraining O&G workers. We evaluated these approaches based on our understanding of their scale, feasibility, and funding need, Table 1. (For more information on these metrics and our research process, see Giving Green’s Research Overview .) Based on our assessment, we think advocating for geothermal RDD&D policies and de-risking projects to spur private sector investment could be especially promising for supporting next-generation geothermal technologies on the basis of scale, feasibility, and funding need. We explored these approaches further by developing a theory of change (Figure 3) that describes how these approaches could reduce emission and then examined the assumptions behind our theory of change. Table 1: Scale, feasibility, and funding need of various approaches nonprofits use to help scale next-generation geothermal technologies Approach Scale Feasibility Funding need Notes Advocating for policies supporting next-generation geothermal RDD&D in the US High Medium Medium Scale: We think next-generation geothermal has the potential for large-scale deployment by opening up new locations. For example, DOE's GeoVision report said that technological advancements could increase geothermal power production almost 26-fold by 2050, reaching 60 GWe. Feasibility: The political environment seems favorable for policies promoting next-generation geothermal RDD&D, given its recent legislative support (e.g., Inflation Reduction Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act). However, it is uncertain how quickly new technologies will scale and reduce in cost, as many are not yet proven. Obstacles include high capital costs, high early-stage risks, maintaining public acceptance, and long permitting timelines. Funding need: Geothermal RDD&D receives less federal funding compared to nuclear power, and according to geothermal experts we spoke to, the geothermal industry is less established than the nuclear industry in the US. Although several large nonprofits advocate for geothermal innovation, it is not a dominant focus in their portfolios. De-risking projects to spur private sector investment High High Medium Scale: We rated this as having a high scale because it would support next-generation geothermal technologies. Please see our notes for "Advocating for policies supporting next-generation geothermal RDD&D in the US" for more information. Feasibility: Based on conversations with geothermal experts, we think there are certain products and services that could help the entire geothermal sector but have been neglected by private firms. An example product would be a publicly available global high-resolution map of geothermal resources, which could help companies reduce some early-stage risks related to exploration (e.g., spending money but failing to find geothermal resources that are suitable for commercially viable production). We think this tool seems especially feasible because from our understanding, mapping has been held back by labor and financial constraints. Directly funding first-of-their-kind projects could also de-risk projects and catalyze more investments from traditional financing mechanisms. We rated spurring private sector investment as having high feasibility because we think it is relatively more straightforward than changing policy. Funding need: We found one nonprofit organization that creates public goods and funds first-of-their-kind projects to spur private sector investment. We downgraded this metric to "Medium" because we think companies and governments could fill part of this funding need, especially in wealthier countries. For example, we think DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office could work with state geological surveys to identify and map geothermal resources in high-priority regions in the US. Transferring assets from the O&G sector Did not assess Did not assess Low Scale and feasibility: In terms of retraining O&G workers, we do not think our methods for assessing scale and feasibility apply well to this pathway because while it seems likely that philanthropy could help nonprofits increase the skilled workforce, we are unsure whether this is currently a primary bottleneck to geothermal deployment. At the same time, we recognize this pathway could have second-order effects that could reduce emissions, such as building political will for geothermal and increasing the likelihood that pro-geothermal policies are passed. As for reusing O&G wells and converting O&G power plants, our impression is that these sites are not necessarily co-located with attractive geothermal gradients and probably not low-hanging fruit for accelerating learning-by-doing. We think other efforts like policy advocacy and spurring private sector investment could have a bigger impact on learning-by-doing and driving down costs, although we are uncertain about this. We did not assess the scale and feasibility of this pathway in depth because we deprioritized this on the basis of funding need. Funding need: We are under the impression that this pathway could have a low funding need because it already has substantial support. According to geothermal experts we spoke to, most US O&G companies have geothermal teams and are thinking about a workforce transition. Within the US, this pathway has also received federal funding, including a 10-year $165 million DOE grant supporting technology transfer and workforce adoption. Figure 3: The theory of change behind philanthropic support for next-generation geothermal technologies In our theory of change, we think policy advocacy and spurring private sector investment could help reduce financial risks and enable technology improvements, leading to reduced costs and faster learning compared to the counterfactual. We think these outputs would decrease emissions if expanded applications of geothermal energy reduce reliance on burning fossil fuels and help speed up and enable a clean energy transition. We also think that if companies can successfully expand next-generation geothermal technologies and replace fossil fuels, this could lead to a positive feedback cycle where the likelihood of supportive policies increases, driving further technology improvements. We explore reasons why we think our assessment of nonprofit strategies and theory of change could be wrong in the section “Key uncertainties and open questions.” Examining the assumptions behind our theory of change Below, we discuss and evaluate key assumptions related to our theory of change. For each of the assumptions, we rank whether we have low , medium , or high certainty about the assumption.[28] Our assessment is based on both primary and secondary evidence, as well as our general impression of the plausibility of the assumption. Importantly, a number of the stages of geothermal power’s theory of change may not be amenable to easy measurement or quantification, are not supported by a robust evidence base, or are expected to occur in the future but have not occurred as of yet. 1. The current policy environment is acceptable for enhancing geothermal power RDD&D in the US ( high certainty ) We have high certainty that there is currently a favorable policy environment for passing legislation and approving budget requests that would enhance geothermal power RDD&D in the United States. Our impression is based on recent government support for geothermal RDD&D, which we think could be predictive of continued support. For instance, the 2020 Energy Act marked the first reauthorization of DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office in over a decade, allocating $170 million (USD) annually from FY 2021 to FY 2025.[29] More recently, the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) included $84 million to support pilot demonstration sites for EGS, and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) extended tax credits for renewables, including geothermal power.[30] Additionally, DOE has set a goal to reduce the cost of EGS by 90% by 2035, which we saw as a strong signal of support.[31] Also, our impression is that geothermal power has bipartisan appeal and there has been a history of bipartisan support for geothermal incentives, which we think improves the odds that supportive policies will be passed in a divided Congress.[32] 2. The regulatory environment in the US is acceptable for geothermal innovation ( medium certainty ) We have medium certainty that the regulatory environment in the US is acceptable for geothermal innovation. Generally, we believe that the timelines for permitting geothermal projects on federal land could be improved, but that there are potential options for expediting the process and alternatives such as building on private or state-owned land. The duration required for designing, permitting, approving, and building a geothermal project directly impacts the project’s cost and early-stage risks. Hence, we believe that project timelines strongly influence the extent to which next-generation geothermal projects can be expanded in the US. Currently, geothermal projects that are sited on federally-managed land may have to undergo the environmental review process as many as six times.[33] This additional delay can extend the permitting period from 1-3 years to 5-7 years.[34] Our understanding is that this timeline exceeds the window for applicable tax incentives from the IRA, undermining its effectiveness in expanding geothermal in the US. Considering that 67% of geothermal electricity generation capacity in the US. is located on public land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, we consider permitting timelines a significant hurdle to expanding geothermal power.[35] Nevertheless, we are cautiously optimistic that permitting timelines will improve in the future. For example, there is potential to streamline geothermal project permits by calling for categorical exclusions, which are already in place for certain O&G and hydroelectric projects.[36] Various large nonprofit organizations across the political spectrum have advocated for this change, suggesting the potential for bipartisan support.[37] It is also worth noting that opportunities to advance geothermal power extend beyond federal lands, such as in Texas, where most of the state’s geothermal resources are located on private or state-owned land.[38] 3. Geothermal innovation in the US will increase the likelihood of global adoption ( medium certainty ) We have medium certainty that geothermal innovation in the US will increase the likelihood of global adoption. Our impression is that RDD&D efforts in the US include technologies that can expand geothermal power globally, and not just domestically.[39] Our impression is supported by a report by Boston Consulting Group and Third Way, which said that the US could leverage its early lead in intellectual property and its O&G workforce to export expertise in drilling, exploration, and innovation.[40] As a caveat, we think geothermal energy's site-specific nature may hinder its export potential. In particular, we are under the impression that variations in drilling technologies and techniques across locations, driven by differences in heat depth and rock hardness, could limit knowledge sharing and affect the rate at which costs go down with increased production. Nonetheless, we believe certain research activities can support geothermal deployment globally.[41] For example, before drilling and testing, there is considerable uncertainty regarding the quality of geothermal resources at a given site and developers can fail to find resources suitable for commercially viable production. We think geothermal resource mapping can enhance the likelihood of project success by helping with mitigating risks, shortening development timelines (and therefore reducing costs), and attracting more investors. 4. The geothermal sector has sufficient trust and legitimacy to operate ( medium certainty ) We have medium certainty that the geothermal sector has sufficient trust and legitimacy, or a social license to operate. For the U.S., our impression is partly informed by a 2022 YouGov poll of US adult citizens, that indicated net favorability (higher likelihood of positive perception compared to negative) of geothermal power among both Democrats and Republicans.[42] However, we think a positive overall impression of geothermal power will not necessarily prevent local opposition. For example, a proposed geothermal project in Nevada has been opposed by community members who expressed concerns about potential subsidence and impacts on their drinking water.[43] Our discussions with geothermal experts suggest that awareness of the geothermal sector remains low in the US and we think that concerns around geothermal’s potential adverse effects could hinder expansion.[44] Various studies in countries including Italy, Australia, Indonesia, Japan, and Chile have also indicated low public understanding of geothermal energy technologies.[45] We think public support for geothermal power will require continued advocacy, education, and outreach. 5. Geothermal innovation will decrease the cost of accessing geothermal energy and increase its geographic range such that companies can increase production globally ( high certainty ) We have high certainty that geothermal innovation will decrease the cost of accessing geothermal energy and increase its geographic range such that companies can increase production globally. We discuss our uncertainty about geothermal’s future cost-competitiveness in the section “Key uncertainties and open questions.” Conventional geothermal power plants have high capital costs, but low maintenance costs, making them cost-competitive over time.[46] It’s unclear what the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of next-generation geothermal systems will be because they are still under development.[47] According to the IPCC, EGS will probably cost more than conventional geothermal systems, but EGS will probably become cheaper as its technology improves over time.[48] In fact, one of DOE’s goals is to decrease EGS costs by 90% to $45 per MWh by 2035.[49] If this works, electricity from EGS could be more cost-competitive than electricity from advanced nuclear power, which could have an LCOE of $85 per MWh in 2040.[50] Although geothermal projects are complex and customized, we think EGS’ price decline is realistic because aspects of EGS could enable learning-by-doing. For example, Tim Latimer (Co-Founder and CEO of Fervo Energy) said EGS can become cheaper similarly to how hydraulic fracturing became cheaper over time.[51] Namely, both technologies can modify rock permeability and create the same wells over and over, enabling learning-by-doing.[52] We also think that EGS will unlock more sites available for geothermal development, which would increase deployment and help drive down costs. Geothermal’s high capital costs and early-stage exploration costs pose financial risks for companies. Although advancements in geothermal innovation may lower costs and mitigate risks to some extent, we think financial and risk insurance schemes remain necessary. What is geothermal energy’s comparative cost profile? In past reports about specific sectors like decarbonizing heavy industry and nuclear , we conducted cost-effectiveness analyses (CEAs) that acted as rough plausibility checks to estimate how cost-effective it could be to support those efforts. This report does not include a CEA for geothermal energy, though we hope to release one in the future. Instead, we provide a comparative analysis with nuclear power, which is another sector we recommend. Although we do not think geothermal and nuclear power are direct substitutes for one another, we thought a comparison between the two would be apt because they can play similar roles in the grid.[53] We explored LCOE projections from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to compare several types of EGS power plants against small modular reactors, which can potentially be built more quickly and cheaply than traditional nuclear reactors (Figure 4).[54] NREL explored three potential scenarios for EGS that varied in how quickly the technology progresses. The conservative case assumes that current industry trends in drilling and EGS will lead to minor decreases in capital expenditures by 2035.[55] The moderate case assumes that cost improvements are fully achieved across the geothermal industry by 2035.[56] The advanced case assumes substantial advancements in technology by 2035 and streamlined permitting.[57] We compared these cases against LCOE data for small modular reactors (SMRs), which included a moderate and conservative case.[58] Figure 4: LCOE of near-field and deep EGS under the (a) conservative, (b) moderate, and (c) advanced scenarios. The conservative and moderate cases include a comparison against SMRs. Data: NREL 2023 . In the advanced scenario, EGS’ LCOE in 2050 ranges between $39 and $67 per MWh, depending on the specific technology (Figure 4c). For the moderate scenario, the range is $85 to $137 per MWh, and for the conservative scenario, the range is $127 to $294 per MWh (Figure 4b). In comparison, SMRs reach an LCOE in 2050 of $74 per MWh in the moderate scenario and $88 per MWh in the conservative scenario (Figure 4a). Based on NREL’s analysis, we think the drilling advancements in the moderate scenario are likely achievable and that the conservative scenario for EGS may be especially pessimistic.[59] We also think ongoing goals at DOE, NREL, and other research facilities could push EGS into the advanced scenario and that this could become more attainable if the geothermal sector receives more support, although we are uncertain of this. We think EGS technologies could become more cost-competitive than SMRs in the future, but given the (1) overlapping cost estimates and (2) our belief that power sources need to be diversified, especially given that nuclear may work in contexts where geothermal does not and vice versa, we are not strongly convinced that we should persuade donors to support one technology over the other. Is there room for more funding? We think funding to scale up applications of geothermal energy is currently insufficient, and nonprofit organizations supporting geothermal RDD&D would probably benefit from additional contributions. How does federal funding for the geothermal sector compare to other sectors? Our impression is that geothermal RDD&D in the US is underfunded compared to RDD&D for other renewables. In 2023, DOE allocated $318 million to solar RDD&D, $132 million to wind RDD&D, and $118 million to geothermal RD&D.[60] However, it is important to note that comparing spending on geothermal power to solar and wind power has its limits. Namely, we see geothermal power as more of a complement to wind and solar than a substitute. We think a more apt comparison may be between geothermal and nuclear power, which can both provide baseload power.[61] Therefore, it may be more relevant to compare RDD&D spending on geothermal and nuclear power relative to their potential to power the US electrical grid. Based on rough estimation using the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 model and current US RDD&D spending, we think funding for geothermal power lags behind that of nuclear power, although we are uncertain of this.[62] How could philanthropic dollars catalyze additional investment? We think interest in geothermal energy has increased in recent years. Looking at ten representative geothermal start-up companies, venture capital and private equity investments rose from $41 million in 2019 to $242 million in 2022.[63] Also, the President’s Office has requested that funding for DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office nearly double between 2023 and 2024.[64] Although we think this increased budget request is unlikely to materialize, we think it serves as a strong indicator of interest.[65] We also think philanthropic donations to geothermal RDD&D have likely increased in recent years, as indicated by the recent entry of major funders such as Schmidt Futures and the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment into the field.[66] We are unsure of how many philanthropic dollars have gone towards supporting geothermal, but note that the number of funders seems relatively small compared to support for other clean energy sources. Despite the growing interest, we think there are still opportunities left unfunded in the geothermal sector. For example, a funder we spoke to explained that federal agencies often prioritize projects that are already receiving funding, leaving the potential for new initiatives unexplored. Moreover, government spending processes tend to be slow, whereas philanthropic dollars can be deployed more quickly. Additionally, we think the private sector does not have a financial incentive to create some public goods that could help reduce project costs and risks for all players. Therefore, we think philanthropy could be especially well-suited for filling that gap and catalyzing additional investment. Are there major co-benefits or adverse effects? Next-generation geothermal technologies offer co-benefits like reduced land use compared to other sources of electricity production, job opportunities for former O&G workers, improved energy access in remote areas, and energy independence. Adverse effects include gas and liquid emissions and the risk of triggering local hazards. We detail these co-benefits and adverse effects below. Co-benefits Small footprint : Geothermal power plants are compact and use less land compared to other electricity sources. Their footprint is significantly lower than that of natural gas, coal, and ground-mounted solar panels.[67] This reduced land requirement has implications for energy planning, aesthetics, and environmental impact considerations.[68] Job opportunities : Technical skills used in the O&G industry, such as drilling and reservoir mapping, can be transferred and applied to geothermal projects.[69] We think scaling up geothermal power could offer job opportunities to former O&G workers with minimal additional training requirements, which would contribute to a just transition to clean energy.[70] Poverty alleviation and energy access in rural areas: Geothermal development could help alleviate rural poverty, especially in remote mountainous areas.[71] Small-scale distributed generation from geothermal power can also improve energy access in remote areas.[72] Energy independence: Geothermal power can help countries build energy independence because it does not rely on imported fuels.[73] However, expanding geothermal energy will likely rely on imported technical capabilities. Adverse effects Gas and liquid emissions: Geothermal fluids may contain mercury, arsenic, radon, and boron.[74] Hazardous chemicals from geothermal power plants, such as arsenic and boron, can be harmful to ecosystems.[75] Geothermal fluids can also contain gases such as hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen, methane, ammonia, and nitrogen.[76] Of these gases, hydrogen sulfide is toxic, but its presence in geothermal fluids is often too low to be considered harmful.[77] Some countries, such as parts of the US and Italy, remove hydrogen sulfide from geothermal power plants while others monitor its levels.[78] Groundwater contamination can be prevented through some engineering practices that are typically mandated by environmental regulations.[79] We think closed-loop geothermal systems probably pose a lower risk of groundwater contamination compared to other geothermal technologies because no fluids exit the system, although leaks could still occur. Triggering local hazards: Deep drilling projects can impact how frequently micro-earthquakes, hydrothermal steam eruptions, and ground subsidence occur.[80] In 2017, an EGS-type power plant triggered a magnitude-5.4 earthquake in South Korea that injured 135 people and caused about $290 million in damage.[81] According to the IPCC, geological risk assessments may help avoid or mitigate local hazards.