'Tis the season for Giving Green🎄🕯️🧸
An annual guide to charitable climate giving
Climate Solutions // ISSUE # 92 // HOTHOUSE 2.0
Hello dear reader,
Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 🎆
If you’re still looking for opportunities to put your tax-deductible dollars to work solving for neglected sources of emissions before the year ends, we’ve got you covered.
Since 2020, the non-profit Giving Green has compiled an annual shortlist of organizations where your charitable contributions will go the farthest to advance promising climate solutions.
Giving Green’s team of economists, led by Daniel Stein, comb through dozens of organizations to identify the most promising non-profits working to reduce emissions in areas policymakers and industry alike have overlooked. And Giving Green’s annual shortlist optimizes for those endeavors that haven’t quite yet hit critical velocity.
As world action on climate change evolves, so does the list, reflecting where the most room for progress remains from one year to the next. For instance, with the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, and the subsequent progress in climate action stateside, 2023 presented an opportunity for Giving Green to turn its attention beyond the United States.
Stein says the opportunities for making the greatest impact came into the sharpest focus when looking at areas where emissions are expected to balloon most dramatically in the future, rather than when referencing a stagnant pie chart of total CO2 emissions today.
As a result, in a departure from years past, Giving Green’s 2023 recommendations are comprised exclusively of technological solutions, each of which takes on a distinctly international bent.
When you look globally, Stein tells Hothouse, the forecasted consumption of many staples—from the proteins we eat to the airplanes we travel in, to our everyday energy demands—are only expected to grow exponentially.
Short of asking developing countries to dramatically restrict their consumption of goods that much of the developed world has enjoyed abundantly for decades, Stein points out there aren’t very many high-impact options to offer developing countries equitable access to resources while still adhering to the road to sub-2C.
“I think everything has to be done [through] the lens of massive energy demand increases in poor countries,” says Stein. “What’s scary about shipping and aviation—it’s about 6 percent [of greenhouse gas emissions] right now. Projections in the future you see almost all other industries going down… All that’s supposed to happen in aviation is demand goes up and we have no way to make it cleaner