[82] There is ongoing research into understanding and mitigating induced earthquake hazards.[83] Water usage: We do not consider water usage a negative impact of geothermal systems because they typically use non-potable water (e.g. brines) and can be designed to use less water, thereby avoiding competition with sources of drinking water.[84] Key uncertainties and open questions How supporting geothermal RDD&D compares to other opportunities that could also help scale applications of geothermal energy: We did not explore some pathways that could help support the geothermal sector because we did not know of nonprofits working on them. For example, we did not look into opportunities that focus on building community support for geothermal and maintaining its social license to operate. We are also unsure how supporting innovation in the US compares to other efforts that are more focused on global knowledge spillover, such as increased collaboration and resource-sharing. Whether next-generation technologies will advance quickly enough to allow substantially more geothermal power: There is uncertainty on geothermal’s future cost-competitiveness because it is unclear how quickly next-generation technologies will improve and decrease in price. We also think there is some uncertainty on how easy it is to apply skills and techniques from the O&G industry to next-generation geothermal technologies. Ultimately, we think there is still value in supporting geothermal technologies because it diversifies the clean energy portfolio and hedges against the risk of a clean energy transition failing. Conflicting interests from O&G involvement : Although we see major benefits in O&G involvement in geothermal development, like technology transfer and workforce development, we think there may be conflicting interests if geothermal development is centralized within O&G. For example, we think it is possible that O&G companies may prioritize their existing fossil fuel operations over geothermal energy, which could slow down the transition to cleaner and renewable energy sources. We note that similar concerns have been raised with respect to O&G involvement in direct air capture technologies.[85] We are also concerned that if geothermal development is centralized within O&G, this could potentially stifle competition from smaller players and limit the overall growth of the geothermal sector. We would be less concerned about conflicting interests if geothermal is supported as a separate industry instead of centralized within O&G. Potential geographic bias: Our view of next-generation geothermal innovation as the most important pathway might be influenced by us primarily speaking to people in the U.S., a hub of innovation. We tried to address our potential geographic bias by speaking to people outside the U.S., including academics and nonprofit leaders, but our network remains U.S.-centric. Bottom line / next steps We believe scaling applications of geothermal energy holds promise in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and requires additional funding. As part of our 2023 research process, we closely examined organizations that are focused on expanding next-generation geothermal technologies in the US and abroad. In particular, we think policy advocacy for RDD&D in the US and de-risking geothermal projects to spur additional funding are especially promising. Ultimately, we classified Project Innerspace and Clean Air Task Force (CATF) as top recommendations for reducing climate change. We think Project Innerspace’s strategy of fast iteration and quickly getting next-generation technologies on a learning curve complements that of Clean Air Task Force, whose geothermal workstream focuses on superhot rock geothermal energy, which is further away from technological readiness compared to other EGS types but could offer cheaper and abundant carbon-free energy if it becomes commercially viable. We think this portfolio approach of supporting different geothermal technologies and strategies helps increase the likelihood of advancing the geothermal sector. For more information on our recommendations, see our Project Innerspace and CATF deep dive reports. Acknowledgements This work has greatly benefited from the feedback provided by various advisors, experts, and reviewers throughout the research process. Giving Green is grateful to those who shared their time, experience, and ideas. We would especially like to acknowledge the principal reviewer, Arthur Reis, P.G., for providing a deep review of this report during its final stages of development. Endnotes Note: This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes. 1. “Geothermal energy is heat energy from the earth—Geo (earth) + thermal (heat). Geothermal resources are reservoirs of hot water that exist or are human made at varying temperatures and depths below the Earth's surface.” https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/geothermal-basics 2. “Geothermal water or steam may emanate naturally from the reservoir and manifest at the surface as hot springs or geysers; but most stays trapped underground in rock, under pressure and accessible only through drilling.” https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/articles/geovision-chapter-2 3. “Geothermal power plants draw fluids from underground reservoirs to the surface to produce steam. This steam then drives turbines that generate electricity.” https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/electricity-generation 4. “Aside from electricity production, several of these concepts may also be used for Direct Use heat applications, meaning utilization of produced heat directly to heat buildings, or for commercial applications that utilize heat, like agriculture or industrial processes.” The Future of Geothermal in Texas - Chapter 1: Geothermal and Electricity Production, 2023 5. “Geothermal energy is classified as a renewable resource (see Chapter 1) because the tapped heat from an active reservoir is continuously restored by natural heat production, conduction and convection from surrounding hotter regions, and the extracted geothermal fluids are replenished by natural recharge and by injection of the depleted (cooled) fluids. Geothermal fields are typically operated at production rates that cause local declines in pressure and/or in temperature within the reservoir over the economic lifetime of the installed facilities. These cooler and lower-pressure zones are subsequently recharged from surrounding regions when extraction ceases.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 6. “The characteristics of productive geothermal wells reflect a dynamic interplay between three major factors, including: heat source(s) and heat flow in the crust; permeability of faults, fracture networks and geological formations; and fluid flow patterns (such as large-scale groundwater convection, recharge and fluid chemistry).” https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-021-00154-y 7. “Temperature increases with depth within the Earth at an average of about 25ºC/km. So if the average surface temperature is 20ºC, the temperature at 3 km is only 95ºC. Although direct use applications of geothermal energy can use temperatures as low as about 35ºC, the minimum temperature suitable for electrical generation is about 135ºC. Geothermal resources occur in areas of higher-than-average subsurface temperatures.” https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/articles/handbook-best-practices-geothermal-drilling 8. “The most active geothermal resources are usually found along major tectonic plate boundaries where most volcanoes are located. One of the most active geothermal areas in the world is called the Ring of Fire, which encircles the Pacific Ocean.” https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/where-geothermal-energy-is-found.php 9. “The United States leads the world in geothermal electricity generation. In 2022, there were geothermal power plants in seven states, which produced about 17 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) (or 17,002,000 megawatt-hours). This was equal to about 0.4% of total U.S. utility-scale electricity generation. Utility-scale power plants have at least 1,000 kilowatts (or 1 megawatt) of electricity generation capacity.” https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/use-of-geothermal-energy.php . Indonesia and Kenya: “In 2021, 27 countries, including the United States, generated about 92 billion kWh of electricity from geothermal energy. Indonesia was the second-highest geothermal electricity producer after the United States—about 16 billion kWh—and equal to 5% of Indonesia’s total electricity generation. Kenya was the eighth-highest geothermal electricity producer at about 5 billion kWh. This was equal to about 43% of Kenya's annual electricity generation, which was the largest percentage share among all countries with geothermal power plants.” https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/use-of-geothermal-energy.php . 10. “Indonesia was the second-highest geothermal electricity producer after the United States—about 16 billion kWh—and equal to 5% of Indonesia’s total electricity generation.” https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/use-of-geothermal-energy.php . 11. “Kenya was the eighth-highest geothermal electricity producer at about 5 billion kWh. This was equal to about 43% of Kenya's annual electricity generation, which was the largest percentage share among all countries with geothermal power plants.” https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/use-of-geothermal-energy.php . 12. “Geothermal power plants produce electricity consistently and can run essentially 24 hours per day/7 days per week, regardless of weather conditions.” https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/geothermal-basics 13. “With near-zero variable costs, geothermal plants have traditionally been envisioned as providing “baseload” power, generating at their maximum rated output at all times. However, as variable renewable energy sources (VREs) see greater deployment in energy markets, baseload power is becoming increasingly less competitive relative to flexible, dispatchable generation and energy storage. Herein we conduct an analysis of the potential for future geothermal plants to provide both of these services, taking advantage of the natural properties of confined, engineered geothermal reservoirs to store energy in the form of accumulated, pressurized geofluid and provide flexible load-following generation. We develop a linear optimization model based on multi-physics reservoir simulations that captures the transient pressure and flow behaviors within a confined, engineered geothermal reservoir.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261922002537 14. “Instead of using combustion to convert chemical energy in a zero-carbon fuel to heat, zero-carbon heat can also be harvested directly from environmental sources, like solar radiation and geothermal energy.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435120305754 15. We think diverse energy portfolios can protect against disruptions in the market and that it is sensible to invest in a wide range of clean technologies because they each have their own set of advantages and disadvantages. 16. Gravity batteries: “One NREL project, Repurposing Infrastructure for Gravity Storage using Underground Potential energy (RIGS UP), is exploring the commercial viability of gravity-based mechanical storage systems using oil and gas wellbores. The ARPA-E-funded project will store electrical energy as potential energy by lifting a multi-ton weight within a wellbore. Once proven, the technology could also be used inside of inactive geothermal wells for long-term mechanical storage.” https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2023/full-steam-ahead-unearthing-the-power-of-geothermal.html . Lithium recovery: “Only 1% of lithium used in the United States currently comes from domestic sources. An NREL analysis focused on lithium found that it is economically feasible for geothermal brines to yield approximately 24,000 metric tons of lithium per year, enough to establish a secure, domestic supply of the scarce mineral.” https://www.nrel.gov/news/features/2023/full-steam-ahead-unearthing-the-power-of-geothermal.html 17. Electricity: “CHS comprises nearly all geothermal electrical power generation existing today.” University of Texas, Austin, "The Future of Geothermal in Texas - Chapter 1: Geothermal and Electricity Production" 2023 . Extent of CHS: ““While the technology is mature, it is limited in supply globally as locations with sufficient heat and fluid flows for power generation are largely confined to areas with active basaltic volcanism, or continental plate boundaries.” University of Texas, Austin, "The Future of Geothermal in Texas - Chapter 1: Geothermal and Electricity Production" 2023 . 18. https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/articles/geovision-chapter-2 19. “NREL is advancing research to access geothermal heat anywhere in the world—even where fractures and fluid do not naturally exist.” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, “Geothermal Anywhere” n.d. 20. Technology progression: “. Developing EGS and deploying EGS-enabling technologies is expected to happen in stages along this resource spectrum. The GeoVision analysis assumes the progression described in this section: from in-field to near-field to deep-EGS deployment.” US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 . In-field resources: “Initial EGS resource development and EGS technology deployment will likely occur with in-field resources, at the sites of existing conventional hydrothermal projects.” US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 . Near-field resources: “Once improved technologies enable the industry to consistently and reliably capture in-field EGS resources, the next likely stage for EGS development would be in the near-field environment, or the zones of hot rock extending beyond the margins of conventional geothermal resources. The areas around existing hydrothermal systems are typically hot as a result of the nearby thermal anomaly and are relatively well characterized, but lack permeability and a connected fracture network.” US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 21. See Figure 2. 22. “At extremely high heat, the performance of geothermal doesn’t just rise, it takes a leap. When water exceeds 373°C and 220 bars of pressure, it becomes “supercritical,” a new phase that is neither liquid nor gas… For our purposes, there are two important things about supercritical water. First, its enthalpy is much higher than water or steam, meaning it holds anywhere from 4 to 10 times more energy per unit mass. And second, it is so hot that it almost doubles the Carnot efficiency of its conversion to electricity.” Vox, "Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout" 2020 . 23. AltaRock Energy, "Super Hot EGS Reducing the Cost of Geothermal Through Technology Breakthrough" n.d. 24. “Advanced Geothermal Systems (AGS) generate heat and/or electric power through a closed-loop circuit, after a working fluid, such as water or CO2, extracts thermal energy from rock formations at great depths via conductive heat transfer from the geologic formation to the working fluid in the closed loop through an impermeable zone, such as a pipe wall.” Malek et al. 2021 . 25. “Considering its technical potential and possible deployment, geothermal energy could meet roughly 3% of global electricity demand by 2050, and also has the potential to provide roughly 5% of the global demand for heating and cooling by 2050.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 26. “At the end of 2008, geothermal electricity contributed only about 0.3% of the total worldwide electric generation.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . GG note: We found more recent articles that also mentioned 0.3% of worldwide electric generation, but could not track down where they found that number and how recent that figure is. “That’s difficult and expensive, which is why geothermal power—sometimes called the forgotten renewable—makes up only about 0.3% of electricity generation worldwide.” MIT Technology Review, "What it will take to unleash the potential of geothermal power" 2021 . 27. “Technology improvements could reduce costs and increase geothermal electric power deployment. Improving the tools, technologies, and methodologies used to explore, discover, access, and manage geothermal resources would reduce costs and risks associated with geothermal developments. These reductions could increase geothermal power generation nearly 26-fold from today, representing 60 gigawatts-electric (GWe) of always-on, flexible electricity-generation capacity by 2050. This capacity makes up 3.7% of total U.S. installed capacity in 2050, and it generates 8.5% of all U.S. electricity generation.” US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 28. We describe our certainty as low/medium/high to increase readability and avoid false precision. Since these terms can be interpreted differently, we use rough heuristics to define them as percentage likelihoods the assumption is, on average, correct. Low = 0-60%, medium = 70-80%, high = 80-100%. 29. “The Energy Act of 2020 provides the first reauthorization of DOE’s Geothermal Technologies program in more than a decade. The law directs DOE to support the development of up to three Frontier Observatory for Research in Geothermal Energy (FORGE) sites to study EGS; requires DOE to demonstrate four EGS projects at potentially commercially viable locations across the nation; establishes a research program on geothermal heat pumps; directs the U.S. Geological Survey to update its geothermal resource assessments; and establishes a program that to advance geothermal computing and reservoir modeling. The Act authorizes $170 million annually for FY 2021 through FY 2025.” Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, "Federal Energy RD&D: Geothermal Technologies" 2021 . 30. Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today issued a request for information (RFI) to support $84 million in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) pilot demonstration projects included in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The legislation authorizes DOE to support four competitively selected pilot projects that demonstrate EGS in different types of geology.” US Department of Energy, "DOE Launches $84 Million Program to Demonstrate Enhanced Geothermal Energy Systems" 2022 . Tax credits: “Eligible for ITC or PTC: multiple solar and wind technologies, municipal solid waste, geothermal (electric), and tidal… Through at least 2025, the Inflation Reduction Act extends the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) of 30% and Production Tax Credit (PTC) of $0.0275/kWh (2023 value), as long as projects meet prevailing wage & apprenticeship requirements for projects over 1 MW AC.” US Environmental Protection Agency, "Summary of Inflation Reduction Act provisions related to renewable energy" n.d. 31. “The Enhanced Geothermal Shot™ is a department-wide effort to dramatically reduce the cost of EGS—by 90%, to $45 per megawatt hour by 2035.” US Department of Energy, "Enhanced Geothermal Shot" n.d. 32. Bipartisan appeal: ““Our challenge is not that we have any enemies,” says Latimer. “If you want to talk to Democrats, we produce carbon-free electricity 24/7 — the last piece of the puzzle for a fully decarbonized electricity sector. If you talk to Republicans, it’s American ingenuity putting our drilling fleet to work on a resource that’s fuel-secure, doesn’t rely on imports, and puts the oil and gas people back to work. It’s a beautiful bipartisan story. The problem is we just don’t get talked about.”” Vox, "Geothermal energy is poised for a big breakout" 2020 . Evidence of bipartisan support: The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided funding for EGS projects, and prior to that, there were bipartisan bills supporting geothermal incentives (e.g., Advanced Geothermal Innovation Leadership Act of 2019). Bipartisan Infrastructure Law: “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today issued a request for information (RFI) to support $84 million in enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) pilot demonstration projects included in President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.” Department of Energy, "DOE Launches $84 Million Program to Demonstrate Enhanced Geothermal Energy Systems" 2022 Advanced Geothermal Innovation Leadership Act of 2019: “US Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Joe Manchin ( D-W.Va .) yesterday introduced the bipartisan Advanced Geothermal Innovation Leadership Act of 2019, otherwise known as the ‘AGILE’ Act. This legislation aims to accelerate geothermal energy development in the United States by including provisions for research and development of both existing and enhanced geothermal systems, resource assessment updates, grant program authorization, and improved permitting.” ThinkGeoEnergy, "Bipartisan bill put forward in U.S. to advance geothermal R&D" 2019 . 33. “The length and number of environmental reviews for a single geothermal project can impact geothermal deployment (Young et al. 2014). Geothermal projects on federally managed land may be subject to an environmental review process under NEPA as many as six times—from agency land-use planning through construction of a power plant and associated transmission infrastructure (Figure 2-19) (Young et al. 2014).” US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 . 34. “Because additional steps and NEPA analyses are required, confirming the resource is more costly and risky. The delay and need for additional steps can result in a 5–7-year period (rather than a 1–3- year period) for a permit applicant to demonstrate a bankable geothermal development (Beckers et al. 2018, Young et al. 2019).” US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 . 35. Geothermal electricity generation capacity: “Geothermal energy production is an important component of this strategy, with 67 percent of the nation’s geothermal electricity generation capacity coming from BLM-managed public lands.” Bureau of Land Management, "Statement of Michael Nedd" 2022 . GG note: This percentage does not consider new geographies that could be unlocked with next-generation geothermal technologies. 36. Potential to streamline permits for some O&G categories: “As discussed in Section 3.2.1.2, the GeoVision analysis included an expansion of categorically excluded activities as one of many pathways for an Improved Regulatory Timeline scenario. A categorical exclusion can be applied when a project’s activities fit within a list of actions that an agency has determined do not significantly affect the quality of the human environment. A categorical exclusion is one option that complies with the National Environmental Policy Act, which is required for projects that are on federal lands, supported with federal funds, or otherwise include a major federal action. Categorical exclusions exist for some oil and gas and geothermal development categories, covering geophysical and exploration activities, including the drilling of temperature gradient holes with no new surface disturbance.” US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 . Examples from licensing for small/low-impact hydroelectric projects: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, "Small/Low Impact Hydropower Projects" n.d. 37. Organizations that have called for streamlined geothermal permitting include ClearPath, Third Way, and Clean Air Task Force. ClearPath: “Streamline permitting and regulatory requirements to reduce costs and increase installed geothermal capacity.” ClearPath, "Geothermal" n.d. . Third Way: “Streamline barriers to domestic deployment. A favorable permitting and regulatory environment can unlock geothermal deployment, facilitate learning, and help U.S. companies achieve economies of scale.” Third Way, "Geothermal: Policies to help America lead" 2023 . Clean Air Task Force: “Barrier 1: Inability to deploy projects. Permitting is a critical bottleneck for many of the stakeholders interviewed. Developing geothermal power facilities requires an extensive permitting process.” Clean Air Task Force, "Policy Brief: Earth Energy Innovation" 2023 . 38. “Much of the ‘low hanging fruit’ that is currently technologically enabled for geothermal development in the United States can be categorized as CHS, exists on Federal land, and development of those resources is currently constrained by permitting and regulatory obstacles, not technology challenges (IRENA, 2017). This land ownership obstacle is however, not present in Texas, where a majority of the State’s geothermal resources are found on State or private land, as will be explored in further detail in Chapter 13, State Stakeholders: Implications and Opportunities - General Lands Office and University Lands.” University of Texas, "The Future of Geothermal in Texas" 2023 . 39. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), initiatives focused on technologies such as extracting geothermal energy from hot dry rocks, closed loop systems, green hydrogen production, and mineral extraction enable geothermal development globally. Our understanding is that geothermal research in the U.S. is diverse and includes those initiatives. IRENA: "Various innovations and research and development initiatives are ongoing in different countries, with a focus on extraction of geothermal energy from hot dry rock (through an enhanced or engineered geothermal system), large-scale closed-loop systems (which are a type of advanced geothermal system), green hydrogen production, development of supercritical resources and mineral extraction from geothermal brines. Funding these initiatives through grants or equity is expected to enable the development of geothermal globally; improve the efficiency of geothermal electricity generation from lowand medium-temperature resources; reduce resource risks; improve the financial viability of new technologies; and enable the economical extraction of minerals from geothermal brines. Implementing pilot projects will demonstrate technical project viability, as well as boost the confidence of communities, policy makers and other stakeholders." IRENA, "Global Geothermal Market and Technology Assessment" 2023 . 40. Export opportunities: “Geothermal also opens up export market opportunities with defendable competitive advantages. Expertise in drilling, exploration, and innovation in new technologies is extremely complex and highly exportable – especially to geopolitically important markets in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.” Third Way, "Two Paths to US Competitiveness in Clean Technologies" 2023 . U.S.’s early advantage: “The US’s early advantage stems from several factors, which include an early lead in intellectual property (IP) and a strong oil and gas (O&G) workforce that can be re-skilled.” Third Way, "Geothermal: Policies to Help America Lead" 2023 . 41. “For customized technologies, data related to user preferences and relevant factors in the physical environment (e.g., detailed geological maps for geothermal power, biomass feedstock characteristics and availability for biomass power, data on building stocks for building envelope retrofits) can be considered a public good. Thus, the efforts of such clubs also need to be directed toward collection and dissemination of such data across contexts, which can facilitate aggregation of markets and scaling up of customized technologies.” Malhotra and Schmidt 2020 . 42. See Figure: Net favorability of energy sources among Democrats and Republicans. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2023/01/03/how-democrats-and-republicans-view-energy-sources 43. “Loss of drinking water is one of the many concerns Gerlach residents have over Ormat’s proposed project. Another is subsidence, the gradual sinking of land already occurring in certain parts of town.” https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/business/burning-man-geothermal-plant-nevada.html 44. “Awareness and acceptance can influence policies, incentives, land access, and other features crucial to geothermal development. In fact, many barriers to successful renewable projects at the implementation level can be considered manifestations of a lack of social acceptance (Wüstenhagen et al. 2007). For example, the public may not have a clear understanding of EGS projects and/or induced seismicity, which could lead to lower acceptance for future EGS projects.” US Department of Energy, "GeoVision" 2019 . 45. Italy: “Our results show that in Termini Imerese there is considerable optimism about geothermal energy exploitation. Nevertheless, levels of uncertainty amongst the general population are high and relates to a substantial lack of knowledge and information on the subject. At the same time, citizens clearly ask for major public participation in energy policy, land management and public fund allocation.” Pellizone et al. 2015 . Australia: “A key finding is that the majority of the Australian public report limited the knowledge or understanding of geothermal technology and have various concerns including water usage and seismic activity instigated by geothermal drilling.” Dowd et al. 2011 . Indonesia: “Based on the interviews with local communities, they reject the construction of geothermal power plants in Mt. Lawu because they think geothermal power plants will give negative impacts to cultural, environmental, economic, and social life aspects in society. This perception may appear because of the lack of understanding of geothermal energy.” Ibrohim, Prasetyo, and Rekinagara 2019 . Japan: “Over 80% of respondents thought that they ‘know’ or ‘know well and can explain in detail’ about each of the various power technologies, including fossil fuel, nuclear, hydropower, solar, and wind power (Figure 7). However, this dropped to 64.2% and 32.5% in the case of respondents’ recognition of geothermal and biomass power, respectively.” Kubota 2015 . Chile: “It suggests that there is a low level of understanding of the technology involved in geothermal energy production, and it highlights social barriers such as lack of trust, spiritual relationship to volcanoes, and uncertainty about environmental impact as factors that affect risk and public perception.” Payera 2018 . 46. High capital cost and cost-competitiveness: “Over the long-term, geothermal power offers a cost-effective means of achieving aggressive decarbonization pathways; in the short-term, however, developing geothermal systems carries significant up-front costs.” US Department of Energy, Geothermal FAQs n.d. Maintenance cost: “Costs of a geothermal plant are heavily weighted toward early expenses, rather than fuel to keep them running. Exploration activities—pre-drilling geotechnical studies, exploration, confirmation, and development drilling—have a collective impact on overall project costs and success. Most geothermal power plants can run at greater than 90% availability (i.e., producing more than 90% of the time), which means that costs can be recouped more quickly. However, operators need to balance operations with costs and electricity prices. Running at 97% or 98% can increase maintenance costs, but higher-priced electricity justifies running the plant 98% of the time because the resulting higher maintenance costs will be recovered.” US Department of Energy, Geothermal FAQs n.d. 47. LCOE refers to the cost of generating one unit of electricity (measured in megawatt-hours) from particular energy sources over the lifetime of a power plant. It takes into account various costs, including capital costs, operating and maintenance costs, fuel costs (if applicable), and the plant’s expected lifespan. 48. “There are no actual LCOE data for EGS power plants, as EGS plants remain in the demonstration phase, but estimates of EGS costs are higher than those for hydrothermal reservoirs. The cost of geothermal energy from EGS plants is also expected to decrease by 2020 and beyond, assuming improvements in drilling technologies and success in developing well-stimulation technology.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 49. “U.S. Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm today announced a new Department of Energy (DOE) goal to make enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) a widespread renewable energy option in the U.S. by cutting its cost by 90% to $45 per megawatt hour by 2035.” See Table B1b. Estimated unweighted levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and levelized cost of storage (LCOS) for new resources entering service in 2040 (2021 dollars per megawatthour). US Department of Energy, "DOE Launches New Energy Earthshot to Slash the Cost of Geothermal Power" 2022 . 50. See Table B1b. Estimated unweighted levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) and levelized cost of storage (LCOS) for new resources entering service in 2040 (2021 dollars per megawatthour). https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf . 51. “Similarly, EGS projects have the potential for far greater scale and repeatability than traditional hydrothermal geothermal projects. Because EGS uses stimulation to induce permeability, places horizontal wellbores to increase reservoir contact, and has the potential to create closed loop systems with water recirculation, the criteria for finding a suitable EGS location are broader than conventional projects. This will allow for large exploitation of resources that have the appropriate thermal gradient and suitable reservoir characteristics that will bring a scale and repeatability similar to unconventional oil and gas development. Because of this, in a similar way that the experience curve is particularly applicable to unconventionals, it is also particularly applicable to EGS development.” Latimer and Meier, 2017 . 52. We note that Fervo Energy is an EGS company and is incentivized to advocate for geothermal energy. 53. As a caveat, cost is not the only factor that should be considered when choosing between nuclear and geothermal. Wase, land area, and social license to operate are also important factors. 54. We compared EGS against small modular reactors because we think that the future of nuclear power likely lies with small modular reactors instead of conventional nuclear reactors. 55. “Conservative Technology Innovation Scenario (Conservative Scenario): Continuation of current industry trends in drilling (e.g., minor efficiency improvements with little to no increase in rate of penetration [ROP]) and EGS (e.g., limited increase in flow rate and stimulation success rate) result in minor CAPEX improvements by 2035.” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Geothermal" 2023 . 56. “Moderate Technology Innovation Scenario (Moderate Scenario): Drilling advancements (e.g., doubled ROP and bit life and reduced number of casing intervals and associated drilling materials) detailed as part of the GeoVision report (DOE, 2019) and EGS stimulation successes from the EGS Collab project (Kneafsey et al., 2022) and industry demonstration projects (Norbeck et al.2023) result in cost improvements that are fully achieved industry-wide by 2035.” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Geothermal" 2023 . 57. “Advanced Technology Innovation Scenario (Advanced Scenario): substantial drilling and EGS advancements (e.g., significantly increased ROP, bit life, and EGS stimulation success, limited casing intervals, significantly reduced consumption of drilling materials, and reduced timelines) as modeled in the Technology Improvement scenario of the GeoVision report result in cost improvements that are achieved by 2035. Going by the updates made in the 2022 ATB, Advanced Scenario EGS power plants are assumed to be built with 100 MW of capacity to maximize project efficiency. In addition, permitting timelines reflect anticipated permit streamlining effects of a National Renewable Energy Coordination Office, as enacted through the Energy Act of 2020.” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Geothermal" 2023 . 58. “Base year and future cost and performance data (see above) are sourced from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's (EIA's) Annual Energy Outlook 2023 (AEO2023) projections” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Other Technologies" 2023 . 59. “Justification: Cost modeling of drilling improvements along with limited successful field demonstrations and abundant oil and gas experience confirm this level of advancement is achievable (Lowry et al., 2017a); (Lowry et al., 2017b); (Hackett et al., 2020).” National Renewable Energy Laboratory, "Geothermal" 2023 . 60. Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, "Energizing Innovation in Fiscal Year 2024" 2023 . 61. As a caveat, we do not think these two are necessarily substitutes for each other because there are some contexts where geothermal may be more advantageous than nuclear and vice versa. We also note that hydroelectric is also a major baseload clean power source. However, we did not explore hydroelectricity further because it is especially location-constrained. 62. According to IEA’s model, the global electrical capacity of nuclear power in 2050 will be 812 GW compared to geothermal’s 126 GW. Compared to the $118 million that the U.S. spent on geothermal innovation in 2023, it spent $1.3 billion on nuclear RDD&D in 2023. Dividing these two values, we found that the ratio of investment to projected electrical capacity (millions USD/GW) was about 0.94 for geothermal compared to 1.62 for nuclear. This lower ratio for geothermal compared to nuclear suggests that spending on geothermal power could lag behind that of nuclear power relative to their respective potential, although we are uncertain of this. We think our comparison between geothermal and nuclear investments could be wrong if (1) spending on U.S. nuclear innovation only plays a minor role in increasing nuclear capacity globally and (2) supporting U.S. nuclear innovation is not analogous to supporting U.S. geothermal innovation, which could have more opportunities for international spillover effects. Additionally, a geothermal expert told us that IEA’s model underestimates geothermal power’s potential because it only considers conventional geothermal systems. Electrical capacity: Table A.3: Electricity International Energy Agency, "Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector" 2021 . Federal spending: DOE Energy RD&D programs summary, FY 2021 enacted through FY 2024 request ($ millions) Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, "Energizing Innovation in Fiscal Year 2024" 2023 . 63. For more information, see VC/PE investment in next-generation geothermal companies, 2023-10-10 . 64. See Table 2: DOE Energy RD&D programs summary, FY 2021 enacted through FY 2024 request ($millions). Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, "Energizing Innovation in Fiscal Year 2024" 2023 . 65. We do not think GTO will receive a nearly doubled budget because it seems likely that nondefense discretionary funding in FY 2024 will remain close to FY 2023 levels. “The bill cuts so-called nondefense discretionary, which includes domestic law enforcement, forest management, scientific research and more — for the 2024 fiscal year. It would limit all discretionary spending to 1 percent growth in 2025, which is effectively a budget cut, because that is projected to be slower than the rate of inflation.” New York Times, "New Details in Debt Limit Deal: Where $136 Billion in Cuts Will Come From" 2023 . 66. To the best of our knowledge, Schmidt Futures started funding geothermal in 2022 with its support for the Texas Geothermal Institute, and the Grantham Foundation began funding geothermal within the past few years. Schmidt Futures: ““Geothermal could play a much larger role in generating clean, affordable, abundant, and reliable energy,” said Tom Kalil, Schmidt Futures’ Chief Innovation Officer. “Our support aligns with Schmidt Futures’ mission to bet early on exceptional people making the world better. We hope the private sector, philanthropy and policy-makers will work together to foster geothermal’s potential to increase production of renewable energy and create jobs.”” ThinkGeoEnergy, "Texas Geothermal consortium launched to roadmap capabilities and technology gaps" 2022 . Grantham Foundation: The Grantham Foundation has used its venture capital vehicle to support geothermal companies including Fervo Energy and Zanskar. The earliest mentions that we found connecting the Grantham Foundation to Fervo Energy and Zanskar are from August 2022. “Other new investors included Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), Liberty Energy, Macquarie, Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, Impact Science Ventures, and Prelude Ventures.” Business Wire, "Fervo Energy Raises $138 Million for 24/7 Carbon-Free Next-Generation Geothermal Energy" 2022 . “Zanskar closes US$12 m Series A funding co-led by USV and Lowercarbon, with participation from new and existing investors, including Munich Re Ventures, Safar Partners, Grantham Foundation, and First Star Ventures.” ThinkGeoEnergy, "Zanskar reports closure of $12m Series A funding for geothermal discovery tech" 2022 . 67. Table 1. Land use intensity of electricity (LUIE) showing total direct and indirect land use (ha/TWh/y). Lovering et al 2022 . 68. “People are concerned about the impacts of land use for energy production for several reasons. The first is the technical question of whether we even have enough land to produce all of our energy from particular sources at all. The second is an aesthetic concern about how much of our landscapes might be taken up by these technologies. The third is the impact of land use on natural habitats and the environment.” Our World in Data, "How does the land use of different electricity sources compare?" 2022 . 69. “For example, petroleum and gas engineering skills are highly applicable to geothermal, including seismic interpretation, drilling and completions, reservoir mapping or flow assurance.” International Energy Agency, "World Energy Employment" 2022 . 70. This impression is partly informed by an interview with Jamie Beard (Project Innerspace) on the Volts podcast. “So skills transfer and all that? Yes, I mean, almost 100%. It is so synergistic in terms of skill set, transferring from oil and gas to geothermal that we're talking about minimal training certificate level, let's just get you up to speed kind of thing, but otherwise go.” Volts, "What's going on with geothermal?" 2023 . 71. “This can alleviate rural poverty in developing countries, particularly in Asia, Central and South America, and Africa, where geothermal resources are often located in remote mountainous areas.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 72. “In many developing countries, geothermal energy is also an appropriate energy source for small-scale distributed generation, helping accelerate development through access to energy in remote areas.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 73. “When it comes to the nation’s future power needs, geothermal energy checks many critical boxes. A renewable resource, it produces no greenhouse emissions and has a low environmental impact. Geothermal energy can be harnessed without importing fuel, and it produces energy around the clock; it could pave the way to increasing the nation’s energy independence.” Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, "Geothermal Energy: Harvesting the Earth's natural heat" n.d. 74. “Mercury, arsenic, radon and boron may be present.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 75. “If present, boron and arsenic are likely to be harmful to ecosystems if released at the surface.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 76. “Apart from CO2, geothermal fluids can, depending on the site, contain a variety of other minor gases, such as hydrogen sulphide (H2S), hydrogen (H2), methane (CH4), ammonia (NH3) and nitrogen (N2).” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 77. “Of the minor gases, H2S is toxic, but rarely of sufficient concentration to be harmful after venting to the atmosphere and dispersal.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 78. “Removal of H2S released from geothermal power plants is practised in parts of the U.S.A. and Italy. Elsewhere, H2S monitoring is a standard practice to provide assurance that concentrations after venting and atmospheric dispersal are not harmful.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 79. “Shallow groundwater aquifers of potable quality are protected from contamination by injected fluids by using cemented casings, and impermeable linings provide protection from temporary fluid disposal ponds. Such practices are typically mandated by environmental regulations.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 80. “Local hazards arising from natural phenomena, such as micro-earthquakes, hydrothermal steam eruptions and ground subsidence may be influenced by the operation of a geothermal field (see also Section 9.3.4.7). As with other (non-geothermal) deep drilling projects, pressure or temperature changes induced by stimulation, production or injection of fluids can lead to geo-mechanical stress changes and these can affect the subsequent rate of occurrence of these phenomena.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 81. Magnitude: “A South Korean government panel has concluded that a magnitude-5.4 earthquake that struck the city of Pohang on 15 November 2017 was probably caused by an experimental geothermal power plant.” Zastrow 2019 . Damage: “The quake was the nation’s second strongest and its most destructive on modern record — it injured 135 people and caused an estimated 300 billion won (U.S.$290 million) in damage.” Zastrow 2019 . 82. “Local hazards arising from natural phenomena, such as micro-earthquakes, hydrothermal steam eruptions and ground subsidence may be influenced by the operation of a geothermal field (see also Section 9.3.4.7). As with other (non-geothermal) deep drilling projects, pressure or temperature changes induced by stimulation, production or injection of fluids can lead to geo-mechanical stress changes and these can affect the subsequent rate of occurrence of these phenomena (Majer et al., 2008). A geological risk assessment may help to avoid or mitigate these hazards.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 83. “Collaborative research initiated by the IEA-GIA (Bromley and Mongillo, 2008), the U.S.A. and Australia (International Partnership for Geothermal Technology: IPGT)12 and in Europe (GEISER)13, is aimed at better understanding and mitigating induced seismicity hazards, and providing risk management protocols.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 84. “Water is not a limiting factor for geothermal power generation, since geothermal fluids are usually brines (i.e., not competing with other uses). Flash power plants do not consume potable water for cooling and yield condensed water that can, with proper treatment, be used for agricultural and industrial purposes. Binary power plants can minimize their water use with air cooling.” Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "Chapter 4: Geothermal Energy" 2018 . 85. “But some oil executives seem to have other plans for the technology, which received a big financial boost from the bipartisan infrastructure law and Inflation Reduction Act. DAC plants use fans, filters, power and piping to suck carbon dioxide from the air and permanently store it deep in the earth. Occidental Petroleum Corp. leader Vicki Hollub has described DAC not as a climate solution but a way to continue producing petroleum.” E&E News, "Oil companies want to remove carbon from the air — using taxpayer dollars" 2023 .

Forestry 2021 // BACK Summary Preventing deforestation is a key part of fighting the climate crisis, but forest carbon offsets suffer from a number of problems that make it difficult to know their true impact. It is difficult to measure the contribution of any forest offset project, as there is limited rigorous evaluation of the effectiveness of forest interventions. Of particular concern is “permanence”, which refers to the fact that in order to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere, trees must stay alive for many years. This adds an additional layer of uncertainty to any forest project that is very difficult to resolve. Given the limited evidence on the effectiveness of forestry interventions and concerns over leakage and permanence, we have not yet been able to find any forestry offsets we can recommend with confidence. We are continuing to look for high-quality forestry offset projects. This report was last updated in November 2021. This work is preliminary, and subject to change. Questions and comments are welcome. Overview Forest conservation, improved forest management, and afforestation/reforestation projects have gained popularity in recent years as “nature-based” solutions to fighting climate change. This makes sense, as deforestation contributes around 8% of the world’s annual CO2 emissions, and revitalization of forests can be a key carbon removal solution. Nature-based projects have received notable financial support from companies like Apple (launched a $200 million Restore Fund in 2021), Amazon (recently launched a $100 million restoration fund ), Netflix , and others to help achieve their net-zero climate goals. Globally, a recent initiative out of the World Economic Forum has even been established to plant 1 trillion trees by 2030 . This frenzy to support forest conservation and tree-planting comes as the world’s tropical forests lost 12.2 million hectares of tree cover in 2020 , a 12% increase from the year before. An area roughly the size of the Netherlands (4.2 million hectares) was lost within humid tropical forests in 2020 alone, and the rate of tropical forest loss looks like it will remain on pace in 2021 . The stunning rate of ongoing deforestation, leading to many degraded forests becoming carbon sources instead of carbon sinks , and the increased global attention to address this challenge warranted a deeper look into forest carbon offsets. Forestry as a carbon offset An analysis by Carbon Direct found that forest offset projects made up roughly 60% of carbon credits available in voluntary markets between 2015-2020. Forest offset projects generally fund NGOs working to protect or increase forest cover. There are three types of projects . The first type – avoided conversion or reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation including conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) – identifies forested land that is under threat of deforestation and takes specific actions to prevent deforestation from happening. REDD+ is a United Nations backed framework to stop the destruction of forests (the “+” in “REDD+” signifies the added importance on conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks). REDD+ helps countries value forests on the basis of the carbon and ecosystem benefits they provide and establishes financial incentives for countries to not cut down forests. The second is improved forest management (IFM) projects that involve working with local communities to use improved land management techniques to maintain or increase carbon stock in a forest. The last type of project involves increasing forest cover by planting trees in previously non-forested areas (also known as “afforestation” or “reforestation”). Mechanism Forest projects have the potential to both remove CO2 and avoid CO2 emissions. For live trees, photosynthesis pulls CO2 and water from the environment and produces oxygen and glucose in return. Much of this carbon is stored in the wood of the tree, sequestering it from the atmosphere as long as the tree is alive. Carbon is also stored in other above ground biomass as well as in the soil. Once a tree dies, its biomass eventually decomposes, releasing some carbon back into the atmosphere. Projects that claim to avoid deforestation or maintain existing carbon stocks in forests are considered avoided emissions, because they prevent the release of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from a forested area. Alternatively, IFM projects that claim to increase carbon stocks in a forested area may be considered carbon dioxide removal, as they attempt to enable a forested area to remove more GHG from the atmosphere than they did previously. Carbon Direct estimates 75% of IFM projects on voluntary carbon markets are avoided emissions projects and the rest could be considered both avoided emissions and removals.Finally, afforestation and reforestation projects also claim to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere by planting trees where they were previously cut down or did not exist before. Causality Unfortunately, it is hard to know the net contribution of any tree or forest to global carbon dioxide or global warming. This recent article in the journal Nature discusses the difficulty of assessing the effect of trees on climate change. While direct carbon capture likely has a cooling effect, trees emit other gases (including methane) into the atmosphere , some which may have warming effects. Additionally, trees can affect warming through changing the earth’s reflectivity of sunlight (known as an “albedo” effect). For example, conifers with dark leaves in far northern forests tend to absorb a lot of heat relative to highly reflective snow cover, reducing or even eliminating the positive effects of their carbon capture. This research is highly controversial, and many climate scientists believe that increasing forest cover is a key tool in fighting climate change. However, it is safe to say that our understanding of the relationship between trees and climate is still evolving and will improve with more direct measurement. Even under the assumption that increasing the number of trees unambiguously fights warming, establishing the causality of any given forest project on carbon sequestration benefits that qualify as additional (beyond business as usual) can be difficult. For example, some forest offset projects aim to prevent deforestation by paying landowners to not cut down their trees - but how can you really know that they would have cut down the trees without the credit? Organizations like Verra and Gold Standard that sell offsets set detailed standards and require projects to document the history of the land and suggest what would have happened in the absence of credits. But there is limited rigorous evidence using valid counterfactuals on the effect of forest interventions. In fact, it was recently discovered that many forested areas that were never under threat of being cut down were sold and marketed to major offset buyers. In another investigation , systematic over-crediting of forest offsets under California’s forest offset program was uncovered and was estimated to amount to 30 million tons of CO2 worth $400 million. The over-crediting was the result of project developers overstating the climate benefit by creating faulty counterfactual baselines. Without a convincing counterfactual it is hard to trust claims of the amount of change in forest cover. Forest projects can also suffer from “leakage” – the concept that preventing deforestation in one area may just cause it to increase in other areas. This is likely true if the underlying demand for non-forested land is not addressed. For example, a project in Brazil might seek to protect a certain forested area from being converted to pasture land, but if the ranchers’ demand goes unmitigated they will likely just shift their activities to another forest where the project is not operating. Whether or not there is leakage in a given project depends heavily on the underlying reason for deforestation, as well as the outside options for the people who are demanding the deforestation. Forest carbon offset projects do not try to directly measure greenhouse gas emissions or quantify other contributions to warming, presumably because doing so would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, program staff model carbon capture based on the number and type of trees planted, managed, or conserved. But project developers face the incentive to exaggerate claims about the number and type of trees, as well as various forest management practices that affect net carbon reduction. Agencies such as Verra address this by requiring periodic audits, but these are generally contracted by the program implementer, which presents a conflict of interest. In the public policy literature, there are few rigorous impact evaluations of forest interventions. One exception is a recent RCT by Jayachandran et. al. (2017) published in the journal Science. This RCT studied a program in Uganda in which farmers were paid to not cut down their trees. They indeed found decreased deforestation compared to control areas, and established that leakage was unlikely to be occurring. Another study of a government-run payments for ecosystems (PES) program implemented in Mexico that compensated communities for protecting ecologically valuable land resulted in a reduced rate of tree cover loss in areas enrolled in the program compared to areas that were not. Some areas at particularly high risk of deforestation saw reductions in tree cover loss by 40%, though overall rates of observed forest cover change were low. A more recent study mapping over 400 tree plantations in India planted between 1980 and 2017 raised serious questions about the success of tree planting and forest restoration campaigns, finding no change in tree canopy cover across the plantations studied. Potential reasons for this could be low survival rates of planted trees and tree planting where canopy cover is already dense. A review of 12 localized REDD+ (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, and enhance carbon stocks) projects found mixed outcomes in terms of increased carbon stocks, with the diversity of interventions across projects making it difficult to understand the drivers of differential effects. Overall, it is difficult to validate the causality of any given forest project and for that reason, causality is assessed as low (or at least uncertain)for many forest projects. Companies have emerged to better track forest activities, estimate CO2 levels, and identify leakage using satellite imagery, LiDAR imaging, and artificial intelligence, but it is still too early to determine whether these technologies can address causality concerns successfully at scale. Project-level additionality In general, forest conservation programs are run by NGOs dependent on outside funding or private sector project developers. For NGO-run projects, it seems reasonable to assume that income from offsets are directly fueling project operations, allowing more activities than without them. For these projects, we assess project-level additionality as high . However, sometimes forest offsets are related to enterprises hoping to make a profit by selling lumber. In these cases, it is possible that the enterprise was profitable without offsets, and therefore may not satisfy project-level additionality. Marginal additionality Forest projects generally need continual revenue flow to keep operating, and can use additional funding to expand their operations. We therefore believe that a well-functioning forest project is likely to satisfy marginal additionality. A well-functioning forest projects would, however, need to demonstrate that offset revenues resulted in protection of areas that would have been deforested or resulted in new carbon stocks added each year . Long-running project may claim continued credits since without the project, more and more of the forest would have been degraded each year. But this is very difficult to verify. Further, the vintage of the forest offset project must be taken into consideration as well. Vintage refers to the year the emissions reduction actually took place. For forest projects where emissions reductions actually took place many years in the past we would assess the marginal additionality as low. Permanence Trees capture and store carbon as biomass as the tree grows. This carbon is not eliminated, but converted into tree matter and fixed to the soil, and if the tree dies and decays (or burns) it will be released back into the air. The ability of trees to reduce atmospheric carbon depends on their survival over decades. If trees that are planted or conserved end up getting destroyed in the future, most benefits of the project are lost (except a delay in GHG emissions). Risks to permanence can be unintentional (such as fires and pests), or intentional (such as logging). To address the risks of such “reversals”, voluntary certifying agencies such as Verra assigns risk score to forest projects and require a risk-related proportion of credits to be put into a risk buffer pool. However, it is unclear whether future monitoring of reversals will be adequate, and if the buffer pool will be enough to account for them. For instance, a recent report by the non-profit CarbonPlan calls into question whether the buffer pool in forest offsets in California’s cap and trade market is sufficient given increased susceptibility to forest fires. Meanwhile, over 150,000 acres of forested areas along America’s West Coast previously used as forest offsets have burned to the ground this past summer alone. Additionally, a recent article by the investigative journalism organization ProPublica looked into a myriad of forest conservation offset projects, and came to the following conclusion: “In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.” The conservation program studied in Jayachandran et al (2017) only lasted two years, so they address permanence questions in their article. The authors do not make a claim of permanence- instead they assume that deforestation will likely resume once the program ends, and therefore the benefits of project come from delaying the deforestation. While they do find that the program is cost-effective even when only considering a delay in deforestation, this conclusion comes from a complicated calculation relying on an assumed discount rate and evolution of the social cost of carbon over time. The parameters chosen in this calculation are controversial, and therefore we don’t have a high degree of confidence that a short-term program would be cost effective. To permanently offset carbon emissions the program would have to be run in perpetuity, making the cost of the offset prohibitively high. Permanence is an important consideration because, once emitted, CO2 can remain in the atmosphere for anywhere between 300 and 1,000 years . It is therefore questionable for forest projects to credibly claim long-term climate benefits if there is a high risk of reversing advertised benefits within a timespan of a few years or even a few decades. Overall, permanence is a persistent issue in forest projects, as it is very difficult to permanently guarantee an emissions reduction with a temporary project. As a result, we assess permanence of many forest offset projects as low . Cost The average price of forest offsets within voluntary carbon markets was $4.73 per ton as of August 2021. However, most forest projects are avoidance-based, so this price mostly reflects the price of avoidance projects. Projects that provide carbon removal tend to be much more expensive as they require significant effort to plant and maintain new trees. According to Forest Trends Ecosystem Marketplace, afforestation and reforestation projects that claim carbon removal benefits have an average price of $8.10 or roughly twice that of the average forest offset. While these prices are low relative to other forms of emissions avoidance and carbon removal, their true cost is difficult to assess given questions about causality and permanence. On causality, most projects establish buffer pools that are not sold as offset credits to account for a percentage of trees dying during the life of a project. Recent reports suggest that typical buffer pools put in place (10-20% of the total project) are straining as wildfires, disease, and pests multiply. Increasing these buffer pools would significantly increase cost. On the permanence front, CarbonPlan recently developed a tool to estimate the equivalent cost of making a temporary project’s carbon removal benefits permanent. Assuming the temporary project (e.g. afforestation/reforestation) lasted 20 years which was subsequently renewed by another 20-year project and repeated for 1,000 years, with a 10% annual risk of project failure (e.g. due to forest fires), and applying a 3% discount rate on future costs, buyers should budget around $37/ton for a project that costs $8/ton today in order for it deliver carbon removal benefits on a 1,000 year basis. In practice, delivering those permanent benefits by sequentially implementing projects for 1,000 years each with a 20-year duration would prove to be difficult. Assuming after 60 years of renewing 20-year long projects, the project is replaced by a direct air capture project with permanent carbon removal at a cost of $200/ton (well below today’s average cost for our recommended permanent carbon removal providers), the budgeted price increases to $65/ton (plus or minus $9), much higher than the advertised $8/ton price. Buyers should be aware that challenges with the permanence and causality of forest projects are not reflected in their cost. Co-benefits Co-benefits to forest projects may include ecosystem conservation, biodiversity, and recreation. Some projects can increase income-generating opportunities, while others can hinder these opportunities from local inhabitants, depending on land tenure and other considerations. Co-benefits can vary widely from project to project, meaning that co-benefits will need to be assessed on a project to project basis. Assessment of forestry projects Overall, our assessment of forest projects puts us in a difficult situation. Conserving forests is a clear necessity in the fight against climate change, and there is no reason to believe that this conservation will happen based on market forces. Therefore, there is a need for additional funding for conservation, and the offset market could be a good way to achieve this funding. For a high-quality project, it’s likely that funding conservation is one of the most cost-effective ways to lower GHG emissions. However, assessing the causal impact of any offset on GHG reduction is extremely difficult, and we do not believe that the certification procedures put in place by the offset certifiers give a high enough level of certainty to trust any specific project. We are not the only ones to come to this conclusion on forest offsets. For instance, a guide to assessing the validity of carbon offsets by Broekhoff et al (2019) categorizes forest offsets as being “higher risk” of being low quality due to concerns about additionality and permanence. While quality forest projects certainly deserve funding, it may just be that the offset market is not the correct mechanism to deliver this funding. Offsets require high standards of certainty that it is very difficult for forest projects to meet. Finding the right forest project Forest offsets are one of the most popular offsets available in voluntary carbon markets. The numerous projects behind these offsets vary significantly in terms of quality, cost, and co-benefits. The popularity, variety, and challenges associated with forest offsets prompted us to think about what features we would expect to see in a forest offset project that would make us confident in recommending it. We determined such a forest project would need to demonstrate the following: 1. Causality: The project would need to show a clear causal impact, meaning: a. A clearly identified counterfactual that shows deforestation happening without the project, or lower carbon stock in the forested area without IFM or afforestation interventions b. Sophisticated analysis demonstrating that leakage is not happening c. Takes place in geographies where albedo affect is not a concern (e.g. tropics) 2. Marginal Additionality: The project is currently active and the funding received is applied towards continued advancement of the specific climate benefits claimed. 3. Permanence: The project demonstrates low risk of reversal, and has means of monitoring reversals. Specifically, the forested area would need a track record of low risk of forest fire or widespread disease. Permanence risks are addressed by a strong buffer pool. 4. Cost: Acknowledging there will always be limitations to permanence with forest-based projects, the costs would have to be low enough to demonstrate that over a 1,000 year period, it would still be more cost-effective than methods of permanent carbon dioxide removal (tools like Carbon Plan’s permanence calculator can help calculate this). 5. Co-benefits: The project does not harm or disrupt the livelihoods of individuals living in nearby communities. Closing the quality gap Recently, new approaches and technological innovations have been leveraged to improve on some of the challenges underlying many forest projects. The following organizations are on the leading edge of addressing some of these problems: Pachama is a broker of existing forest avoidance and removal-based offset projects that uses LiDAR imaging and satellite imaging to estimate biomass volume and carbon stock in a project’s forested area. The company uses machine learning models to estimate counterfactuals (if there were no carbon offset project) and uses radar data to monitor changes in forest cover to detect instances of deforestation. The company also monitors leakage risk for forested areas surrounding a project. Based on these analyses, Pachama identifies certified forest carbon credits where it believes the underlying assumptions are particularly credible and resells them on its marketplace. Pachama’s technologies could help improve measurement of the causal impact of a forest project, but gaps still remain in accurately measuring carbon stock, fully eliminating counterfactual concerns, and addressing permanence issues. Jurisdictional REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) builds on previous REDD+ initiatives that were designed to offer incentives to developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and improve sustainable management of forests. Jurisdictional REDD+ refers to an accounting framework that establishes consistent baselines and carbon crediting approaches across forest projects within a jurisdiction like a state or country. Proponents believe that taking a jurisdictional approach to REDD+ reduces the risk of leakage, so that efforts to preserve forests in one area do not lead to increased deforestation in another. Initiatives like Architecture for REDD+ Transactions (ART) are developing standardized procedures to improve the integrity of crediting emissions reductions and removals in REDD+ projects, and enhancing comparability across jurisdictions. Project developers like Emergent serve as an intermediary between tropical forest countries and the private sector to facilitate transactions that meet ART’s verification standards. NCX utilizes forest mapping techniques to make an accurate prediction of carbon stock across US forests, and then facilitates an exchange between landowners and offset buyers to defer timber harvests. NCX’s key technological innovation is a detailed “basemap”, that provides estimates of predicted deforestation for every plot of forested land in the United States. These predictive estimates of deforestation provide the estimates of avoided emissions from landowners who join NCX. Aside from claiming to quantify carbon stock more accurately, NCX has a unique approach to permanence. Their projects only delay tree-cutting by one year, and they sell a guarantee of this delay to credit purchasers. They then claim that delaying tree-cutting on 31 acres for one year is equivalent in terms of avoided emissions to permanently avoiding tree-cutting on one acre. NCX attempts to address leakage concerns by requiring landowners to enroll their entire properties on their platform and makes their platform available to small landowners. While all of these advances are laudable, we still have concerns about the project attracting landowners who were not going to cut down their forests, market-level leakage, and the actual value of one-year contracts. Each of the above organizations and initiatives attempt to address different challenges, from causality and additionality to leakage and permanence. Giving Green intends to dive further each of these solutions, and follow their progress as they continue to improve. We hope that advances in technology will eventually allow the market to produce reliable forest offsets. References Broekhoff, Derik Gillenwater, Michael Colbert-Sangree, Tani Cage, Patrick “Securing Climate Benefit: A Guide to Using Carbon Offsets”, November 2019, http://www.offsetguide.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/11.15.19.pdf Jayachandran, S., De Laat, J., Lambin, E. F., Stanton, C. Y., Audy, R., & Thomas, N. E. (2017). Cash for carbon: A randomized trial of payments for ecosystem services to reduce deforestation. Science, 357(6348), 267-273. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/357/6348/267 Popkin, Gabriel (2019) How Much Can Forests Fight Climate Change? Nature 565, 280-282 (2019) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00122-z Song, L., & Moura, P. (2019). An (even more) inconvenient truth: why carbon credits for forest preservation may be worse than nothing. ProPublica. https://features.propublica.org/brazil-carbon-offsets/inconvenient-truth-carbon-credits-dont-work-deforestation-redd-acre-cambodia/

Activism: Cost-Effectiveness Analysis // BACK This report was last updated in November 2021. It may no longer be accurate, both with respect to the evidence it presents and our assessment of the evidence. We may revise this report in the future, depending on our research capacity and research priorities. Questions and comments are welcome. Overview: By applying pressure onto elected officials and shifting what policies are seen as politically possible, climate change activism can trigger a chain of events that reduces greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In our cost-effectiveness analysis model, we estimated how much it would cost (in expectation) to remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere by donating to climate change activism. Download the full report: 2021-11 Activism CEA .pdf Download PDF Image Credit: Mark Dixon Executive Summary Climate change activism focused on US federal policy can potentially reduce levels of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere by impacting the likelihood of climate bills passing in the House and Senate, or by affecting executive or regulatory policy. We developed a simple cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) model that assesses activism’s contribution to GHG emissions. In this model, we focused on activism’s potential impact on two types of bills: a bipartisan bill and a progressive-influenced bill passed along party lines. After testing various scenarios in our CEA (e.g., Very Pessimistic to Optimistic), we found that donating to climate change activist groups could be highly cost-effective in reducing GHGs, which we measured in terms of CO2-equivalent (CO2e). Donating to activism runs the very small risk of either having a negative effect or no effect at all on CO2e levels. For this risk to occur, (1) bipartisan climate bills would need to be highly impactful and (2) activism would also need to reduce the likelihood of bipartisan bills being passed. We believe that the former is somewhat unlikely and that the latter is unlikely, making the overall risk low. We conducted our CEA by (1) estimating how much CO2e could be averted through bipartisan and progressive climate bills between 2022 and 2030, (2) assuming the change in probability of these climate bills being passed due to activism, (3) calculating an expected value for activism in terms of CO2e averted, and (4) using our estimates and assumptions to calculate cost-effectiveness. Given the large uncertainty on the different values we used in our analysis, our estimates should be viewed as rough, indicative estimates. Note: This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

Original Power: Deep Dive // BACK This report was last updated in December 2021. It may no longer be accurate, both with respect to the evidence it presents and our assessment of the evidence. We may revise this report in the future, depending on our research capacity and research priorities. Questions and comments are welcome. Executive Summary Original Power (OP) is working to ensure Australia’s First Nations communities benefit from the renewables boom. It uses a collective-action model to resource and support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to self-determine what happens on their country. First Nations people are critical stakeholders in the transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to one powered by clean, renewable energy. OP supports communities in their efforts to protect cultural heritage, challenge fossil fuel developments (if this is what communities decide), and create a just transition to renewables. [1] OP’s work can support the rapid roll out of large-scale renewables as an alternative to fossil fuel projects, in turn reducing Australia’s emissions. OP is proving to be an effective advocate for clean energy alternatives to fossil fuels. It has established renewable demonstration projects in Marlinja and Booroloola. It developed a Clean Energy Economic Recovery Plan for the Northern Territory. It is leading the First Nations Clean Energy Network : a network that includes First Nations people, community organisations, land councils, unions, academics, industry groups, technical advisors, legal experts and renewables companies. The co-benefits of these projects include improved health for communities and the environment, reduced reliance on fossil fuels, increased energy security, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Additional marginal investment could help OP scale up these programs, supporting communities to address the barriers to clean, affordable and reliable power and advising First Nations communities and business enterprises seeking to set up medium- to large-scale export-focussed clean energy projects. Traditional Owners have special rights over 52 per cent of Australia’s land. [2] While these rights usually fall short of veto power, they can influence the scope and speed of both fossil fuel and renewable energy developments. Backing new clean energy projects will help First Nations people play a role in addressing climate change, including by reducing emissions from coal and gas projects. Supporting First Nation peoples to organise, assert their rights, and advocate for clean energy alternatives is a clear yet neglected route to limiting Australia’s growing greenhouse gas emissions. OP’s research, training, organising, and advocacy is building the power of First Nations communities to make decisions which determine their future and protect their country, culture and sacred sites. This may include, if they choose, challenging the expansion of coal and gas on their lands. See, for example, OP’s efforts to support Traditional Owners to challenge an Underground Coal Gasification project in South Australia. While the renewable energy industry is expanding quickly, it does not yet have clear policies guiding best practice agreement making with First Nations people. OP, working with academics and other experts, is helping close this critical policy gap with best-practice guidance that empowers First Nations communities and ensures that renewable energy projects deliver benefits for the local Indigenous peoples on whose land they are built. Based on OP’s achievements and strategic approach, we recommend it as one of our top organisations for influencing Australian climate policy. Give to Original Power here. This report was last updated in December 2021. Installing solar, Marlinja NT. Photo credit: First Nations Clean Energy Network. Table of Contents Giving Green's Research Organisation overview Context Historical importance of First Nation activism About Native Title The importance of First Nations advocacy Activities and tactics Achievements Self-determination Defending Country Powering Alternatives Incubating new organizations, networks, and partnerships Theory of Change Assumptions behind theory of change Risks Room for additional funding Conclusion Endnotes Giving Green’s Research 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 that are using the three key approaches our research determined are the highest priority for delivering policy change: ‘insider advocacy’, ‘outsider advocacy’ and ‘changing the story’. OP seeks policy change through ‘outsider advocacy’ and ‘changing the story’. Furthermore, OP was nominated 9 times by the 52 experts surveyed, which was the fourth highest number of votes any organisation received. OP would also likely deliver substantial returns from additional marginal investment. In our assessment of OP’s impact, we spoke with representatives from OP and interviewed a number of climate policy and advocacy experts and practitioners. We also reviewed publicly available information on OP, including its website and reports, as well as media coverage of the organisation. Organisation overview Established in 2018, OP uses a collective-action model to build the power, skills and the capacity of Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander peoples to strengthen self-determination. This work means First Nations communities have the access to the resources and knowledge they need to decide which projects they want, and to challenge developments that do not have their informed consent. OP’s work is paving the way for more clean energy projects that are owned by and benefit First Nation communities, both now and into the future. They are also supporting community-driven efforts to protect the community, country and climate from harmful developments. In just three years OP has grown into an organisation with six board members and 9 employees. They have people in the Northern Territory (NT) and Western Australia (WA), and staff in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. OP raised $1.2 million in the 2020-21 financial year, most of which came from individual donations, trusts and foundations. [3] OP’s recent launch of the First Nations Clean Energy Network and associated media reports in outlets including the ABC , the Sydney Morning Herald/The Age , The Canberra Times and RenewEconomy is a signal of their growing influence. Context Historical importance of First Nation activism Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander peoples are the traditional custodians of Australia, with highly sophisticated cultures and spirituality centred on ‘caring for country’, which includes the climate. Their knowledge of the intricate interrelationships required to protect the health of Australia’s unique ecosystems, and understanding of humanity’s custodial role in maintaining ecological balance, comes from experience accumulated over tens of thousands of years and passed down from generation to generation. [4] Aboriginal cultural practices are increasingly recognised as climate positive, with the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and safeguard biodiversity (see, for example, fire management techniques known as Cool Burns). [5] Australia’s First Nations people are also the continent’s first activists, having immediately organised resistance to the British invasion of 1788. Suffering the crimes of colonisation, Australia’s First Nations people have survived by continually engaging in political activism to fight injustice and advance their rights. Today, First Nation activists are at the forefront of many social and environmental issues, including the fight for climate justice. About Native Title On 3 June 1992, the High Court of Australia overturned the doctrine of ‘terra nullius’ and recognised the existence of native title. Known as the Mabo decision, the ruling brought into common law the recognition that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders had, and still have, rights to their traditional lands. In response to the Mabo decision, the Keating ALP Government introduced the Native Title Act with fierce opposition by the Liberal National Coalition and national mining, pastoral and agricultural lobbies. [6] Native title is the recognition by Australian law of Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s traditional rights and interest in land and waters held under traditional law and custom. [7] Traditional Owners have the ‘right to negotiate’ for mining and exploration activity. It is often held concurrently with other land rights, such as mining rights, and usually but not always falls short of the power to veto developments (veto is enabled under the Aborginal Land Rights Act at the exploration phase). [8] The Native Title Act sets up processes to determine where native title exists, how future activity that impacts upon native title may be undertaken, and when native title is impaired or extinguished. Those who are recognised to have native title have the right to be consulted and, in some cases, participate in decisions about activities proposed to be undertaken on the land. [9] First Nation peoples hold native title 52 per cent of the Australian continent, [10] with rights to more than 70 per cent of the NT and 90 per cent of WA. [11] However, in practice these rights don’t always equate to the ability to determine what happens on country or protect cultural and environmental heritage. Many communities are remote, under-resourced and under pressure from complex social and economic factors. These issues are exacerbated by the power imbalance between communities and powerful mining companies operating with government backing. OP’s self-determination work is helping to address this power imbalance by bringing First Nation communities together, supporting them to determine their own futures, and providing access to the resources to organise and advocate. Through the First Nations Clean Energy Network, OP is working to support communities to address the barriers to clean, affordable and reliable power, securing good jobs and strong economies. The Network will also advise First Nations communities and business enterprises seeking to set up medium to large scale export-focussed clean energy projects. The importance of First Nations advocacy 1. First Nations land can be the site of renewable projects and fossil fuel extraction There is substantial overlap between proposed fossil fuel developments, renewable energy resources, land held under various forms of First Nations title, the National Energy Market’s Renewable Energy Zones, and projects that are underway or proposed for construction. With native title rights to approximately 50 per cent of Australia's land, First Nations people are a critical stakeholder in the climate policy change conversation. Traditional Owners can (and are already) playing a significant role both in confronting fossil fuel extraction and advocating for a just transition to renewable energy. (For example, see the Wangan and Jagalingu people’s campaign against Adani’s Carmichael coal mine, and the Adnyamathanha people ’s fight against underground coal gasification in South Australia.) 2. First Nations people should be well-positioned to share in the benefits of renewable energy Renewable energy projects, from small community-based projects to large-scale and export-focussed initiatives, are gaining momentum across the country. Despite a lack of significant Government investment or an appropriate regulatory environment, Australia is seeing the world's fastest rollout of renewable energy per capita, with 24 per cent of Australia's total energy generation currently coming from renewables. While not fast enough alone to keep the planet at 1.5 degrees warming, this is a significant revolution in energy production in this country — but it’s a revolution that does not yet adequately include and engage with First Nations peoples. Notwithstanding emerging opportunities, there are significant barriers which need to be addressed to ensure First Nation peoples are a part of the economic transition to clean energies and enjoy the benefits, alongside all Australians, of commercial and other opportunities that will arise. OP is working both in communities on the frontline, and alongside industry, investors, academics, technical and legal experts and policy makers, to make this a reality. 3. First Nations people are uniquely exposed to the impacts of climate change Another reason for supporting a First Nations organisation is that many communities are on the front-line of climate impacts. The United Nations’ Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues acknowledges that “Indigenous peoples are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change, due to their dependence upon, and close relationship, with the environment and its resources.” Further, “Climate change exacerbates the difficulties already faced by indigenous communities including political and economic marginalisation, loss of land and resources, human rights violations, discrimination and unemployment.” As such, it is critical that justice-focused climate policy centres the voices of Australia’s first people. One of the best ways to do that is to support First Nations organisations working on climate advocacy through self-determination, defending Country and advocating for renewable energy alternatives. Within this context, OP stands out as an exceptional organisation that is creating positive network effects within First Nation communities. As well as supporting self-determination so Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities take control of decisions that affect them, OP is ramping up its work, in collaboration with others, to ensure that clean energy is done the right way and driven by First Nations communities. This is inspired by the belief that First Nation peoples should have energy security - knowing there's power available for future generations, and that it can be developed in a way that does not compromise Country. Activities and tactics The largest part of OP’s work is supporting First Nations communities to determine what happens on their Country, empowering communities to decide which projects they give consent to, or not, and ensuring the projects are owned by and benefit communities in future. OP’s work falls into four interrelated categories: Self-determination. OP develops resources, training and mentoring programs that support and empower First Nations people to organise and drive their own solutions to local issues. This includes the development of resources that support communities and individuals to lead campaigns, and conducting research and analysis to assist communities make informed decisions. Defending Country. OP supports communities to self-determine what happens on Country and to protect and defend Country and culture from harmful developments. Powering renewable alternatives. OP assists communities to co-create their own renewable energy projects that provide affordable, reliable power. OP is also working with academia, policy makers, investors and the clean energy industry to develop best practice guides to agreement making between renewable developers and First Nations communities. Incubating new organisations, networks and partnerships. OP works in a collaborative way to develop networks, such as the First Nation Clean Energy Network, which is supporting community-owned renewable projects to deliver lower-cost, reliable energy, powering job opportunities and strong economies and forming strong industry partnerships, so everyone benefits from a renewables-rich future. Achievements Original Power has made a substantial improvement in identifying the regulatory and technical barriers that exist for Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in transitioning to lower cost, clean energy and being able to manage and benefit from mid-to-large scale clean energy projects. They are working to lift significant federal and state regulatory barriers and stoke government investment. They have also identified the need for best practice agreement making between First Nations communities and clean energy developers, helping to develop resources to support the engagement of First Nations people in the renewables boom. Below we discuss OP’s specific achievements: Self-determination Building Power Guide Original Power’s Building Power Guide is a resource for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander changemakers and facilitators. The guide’s purpose is to provide the resources to enable First Nations people to make informed decisions that provide for community needs, including what may be helpful in deciding whether to say yes, or no, to fossil fuel developments being offered or imposed on First Nations communities, and the ingredients needed to negotiate clean energy projects. It brings together tools and processes for community visioning, campaign planning, power mapping and leadership development. The practical guide offers 32 process guides and resources organised around OP’s six ingredients for building self-determining communities: knowledge, motivation, leadership, community processes for decision making, resourcing, agency and power. The project evolved from working with and collecting stories, lessons and case studies from First Nations communities around Australia. Insights came from campaigns to stop a nuclear waste dump, resistance to the imposition of fracking, and lessons from the many communities challenging the existence and expansion of mining. The Message Stick Project Passing the Message Stick is the first ever messaging guide specifically developed to empower First Nations peoples to change the story and build public support for self-determination and climate justice. The project was led by a steering committee supported by Original Power in collaboration with GetUp and Australian Progress. It was supported by a cohort of 19 First Nations Fellows, who took part in a five month messaging research and communications fellowship in 2019-20, and had input from over 500 First Nations advocates. The main objective of the project is to counter the unhelpful ‘deficit-based’ narrative frame that often excludes First Nations voices from dialogue on public policy in general, and climate and energy in particular. Because of Australia’s colonial legacy, dominant messages tend to relegate First Nations people to the object position rather than as capable subjects in their own story. The research project uncovered three key messages that can help First Nations people increase public support for self-determination and lay the foundation for transformative change. They are (1) First Nations people are strong and capable, (2) Current injustices exist and there are unfair barriers that persist today, and (3) The solution is First Nations people making decisions, because they know what’s best for their communities. Defending Country OP provides practical and strategic support for communities that have decided they want to oppose the development of harmful projects on Country. For example, 90 per cent of the Adnyamathanha people of South Australia have united together to resist a plan for underground coal gasification near the towns of Leigh Creek and Copley. With support from OP, this First Nation community has asserted its rights to protect the health of their Country and people from a dangerous extractive process that is already banned in Queensland, effectively stalling the project for three years. See here for more information. Powering Alternatives Policy: Clean Energy Economic Recovery Plan for the Northern Territory Original Power’s Clean Energy Economic Recovery Plan for the Northern Territory is a rapid response report prepared for the Northern Territory Government’s Economic Reconstruction Commission in 2020 that demonstrates the potential for First Nations community-owned clean energy to lead the regions out of the COVID-19 economic crisis through the creation of sustainable jobs on country. The report highlights key renewable energy generation projects, infrastructure and development models that can underpin the growth of fairer, more resilient and prosperous local communities and economies, and contribute to a safer climate for all. It shows case studies for how these solutions can increase Aboriginal economic participation, reduce running costs for households and businesses, create new skilled jobs in solar energy, and help remote Aboriginal communities address energy insecurity from over-reliance on expensive diesel-generation. The report also proposes a ‘territory connect’ high voltage direct current (HDVC) cable between Darwin, Katherine and Alice Springs as a central transmission link connecting the NT’s existing electricity grids. The proposed plan was adopted by the NT Government as a key recommendation of the Economic Reconstruction Commission. The model is also being considered by Indigenous communities developing solar grids in Central Australia, the Barkley and Gulf regions. Community Solar Power Demonstration Projects OP has teamed up with local First Nations communities in Marlinja and Borroloola to create two solar power demonstration projects. Marlinja is home to 60 people in the Barkly tablelands and one of the many remote Territory communities experiencing extreme energy insecurity, with high household power costs and lengthy system outages which means residents experience regular electricity disconnection. With Wet season temperatures in the mid-40s and overcrowded, poorly designed houses, the inability to afford electricity for essential needs has been an ongoing concern. The Marlinja Community Solar Project , supported by OP, is a community-led initiative to improve household and community-wide energy security for residents of Marlinja outstation. The second phase of the community solar project is now underway, with the planned installation of a 100kw solar array, inverters and home battery systems, providing enough power for the 13 community household’s daytime and overnight needs. Borroloola is a community of over 1300 people in the Gulf of Carpentaria that has sought to design, develop and build its own clean energy supply for residents, families and businesses in the region. Solar power for Borroloola will provide energy security, reduce the high cost of electricity and create local training and job opportunities. The objectives of both these renewable demonstration projects is to demonstrate the benefits of lower cost, reliable energy to First Nation communities, create a blueprint for other communities to develop and own their own solar projects, and to change policy to enable streamlined regulatory approvals process for community solar project grid connection. Through planning, preparation and implementation of solar projects at various levels, from individual households with pre-paid power card meters and the issues integrating them with solar PV and billing, to community-scale projects in Marlinja and Borroloola, OP have identified both barriers and solutions to the uptake of clean energy in Indigenous communities. They have begun engaging with the relevant utilities and government agencies to address these challenges. These actions, undertaken as part of actual installations in communities, have provided important insights into best practice and process and helped to streamline some of their activities going forward. These on-the-ground insights are informing the initial policy work of the First Nations Clean Energy Network. The process has already been critical in OP’s work with key stakeholders to establish how they can implement such projects at scale and develop more efficient, streamlined and cost-effective processes that will allow for a faster rollout of renewable assets in future. Incubating new organisations, networks and partnerships First Nations Clean Energy Network Alongside their work to protect Country, OP is driving new initiatives to ensure that First Nations people share the benefits of the clean energy transformation through ownership, equity, investment and participation in the clean energy revolution. OP has been a key driver of the First Nations Clean Energy Network (FNCEN), an important first step to build a forum to develop a body of knowledge, a shared vision, and coordinate efforts to ensure energy production is secure, cheaper, accessible and sustainable for generations to come. With the FNCEN launching in November 2021, the long-term impact of this initiative remains to be seen. However, the creation of the Network — which has been endorsed by leading climate and energy policy groups, universities, impact investors, unions, and top tier climate and environmental advocacy organisations — demonstrates OP’s ability to incubate and birth new projects and initiatives to improve neglected areas of climate policy, clean energy and First Nations’ justice. OP led 18 months of initial stakeholder roundtables, community and First Nation organisation conversations, discussions with industry experts, technical advisors and renewable energy practitioners. It was clear that there was a broad appetite to build a national network to meaningfully engage First Nations in the rapidly developing clean energy sector. The FNCEN is focused on community-building, policy reform and industry partnerships that put First Nations people in the driver’s seat of the clean energy revolution. The goals are to remove barriers to First Nations people setting the terms for clean energy developments, to ensure benefits are shared and that best practice principles for project development, design and implementation are followed. To achieve these goals, the FNCEN plans to: Create a platform for people with different areas of expertise, influence and experience, from which people can collectively organise and advocate from; Enable oversight and a collective approach to research and policy reform; Develop best practice standards and principles for industry and investors to ensure community engagement in planning, design and benefit sharing models; Connect First Nations energy businesses with each other, and providing a network of specialists and experts for communities to access where technical advice is needed; Generate resources to share information, innovation and support networks, while delivering capacity building and mentoring for communities or First Nation organisations who want to develop their ability to manage projects or are currently considering their options in relation to renewable energy projects. Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University For OP and the FNCEN to build an even stronger program, based on evidence, analysis and policy work, they have partnered with the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University (the ANU). Original Power has also supported the work of the ANU to develop the Clean Energy agreement making on First Nations Land guide, and additional research on large scale renewables projects. OP, working with the FNCEN, will provide resources for First Nations communities wishing to develop their own projects. It will also support them to negotiate strong and equitable agreements with the clean energy industry wishing to establish projects on Country, including the proper management of cultural heritage and sacred sites as part of this process. Theory of Change Original Power’s theory of change is based on a collective-action model which resources and supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to self-determine what happens on their country. OP supports communities in their efforts to protect cultural heritage, challenge fossil fuel developments (if this is what communities decide), and create a just transition to renewables. [12] OP’s work can support the rapid roll out of large-scale renewables as an alternative to fossil fuel projects, in turn reducing Australia’s emissions. This work is critical because, as Australia’s traditional owners, First Nations people have unique rights over 50 per cent of Australia’s land, making them critical stakeholders in the transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to one powered by clean, renewable energy. For the purpose of our assessment of organisations’ Theory of Change and their ability to achieve the goals outlined, the primary input is funding. Activities Original Power uses its funding and networks to support First Nation peoples seeking to self-determine on issues of culture, protecting Country and securing the benefits of the clean energy revolution for their communities. Outputs Through research, training, and education, Original Power supports First Nation peoples with the information and connections they need to assess whether projects are in their interests, advocate for those that are beneficial, and reject those that may harm Country, community, and the climate. OP’s industry and policy networks enable them to inform and support communities in necessary advocacy and lobbying efforts. Outcome Greater First Nations self-determination on climate and energy has the potential to protect Country from harmful projects, remove the barriers to renewable energy developments, and ensure that developments on Aboriginal land fairly benefit First Nations people. Impact Emissions are reduced from fewer or delayed fossil fuel projects. First Nation communities are better positioned to lead and benefit from the renewable energy boom. The clean energy industry has best-practice guidelines for agreement-making with First Nation communities. Emissions in the broader economy are reduced, as is Australia’s contribution to global warming. Assumptions behind theory of change Below, we discuss and evaluate each of the assumptions related to the Original Power theory of change. For each of the assumptions identified, we assess whether the assumption most likely holds , may hold , or is unlikely to hold . For each assumption, we assess whether the best available evidence, primary or secondary, suggests whether the assumption will plausibly hold or not. If training and organising work is implemented, and collective power is built, First Nations people will have greater capacity for self-determination and collective action ( most likely holds ) OP’s capacity building activities, training programs and organizing tools have already had a positive impact on the ability of First Nation communities to self-organise and engage in collective advocacy. OP’s activities have led to the creation of new organisations such the First Nations Clean Energy Network. It has supported Traditional Owners to advocate that the West Australian government co-design the controversial Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Bill 2020 and draft stronger laws that protect sacred sites. The Message Stick project has engaged thousands of First Nations people with powerful and persuasive messaging for self-determination. The Adnyamathanha people have been supported to resist underground coal gasification in South Australia. Policies for a clean energy COVID-19 recovery have been adopted by the Northern Territory government. These all demonstrate the ability of Original Power to engage Traditional Owners and support communities to advocate for positive change. With support, First Nations people can organise to protect Country from projects that harm Country, water and the climate. ( most likely holds ) With Country, culture, health, water and climate at risk from extractive industries, First Nations people are already some of the most vocal opponents of fossil fuel projects in Australia. For example, over the past decade the Wangan and Jagalingou people have spearheaded direct action, lobbying and legal interventions that have drastically slowed Adani’s Carmichael coal mine development in the Galilee Basin. Their stated motive for resisting Adani is because it is their custodial responsibility as Traditional Owners: “The sacred beliefs of our culture, our religion, is based on where the song lines run through our country. These song lines connect us to Mother Earth. Trees, plants, shrubs, medicines, waterholes, animals, habitats, aquifers – all these have a special religious place in our land and culture.” [13] Although as we have seen the decision of communities to push back on certain developments alone isn't enough. Original Power works to connect communities with each other, share lessons and case studies and support cross-community collaboration and power. In addition the policy work OP is doing can pave the way for best-practice agreement making between First Nation people and the renewable energy industry. If First Nations people oppose fossil fuel projects, will they be able to defeat them? ( may hold ) It is very challenging to ‘defeat’ fossil fuel projects in the current political climate, however First Nation communities that self-determine to oppose fossil fuel projects can be very effective campaigners. First Nation advocacy for due process and proper consultation can slow developments and challenge the scope of projects that may harm Country, culture, health, water and the climate. As Traditional Owners over more than half of the continent, First Nations communities have unique rights and a moral authority that is increasingly being recognised, especially in the wake of recent, high-profile failures by mining companies. The Juukan Gorge disaster, in which Rio Tinto destroyed 46,000 year-old, historically significant Aboriginal rock shelters, has brought into sharp focus the importance of proper consultation with First Nations communities. [14] This high-profile failure resulted in executive resignations from Rio Tinto, and activated the company’s investors to block executive bonus packages. The resulting Senate inquiry recommended new, strong Federal and state cultural heritage laws. There are strong and united calls from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, business and others for First Nations people to have a voice and a seat at the table when it comes to companies making decisions that impact their Country and cultural heritage. Despite all this, we have rated this assumption may hold due to the current political situation in Australia where governments overwhelmingly support mining over First Nation people’s rights to say ‘no’ and where projects, once proposed, are difficult to challenge in the public arena and the judicial system. If First Nations people receive more support for self-determination and collective action, and are supported with the resources they need to actively engage in the clean energy revolution, then Australia will see more and speedier renewable energy development ( most likely holds ) First Nations communities understand the benefits that affordable, clean, renewable energy can bring to bear on health, employment, and local economies. They just need support to make it happen. Many remote First Nations communities are seeking energy security. Often powered by diesel generators with prohibitively high fuel costs, renewable energy is seen by many as a solution to cost-of-living pressures, to protect against more extreme temperatures coming with climate change and ensure essential health and educational opportunities. Clean energy also provides a way to live in-line with cultural responsibilities to protect Country. The extremely positive response to the initiation and launch of the First Nations Clean Energy Network is evidence that there is growing support for First Nations communities to quickly realise the benefits of renewables and for Original Power to support additional clean energy projects such as those being implemented in Borroloola and Marlinja. Risks There are three key risks associated with OP achieving its aims. First, that federal and state governments remain intransigent and fail to reform laws and regulations which currently frustrate securing a just, equitable and rapid transition to renewables. Second, that the clean energy industry does not sufficiently engage with or prioritise the interests of First Nations people as the renewables boom gets underway. Third, that First Nations communities, because of the actions of the fossil fuel industry which works to maximise profits at the expense of First Nations people, and because of a lack of alternate economic and job opportunities, have limited options around coal and gas development, and may risk losing country and culture without any compensation. However, much of OP’s program is about mitigating these risks. By pursuing just economic and employment benefits for First Nations people from renewables, OP is building the social license and political capital needed for a rapid and just transition to renewable energy within First Nations communities, the clean energy industry and policy makers. As a small organisation, OP carries personnel risks. Its ongoing effectiveness relies on retaining and attracting talent at all levels of the organisation. There can be challenges from building and managing a team of very diverse people and skills, working in communities where there may be limited equipment and internet access. To mitigate these risks, OP has recently brought on more staff and is implementing a peer-to-peer mentoring program to up-skill and support its team. OP is also offering additional support for remote staff, including helping the whole team develop systems that better acknowledge the diversity of language and literacy skills, as well as access IT hardware and support. This will be important as the organisation grows and works to expand its efforts across the country. Room for additional funding Additional funding could help Original Power expand their on-country community engagement program, evaluate the community and climate impact of clean energy demonstration projects, and to further scale the important community, industry partnerships and policy reform work of the First Nations Clean Energy Network. Original Power’s priorities for 2022 are community, policy, and industry partnerships. They are developing plans for improving First Nations energy security and household power, which will help communities gain access to cheaper, more reliable energy, job opportunities and better health and social outcomes. On policy and industry, as discussed above there is currently no framework to guide how First Nations people can work productively with the clean energy industry. Given the importance, tractability and significant effort required to achieve OP’s aims, any marginal investment is likely to have an outsized positive impact on greenhouse gas reduction and climate justice efforts in Australia. Conclusion We believe that OP is making a significant contribution to ensuring Australia’s First Nations communities benefit from the renewables boom. Increasing First Nations communities’ access to clean, reliable energy will help them deal with more extreme temperatures brought by climate change. Securing equitable arrangements for medium- to large-scale renewable projects on First Nations land will provide an alternative to new, polluting coal and gas projects. Additional donations would enable OP to align the interests of First Nations people and the clean energy industry, making possible the mass deployment of renewables in a way that benefits First Nations communities. Based on OP’s achievements, strategic approach, and the impact that additional funding would have, we recommend it as one of our top organisations for improving climate policy in Australia. Support Original Power. Endnotes [1] https://www.originalpower.org.au/about_us [2] National Native Title Tribunal as of October 2021 [3] According to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) , Original Power is a registered Australian charity (Original Power Ltd, ABN 98627048373) and is up-to-date with all required charity reporting. The Australian Tax Office’s Original Power profile confirms the organisation registered as a charity on 26 July 2018, and is endorsed as a Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR). [4] See Bruce Pascoe’s Dark Emu for more on the cultivation of land by Australia's First Nations people, and Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta for the importance of Aboriginal philosophy in addressing the climate and ecological crisis. [5] https://www.watarrkafoundation.org.au/blog/aboriginal-fire-management-what-is-cool-burning [6] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2017C00178 [7] https://www.austrade.gov.au/land-tenure/native-title/native-title [8] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Series/C2004A04665 [9] https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/aboriginal-land-rights-act ; https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html [10] https://www.austrade.gov.au/land-tenure/native-title/native-title [11] https://www.austrade.gov.au/land-tenure/native-title/native-title-in-the-northern-territory ; https://www.austrade.gov.au/land-tenure/native-title/native-title-in-western-australia [12] https://www.originalpower.org.au/about_us [13] https://wanganjagalingou.com.au/who-we-are/ [14] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-18/one-year-on-from-rio-tinos-juukan-gorge-blast/100145712 // BACK

The Superpower Institute: Deep Dive // BACK Download our deep dive report on The Superpower Institute: The Superpower Institute Deep Dive .pdf Download PDF • 1.42MB Summary Giving Green classifies The Superpower Institute as one of Australia’s top climate nonprofits in 2024. We think its theory of change is compelling and that its team has uniquely strong expertise. We are also impressed by its thought leadership in popularising the idea of Australia as a major renewable energy exporter. Australia’s green industrial exports are a lever by which Australia could reduce a significant portion of world emissions in sectors which would be difficult for most other countries to decarbonise—as explored in Giving Green’s report, High-Impact Climate Giving in Australia . The Superpower Institute can help to accelerate the development of green industry in Australia by working to address policy gaps that can lay the foundation for green industry. We think its research and policy work can lead to changes which would make green industrial work significantly more likely to happen at scale in Australia. Achieving this would drive down the costs of a number of green industrial goods worldwide and foster innovation that could be utilised in multiple other countries. The Superpower Institute has ambitious plans for accelerating Australia’s development into a major renewable energy exporter and a major exporter of green industrial products. In addition to addressing domestic emissions (which make up approximately 1% of global emissions), The Superpower Institute's approach aims to enable Australia to play a role in decarbonising up to 7% of global carbon emissions. If successful, this strategy would have significantly higher impact on addressing climate change than any domestic strategy, reducing hard-to-decarbonise industrial emissions globally, while also having strong economic benefits for Australia. The Superpower Institute reported a funding gap of $1.5 million AUD for its research and policy work and would use additional funds to further its research and policy work. What is The Superpower Institute? The Superpower Institute is a climate think tank run by some of Australia’s most experienced economists, implementing a strategy focused on reducing Australia’s industrial export emissions in ways that can lead to significant economic benefits for Australia. It aims not only to help Australia decarbonise its domestic emissions but also to have significantly larger impacts on climate globally through decarbonising export products. The Superpower Institute primarily works towards accelerating the development of low-emissions heavy industry in Australia, reducing emissions from Australia’s industrial exports, and catalysing major green export industries in Australia. This is among the highest-scale climate strategies operating in Australia, as industrial export emissions currently comprise a very large and comparatively neglected portion of Australia’s emissions profile. How could The Superpower Institute reduce greenhouse gases? The Superpower Institute's research has been used and will likely continue to be used to inform Australian policymakers. The Superpower Institute has a strong focus on strategies that can allow Australia to be a major green energy exporter . This approach is especially important, as exported emissions currently make up the vast majority of Australia’s emissions profile but are still comparatively neglected. Much of The Superpower Institute's research works to highlight the economic viability and significant economic advantages of developing green industry in Australia and having Australia become a green exporter at a global scale. The Superpower Institute highlights both macro benefits, including improved economic growth and development of new industries, as well as micro benefits, including significantly improved employment opportunities in regional communities. A number of Australian policy insiders interviewed by Giving Green have suggested that this emphasis on economic advantage is critical for climate policy advocacy work in Australia to gain traction. The Superpower Institute focuses on work which could have the largest impact on climate, such as accelerating Australia’s green exports industry and introducing emissions monitoring systems to allow Australia’s green products to be recognised internationally by, for example, Europe’s CBAM. Best practice emissions monitoring will also ensure that National Inventory data is accurate and robust and accurately pinpoint whether policy frameworks such as the government’s federal Safeguard Mechanism are having the impact that is needed. Giving Green’s method of analysis: In assessing The Superpower Institute, Giving Green engaged in a short literature review and an extensive series of interviews with a variety of experts about The Superpower Institute's approach, including climate policy experts, government policymakers, advocacy practitioners, academics, foundations, and think tanks. In addition to speaking directly with The Superpower Institute, Giving Green also reviewed publicly available information on The Superpower Institute, including its policy reports, website, and recent media coverage. Giving Green also drew insights from our report on Australian climate philanthropy , which identifies highest-impact strategies in Australian climate work. Room for more funding: In our assessment, we conclude that The Superpower Institute has room to impactfully deploy more funding and could deliver substantial returns from additional marginal investment. Additional funding would enable it to expand its research and policy work. In particular, research and policy work in the short term will likely focus on proposals such as the Emissions Monitoring Scheme – which would be a powerful enabling feature for developing the green industry in Australia, as well as for the successful operation of Australia’s Safeguard Mechanism. It is our impression that funding at this stage could be particularly catalytic for The Superpower Institute’s future progress. Co-benefits and co-costs: We find The Superpower Institute's work to have substantial co-benefits. These take the form of economic benefits for Australia, employment benefits for Australian regional workers, and air quality benefits for both Australia and its industrial export partners. We also identify co-costs incurred by its work, including employment loss in some of Australia’s export partners and potential economic costs to the Australian government stemming from investment in green industries. Key uncertainties: Our key uncertainties include a) whether the track record of policy change from individuals on The Superpower Institute’s team will translate to organisational success at policy change, b) whether the team will be able to manage key-person risk and maintain high performance in the long-term, and c) the fact that success of green industry may also be to some degree dependent on some international factors, which cannot be easily affected by Australian policy. However, we consider most of these uncertainties to be largely manageable, and consider the expected value of The Superpower Institute’s work to be extremely high and to be among the best philanthropic opportunities in the Australian climate space. Bottom line/next steps: Based on The Superpower Institute's early signs of traction, its strong working relationships with government, the extremely high level of expertise on its team, its strategic, high-leverage approach, and the tractability of the current political environment, we conclude that The Superpower Institute is potentially one of the most effective climate organisations in Australia, with very high potential upside impact. Giving Green considers The Superpower Institute to be a highly promising philanthropic funding option. // BACK

Overview of the Voluntary Carbon Market // BACK Summary In this document, we give a very brief overview of how carbon markets work, and why they may lead to supporting projects that do not reduce emissions. We also show why the stated purpose of offsets—to provide a verifiable reduction of a specific amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—is rarely attainable. But even if validating the exact amount of emissions reduction tied to a carbon credit is an unrealistic goal, purchasers can still direct their investments towards projects that are likely making some positive difference in the fight against climate change. For organizations that have the flexibility to make climate impact through charitable donations as opposed to purchasing carbon credits, we suggest donating to Giving Green’s recommended US policy organizations , as we believe that these policy organizations have more expected impact than even the best of carbon offsets or removals. This report was lightly updated in November 2022. The prior version of this report was published in October 2021. We may do a more detailed investigation of this area in the future. Carbon Markets and the Certification Process Types of carbon markets Let’s start with some definitions. The carbon market is generally split into two parts. The compliance market is for offsets associated with international pacts such as the Kyoto accords and national or regional cap and trade systems (such as the California Cap-and-Trade Program). These frameworks each have their own rules for certifying offsets. The other part is the voluntary market , which provides offsets for individuals and businesses to purchase on their own accord. This might be for an individual looking to offset their flight, or for businesses looking to brand themselves as “carbon neutral.” The vast majority of the demand for offsets comes from businesses. We focus on the voluntary carbon market in this analysis, though many of the conclusions also hold for the compliance market. In the voluntary market, there are no set rules for who can establish and sell offsets: any project developer can sell an offset as long as they can find a buyer. However, in practice, the vast majority of offsets that change hands in this market are validated by an established certification body. These certification bodies are supposed to provide certainty to offset purchasers that the offsets are actually representing avoided emissions. One certification option is the United Nations’ Clean Development Mechanism, which was established to certify international offsets to be used under the Kyoto Protocol, but now also provides certifications to the voluntary offset market. However, CDM projects are almost exclusively associated with compliance markets. According to Allied Offsets , the largest certification providers by number of listed projects as of September 2021 are Gold Standard (2,218 projects), Verified Carbon Standard (2,132), Climate Action Reserve (652), and American Carbon Registry (484). An analysis in April 2021 by Carbon Direct found that offset projects across these registries represent 1.1 billion tons of CO2 that is claimed to be avoided, reduced, or removed. The recent flurry of net-zero commitments in the past few years across industries has fueled newfound interest in carbon markets. McKinsey found that the number of corporate net-zero commitments doubled between 2019 and 2020 and estimates that the demand for carbon credits could increase by a factor of 15 by 2030, leading to a total carbon credit market value of more than $50 billion. The growing interest in carbon offsets has stimulated a number of institutions to improve the integrity of carbon markets and better define what role they have in a net-zero world. The Science-based Targets Initiative (SBTi) , a partnership between CDP, the United Nationals Global Compact, World Resources Institute, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), helps companies establish science-based emissions reduction targets aligned with climate science to limit global temperature rise well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. SBTi’s target setting criteria does not allow for offsets to be counted as emissions reduction towards a company’s science-based targets. SBTi requires participating companies to reduce emissions within their own operations and value chains without the use of traditional offsets, with the potential exception of carbon removal to address hard-to-abate, residual emissions. On the other hand, a private-sector led initiative known as the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (TSVCM) was established to scale up carbon markets and try to improve the integrity and functioning of these markets. The TSVCM has established working groups consisting of offset suppliers, verification bodies, NGOs, regulators, academia and other stakeholders to address gaps in voluntary markets relating to governance, legal frameworks, and carbon credit integrity. While the TSVCM is the largest effort to address these gaps, the initiative has been criticized for not going far enough in addressing the many quality issues inherent in today’s carbon offsets. For instance, critics have noted that they are attempting to commoditize a sector where carbon offset projects vary significantly across a variety of factors including additionality and permanence. Finally, Oxford University recently published a set of principles to help offset buyers understand what types of offsets are acceptable and under what conditions should they be used. The “Oxford Offsetting Principles” encourage buyers to prioritize cutting emissions and, when using offsets, to shift to carbon-removal-based offsets with long-lived storage over time. The Oxford principles attempt to stake a middle ground, recognizing a role for offsets in achieving net-zero targets while encouraging buyers to use offsets sparingly and providing guidance on how to support “net-zero aligned” projects. The carbon offset certification process How does the certification process work? Each of the certification organizations has pre-determined methodologies and calculations that project implementers need to use in order to validate that they provide real emission reductions. Applicants are required to provide certain inputs (i.e. the amount of power provided by a wind farm, etc.) along with justifications for these assumptions (frequently using some data they have gathered). These inputs go into a model, which determines how many credits they will receive for the project. Applicants also must provide evidence that the project would not be completed without the carbon credits, and that the emissions reductions are not being claimed twice. Although applications are typically done before a project is implemented, actual credits are generally not issued until after the emissions reduction is “verified,” which typically happens annually. The project implementer has to verify key assumptions of the model, and this verification is then “validated” by the certification agency. Only after completing this process is the project granted emission credits. The next step is for the project to sell these credits as offsets. Some projects have pre-committed buyers, set up through “Emissions Reduction Purchase Agreements” (ERPAs). Some projects sell their offsets directly to buyers through retail sites. For instance, Gold Standard provides a platform for certified projects to sell offsets directly to consumers on its website. However, the vast majority of offsets are instead transferred to brokers such as ClimateCare , South Pole , or CO2balance . These brokers work with clients (typically large corporations) to provide bespoke offset packages. Since brokers control the majority of the offset market, it can be hard for individuals to access the full spread of offset options. Some projects are not certified at all, and have circumvented registries altogether. This is largely due to the absence of a certification protocol for specific climate mitigation solutions, and is particularly applicable to non-forestry projects that claim to remove GHGs from the atmosphere. In some cases, the costs of thirdparty verification and certification may be too costly relative to the size of the project. In the absence of third-party verifiers, climate change research organizations like CarbonPlan conduct their own due diligence on carbon removal and carbon avoidance projects; CarbonPlan has made their findings available on a public database . However, these assessments are not often conducted at project sites and are based on information that providers make publicly available. Further, major carbon removal purchasers like Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify conduct their own due diligence on providers and have made project proposals publicly available, like this repository by Stripe on GitHub . While these assessments are a valuable source of information, it is important to note that much of this due diligence is based on publicly available information and claims made by project developers that have not been verified on site. The price of offsets is simply determined by supply and demand in the market, with sellers of offsets trying to get the best price they can receive while still making sales. This is an important note. Many people may assume that if a project cost, say, 1 million USD and prevented a million tons of CO2 emissions, then each offset would be priced at $1. But this is not true. The amount of revenue gained from offsets can be a small proportion of the costs of running a project, or can result in additional profits for revenue-generating projects. This can be problematic, as it is difficult to figure out how much of the emissions reduction of the project (if any) can really be attributed to the offsets. We discuss this further in the report. Reliability of Certified Offsets Criticism of certified offsets Even certified offsets have received a lot of criticism. For instance, the investigative journalism organization ProPublica looked into a myriad of forest conservation offset projects, and came to the following conclusion : “In case after case, I found that carbon credits hadn’t offset the amount of pollution they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last.” Additionally, a detailed assessment of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism determined that “CDM still has fundamental flaws in terms of overall environmental integrity” and that “85% of the projects covered in this analysis … have a low likelihood that emission reductions are additional and are not over-estimated.” Since the other certification agencies have based much of their certification protocol on CDM standards, this does not bode well for the industry as a whole and has real-world implications in addressing climate change. In the forestry sector, a recent analysis by ProPublica, MIT Technology Review, and CarbonPlan shed light on systematic over-crediting in almost 30% of carbon credits under California’s regulated carbon offset program representing 30 million tons of CO2e worth $410 million. CarbonPlan recently found a lack of rigorous standards to ensure good outcomes in an assessment of all of the soil carbon credit protocols developed by carbon registries and other institutions. A white paper by Compensate found that after analyzing 100 certified offset projects, 90% failed to meet their offsetting claims, were not permanent, or resulted in negative side-effects for local communities and ecosystems. These examples demonstrate that certified projects are not at all fool-proof, and purchasing poor-performing certified offsets in an effort to negate individual or corporate GHG emissions can even do more harm than good. Although the certification agencies play an extremely important role in identifying projects that have a plausible path to impact, they do not give enough certainty to allow us to recommend all certified offsets. There seem to be many opportunities to game the system, and we do not believe that certification alone is enough to guarantee that purchasing offsets will result in true emissions reductions, especially not of the stated magnitude. We conduct our own due diligence to find projects in which we are confident that the purchase of a credit yields climate benefit. Giving Green’s Approach to Recommending Offsets & Removals When does Giving Green recommend an offset or removal? In this section, we explain Giving Green’s approach to assessing carbon offset and removal projects and determining which ones to recommend. We are searching for projects where there is a direct, causal, and verifiable link between someone purchasing a carbon credit and a decreased amount of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere. First, we look at the offset market sector by sector, to determine which sectors are most likely to provide reliable offsets. For sectors that we determine to be likely to contain high-quality offset projects, we then search through available projects and recommend those that meet our criteria. We rate projects using seven categories: mechanism, causality, cost, project-level additionality, marginal additionality, permanence, and co-benefits. Note that our project recommendations are not comprehensive—we have not assessed all projects in the market. (In fact, many projects do not have any publicly available information!) We have developed a systematic approach to assessing projects, and recommend the best ones we find. As our research continues, we expect to find more projects to recommend. A note to offset and removal providers: if you believe your project would meet our quality bar using the methods described below, please do feel free to reach out to us! For organizations that have the flexibility to make climate impact through charitable donations as opposed to purchasing carbon credits, we suggest donating to Giving Green’s recommended policy organizations, as we believe these have more expected impact than even the best of carbon offsets. Sector-level analysis We begin by conducting analyses at the sector level, since offset projects in the same sector tend to have similar strengths and weaknesses. For each sector we review (such as forestry, renewable energy, etc.), we produce a sector research report, in which we discuss the logic for offset projects in the sector, and determine whether we believe the underlying projects are likely to be reliable. We generally proceed by working through the certification process for an example offset project. In this process, we show what data must be provided by the project developers, and what assumptions are accepted by the certification agencies. We then discuss whether we believe these assumptions, consulting the literature to validate them. Based on this analysis, we determine if the sector appears to be promising for high-certainty projects. If so, we search for specific projects to recommend. If we determine that a sector is not promising, that does not necessarily mean that there are no high-quality projects in the sector. But given our limited research resources, we have simply concentrated our search for projects on what we consider to be the most promising sectors. We are open to finding high-quality projects in all sectors, and will consider projects in less promising sectors if they seem to be of exceptional quality. Project-level ratings After performing sector-level analyses, we then analyze and rate specific projects in promising sectors. We search for offsets to consider by assessing projects from open calls for proposals from major offset purchasers like Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify as well as reviewing publicly-available marketplaces selling offsets. We concentrate our search among projects that were easy to purchase online and where detailed information on the projects they support was available online. We rate offsets using seven main categories: mechanism, causality, project-level additionality, marginal additionality, permanence, cost, and co-benefits. These are summarized in the below table. For each project that we analyze, we rate each of these categories as ‘High’, ‘Medium’, or ‘Low’. In order to be recommended, projects need to make a compelling overall case that purchasing carbon credits reduces emissions. However, they do not have to score highly in all categories to do this. We elaborate on this in our explanations of each metric below. Mechanism Mechanism refers to the type of climate benefit a project offers. A project may offer “avoided emissions” or “carbon removal” climate benefits, and some projects can even offer both. Avoided emissions projects reduce or prevent additional GHGs from entering the atmosphere. For example, renewable energy projects or clean cookstove projects reduce GHG emissions when they are deployed instead of higher polluting alternatives. The climate benefit is that GHG emissions are reduced, or avoided altogether. More recently, projects that offer carbon removal benefits have gained in popularity. These projects claim to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it away over short or long time horizons. Afforestation or reforestation projects, or efforts to improve soil’s carbon storage capacity, are common nature-based carbon removal projects. Technological solutions like direct air capture (DAC), which uses machines to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it away in geologic formations, have just begun commercial deployment. We assess carbon removal projects more favorably than carbon avoidance projects because they remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere, which is better aligned with global net-zero goals that call for sharp emissions reductions where possible and the use of carbon removals for hard-to-abate emissions. Further, the projects tend to have greater project-level additionality (see below) than carbon avoidance projects. Additionally, the Oxford Principles for Net-Zero Aligned Offsetting recommends a shift to carbon removal-based offsets and, eventually, to carbon removal-based offsets with long-lived storage. Causality Causality refers to the extent to which the project actually causes reduced GHGs in the atmosphere. Determination of causality comes from understanding the “counterfactual”, which is what the state of the world would have been like without the project. However, this can be difficult to determine. For instance, consider a project that protects a forested area from being deforested. Determining causality requires answering two questions. First, does avoiding deforestation lead to reduced GHGs? This is a purely scientific question, which can be answered by consulting the literature. It is well-established that cutting down a forest leads to more GHGs in the atmosphere, since the trees no longer absorb CO2 and they will emit stored CO2 if the trees are burned or allowed to rot in the process. This part of causality is relatively easy to establish in this example. Secondly, would the trees have been cut down in the absence of the project? If not, then the project is not avoiding emissions. This is more difficult, as it is not possible to know with certainty what would have happened without the project, or what certifiers refer as the “baseline” scenario. Offset projects must make the case that their project leads to fewer trees being cut down, and they generally use data concerning deforestation rates before the project or in similar areas. This type of analysis is difficult for an offset certifier to validate, especially since the project developer has an incentive to exaggerate the amount of causality. For example, widespread over-crediting was recently observed in California’s forest carbon offset program to the tune of an estimated 30 million tons of CO2e and $410 million. While the certification agencies attempt to assess causality, the standards of evidence are much lower than generally accepted in the social science impact evaluation literature. For instance, the parts of the model that are verified are generally proximate inputs (like say, usage of a stove) rather than final ones (such as total fuel burned in real life usage). Another consideration that has proven difficult to manage is leakage. Leakage occurs when efforts to reduce emissions in one place shifts emissions to another location. For example, an offset that protects an area of forest may simply lead to increased deforestation in another area. Leakage is difficult to monitor, and controlling for it is extremely complex. Causality is central to an offset project being valid, and a project must have high certainty of causality to be recommended by Giving Green. In cases (such as the forestry example) where changes in human behavior are needed to guarantee causality, Giving Green requires evidence from a rigorous impact evaluation to validate this behavior change. A rigorous impact evaluation provides a convincing measurement of the counterfactual, and calculates the change in GHGs compared to this counterfactual scenario. Project-level additionality Project-level additionality is satisfied if a project would not have happened without the sales of offsets. This requirement tends to be satisfied for projects run by non-profits who solely rely on offset revenue in order to operate. However, it can be very difficult to determine for projects with multiple revenue streams. For instance, consider a wind energy project that is considering selling carbon offsets. In many markets, wind energy is cost-competitive with other kinds of energy, and wind energy plants are built and profitable without the need for carbon offsets. In this case, a wind energy project does not satisfy project-level additionality. However, in other markets, a wind energy plant may not be profitable, and therefore would not have been built without an additional revenue stream from offsets. In this case, the offset project would have project-level additionality. Two characteristics of such offset projects make project-level additionality difficult to assess: It is very difficult to verify the actual financial circumstances of the project. In order to receive certification, project developers need to provide a financial model showing that with offset revenue they would be profitable, but without offset revenue, they would not be. However, the projections of future flows of costs and revenues necessary for such a model rely on a significant amount of guesswork. Additionally, project developers have every incentive to claim additionality and therefore be eligible to sell credits. The offset certifiers likely have no way to validate these models, and also must rely on their own guesswork to decide if they believe the project developers’ case. Verifying project-level additionality is further complicated by the timing of the carbon market. Offsets are only certified once a project is up and running. For something like a grid energy project, most of the costs are up-front and therefore have already happened by the time any offsets can be sold. That makes it difficult to consider the purchase of offsets as having caused any emissions reductions. One way to get around this is for projects to receive guarantees from buyers to purchase the offsets in the future (known as an Emissions Reduction Purchase Agreement, or ERPA). In these cases, it is appropriate to take a less literal view of project-level additionality. If projects were undertaken due to the expectation of being able to sell offsets, purchasing the offsets justifies this expectation and can help uphold the market in the future. Additionally, if the project developer is continuing to develop new projects, the offset purchase can provide working capital for these new projects. That being said, it is hard to justify the additionality of offsets from a capital-intensive project that are purchased far after the capital expenditure. In our assessments at Giving Green, we accept claims of project-level additionality only when projects rely on offsets for most or all of their revenue stream, or when offsets are crucial to raising private sector capital. The project also must not be required by regulations. We may recommend projects that do not satisfy project-level additionality if they satisfy marginal additionality, as described below. Marginal additionality Most project certifiers do not consider marginal additionality, but Giving Green believes it is important and overlooked. Marginal additionality means that each additional offset purchased contributes to reduced emissions. This is an important requirement for projects to work as advertised: the purchase of every single offset must cause extra GHG reduction. For example, let us consider a landfill gas capture project, where methane is captured and flared. Assuming there are no regulations requiring such a system and the gas is not sold, the project clearly satisfies project-level additionality, since offsets are needed to fund the entire project. However, a landfill will keep producing gas for many years, and after some time the cost of the project will be covered. In this case, additional offset sales simply add to the profits of the project developer, and certainly do not lead to reduced emissions. The opposite can also be true: projects can have marginal additionality without having project-level additionality. For instance, consider a for-profit provider of clean cookstoves. The company may have a viable business model, and would exist and sell cookstoves even if offsets were not available. Therefore, they do not exhibit project-level additionality. However, if they do sell offsets, this allows them to lower their prices, therefore selling more stoves. In this case, each additional offset can contribute to additional lowering of stove costs, resulting in more stoves being sold. Therefore, the project satisfies marginal additionality. Two significant factors determining whether a project have marginal additionality are its modularity and whether it is a non-profit. Projects that are modular , as opposed to those that primarily undertake one large capital expense, are more likely to use offset purchases for continued emissions reduction. For instance, service-based offset providers, like those who procure and destroy ozone-depleting substances, or manufacturers of small products, such as cookstove manufacturers, can easily reinvest offset proceeds into additional emissions reduction. For projects that do involve a large expense, offsets sold in early years are more likely to be additional, as this is when the project is paying down loans as opposed to contributing to profits. Non-profits are more likely to reinvest offset proceeds into additional activities. If a for-profit project developer is booking profits above the opportunity costs of its founders and investors, this is a reason to question marginal additionality: additional offset purchases simply increase profits and are unrelated to decreasing GHG emissions. An exception may exist where project developers can demonstrate the increased profits attract additional investment needed to deploy new GHG-mitigating projects. Giving Green addresses some of these challenges by considering vintage. Vintage refers to the year in which the carbon avoidance or carbon removal activity occurred. Projects that are selling carbon offsets for emissions that were avoided or removed more than two years ago do not meet our vintage standards. At Giving Green, we view marginal additionality to be critical to the validity of an offset, though we admit it can sometimes be difficult to ascertain. We need to have high confidence in the marginal additionality of an offset to be able to recommend it. Note that this is a higher bar than required by the offset certifiers, whose definition of additionality only includes project-level additionality. Finally, one needs to be sure that the emissions reductions are not claimed by multiple parties. For instance, both the producers and users of low-energy lightbulbs might apply for credits. Generally, we think the certification agencies do a good job of preventing this kind of behavior, and therefore Giving Green does not work to provide additional verification. Permanence An offset provides permanent emissions reduction if there is no chance of undoing the project’s activities. In projects that avoid emissions, this is frequently satisfied in a trivial manner. For instance, if a project incinerates a refrigerant, the GHG is destroyed and emissions are avoided permanently. But permanence can be more difficult to establish for forestry or other land use projects. For instance, consider an offset project that prevents a portion of forest from being logged. These gains can be completely undone if, in the future, the forest is logged or burns down. This is known as a “reversal”. Offset certifiers have tried to deal with this risk by requiring project developers to keep a certain percentage of offsets unsold in a so-called “buffer pool”. This acts as insurance, and is drawn down when there are demonstrated reversals. But it is difficult to be certain if reversals will actually be reported in the future, and if there will be enough offsets in the buffer pool. For instance, by some estimates the size of the buffer pool in the offset scheme in California’s cap and trade is insufficient due to increased fire risk. Giving Green views permanence as an important component of an offset’s validity, and therefore we need a high degree of certainty in permanence to recommend an offset. However, since land use projects are important and it is impossible to completely verify permanence for these, we may recommend projects with some permanence uncertainty as long as strong, proven methods are put in place to guard against reversals. Cost The public-facing cost of carbon offsets is typically based on market supply and demand determined by an intermediary or broker, and not on the cost of deploying the project itself. Giving Green utilizes project details, costing studies, and internal modeling to determine the real cost of the underlying project and address the lack of transparency in offset pricing. Projects with a lower cost per ton can reduce or remove GHGs more efficiently, but they may not reflect a high standard of quality based on factors like additionality and permanence. Giving Green uses tools like CarbonPlan’s permanence calculator to try to put projects with short-lived climate benefits on an even playing field with projects with more permanent benefits, though finding like-for-like cost comparisons between projects remains difficult. Co-benefits Some offset projects offer additional benefits besides GHG reductions, known as “co-benefits”. For instance, these could include improving the income of poor families, or improving biodiversity. Giving Green only uses GHG reductions to determine which offsets to recommend, and therefore it is not necessary for an offset to have co-benefits to gain our recommendation. However, as many offset purchasers would like to buy offsets with co-benefits, we highlight them in the analysis of our recommended offsets. Conclusion It is difficult to calculate the exact amount of emissions reduction caused by the purchase of a specific carbon credit, but it is still worth investing in good projects. Overall, our assessment is that it is extremely rare for a marketed offset to truly represent its advertised amount of emissions reduction. Calculating the amount of marginal emissions reduction from an offset sale is more of an art than a science. Even “good” offset projects tend to have some questions about their additionality or permanence. That said, on average, providing more funding for activities that are verifiably reducing GHGs in the atmosphere will almost certainly result in lower amounts of GHGs, even if it is hard to exactly quantify. Therefore, we still feel comfortable recommending “good” projects, even if we do not believe that the exact amount of emissions reduction advertised by the offset is achievable. We will keep looking for “perfect” offsets, but overall we think it is an unrealistic bar to achieve. This means that companies and individuals looking to go “carbon neutral” with certainty are likely to be disappointed. However, these entities can still finance valuable, albeit more expensive, climate-improving projects. Projects that demonstrate a high degree of additionality and permanence, for example, are the gold standard but may cost many times more than a standard carbon offset project. As such, Giving Green recommends that individuals and organizations view offsets simply as a philanthropic contribution to a pro-climate project with an evidence-based approach to reducing emissions, rather than a way to eliminate their contribution to climate change . And we think that individuals and organizations with flexibility in their donation options will get better value from donating to policy organizations rather than from purchasing offsets. Additional resources As our document is merely a brief overview, we recommend those interested in a more holistic view of the market explore these resources: “Securing Climate Benefit: A Guide to Using Carbon Offsets,” by the GHG Management Institute and the Stockholm Environmental Institute, offers an accessible description of how offsets work. The Oxford Principles for Net Zero Aligned Carbon Offsetting offers a useful taxonomy of the different categories of carbon offsets. McKinsey charts out a potential roadmap for scaling up carbon markets in “ A blueprint for scaling voluntary carbon markets to meet the climate challenge” . Forest Trends publishes an annual “State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets” report. The Berkeley Carbon Trading Project developed a database of voluntary offsets across all major offset project registries and Carbon Direct recently published some key findings in an in-depth analysis of the database. CarbonPlan has done some excellent research and analysis on carbon offsets, and carbon removals in particular.

An actionable guide to maximizing the impact of corporate climate action Instead of offsetting the past, we help your business decarbonize the future. Take your corporate climate action beyond net-zero Pressure is mounting for companies to develop and implement meaningful climate strategies. However, conventional approaches to carbon neutrality have limitations: direct emissions reductions remain out of grasp for some businesses, and the efficacy of many carbon offset projects is highly uncertain. Giving Green encourages companies to move away from immediate net-zero goals and instead develop a meaningful business climate strategy that truly maximizes climate impact. Instead of offsetting the past, companies should focus on decarbonizing the future. For more detail, please read our white paper on corporate climate action: Download our white paper on corporate climate action We recommend that most donors and businesses give to our Top Nonprofits , but we recognize that many corporate climate strategies are multifaceted. Below, we list some specific recommendations for businesses to invest in catalytic carbon removal portfolios—just one of the strategies we outline in the above white paper. For the research behind our recommendations below, see our carbon offsets & carbon removals research . Invest in catalytic carbon removal portfolios Frontier Frontier is a private sector-led advance market commitment (AMC) intended to support and accelerate the development and deployment of carbon removal technologies. Climate models indicate that in order to limit warming to 2°C, emissions reductions alone may not suffice; reaching net-zero in the necessary timeframe will likely require gigaton (billion ton)-scale deployment of carbon removal by midcentury. The carbon removal sector is in its early stages, both in terms of technological readiness as well as supply; available carbon removal supply is too expensive to create broad demand. Frontier’s AMC model allows companies to maximize impact by pulling forward their carbon removal demand in order to catalyze the market. *Frontier has both an LLC and 501(c)3 arm. CONTRIBUTE READ OUR RESEARCH Milkywire Milkywire is a platform that hosts and manages the Climate Transformation Fund, a fund for businesses that consists of a portfolio of climate projects within three areas: restoring and protecting nature, carbon removal, and decarbonization. Giving Green recommends Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio as one of the top donation opportunities for businesses. Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio provides a widely accessible, catalytic investment opportunity to enable future net-zero pledges by supporting the growth and development of carbon removal. VISIT MILKYWIRE READ OUR RESEARCH Our carbon removal recommendations Charm Industrial Charm Industrial is a US-based company that converts agriculture residues into bio-oil, a dense carbon-rich liquid, and injects it deep underground, where it remains for thousands of years. Agriculture residues are usually left to decompose and release greenhouse gases; Charm’s bio-oil breaks this cycle, locking away the carbon where it can’t cause warming. We believe Charm Industrial’s process offers a highly permanent and certain reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Purchasing removal from Charm enables Charm to put more carbon underground and to scale up their pyrolysis technology. *Charm Industrial is a for-profit business. BUY CREDITS READ OUR RESEARCH Climeworks An important avenue for removing CO2 is Direct Air Carbon Capture and Sequestration (DACS). We have investigated several DACS projects and recommend purchasing carbon credits from Climeworks, a Switzerland-based company that has built a modular technology for capturing CO2 and then permanently turning it into solid material deep underground. Although these credits are expensive at over $1000 per ton of CO2, purchasing them gives unparalleled certainty of permanent CO2 removal, and supports the development of important frontier technology. *Climeworks is a for-profit business. BUY CREDITS READ OUR RESEARCH Mash Makes Mash Makes is an Indo-Danish carbon-negative energy company. It aims to convert waste streams (primarily residue biomass) into energy products (biofuel, hydrogen, and electricity), of which biochar is a byproduct. Mash Makes partners with farmers, NGOs, and organizations working in agriculture in India to convert crop residue that would have otherwise been burnt into biochar, with the possibility of expanding to other locations. Applying biochar to soil securely stores carbon that plants have removed from the atmosphere with medium-term permanence, preventing carbon emissions and air pollution. We have identified the Mash Makes Maharashtra Model as a high-quality, medium-term-permanence carbon removal option. *Mash Makes is a for-profit business. BUY CREDITS READ OUR RESEARCH Our carbon offset recommendations BURN BURN makes and distributes fuel-efficient stoves in Kenya. Their impact on fuel usage (and therefore GHG emissions) was validated by a recent randomized controlled trial (or RCT), which sets it apart from the mixed results of other cookstove providers. Additionally, BURN stove users see large reductions in expenditure on fuel, leading to more money for the family. *BURN is a for-profit business. BUY OFFSETS READ OUR RESEARCH Tradewater Tradewater’s mission is to find and destroy refrigerants and other gases with warming potential up to 10,000 times that of carbon dioxide. They work worldwide to find these gases, purchase them, and then destroy them. Priced at $18 per ton of CO2 removed, Tradewater offers one of the most attractive combinations of price and certainty. *Tradewater is a for-profit business. BUY OFFSETS READ OUR RESEARCH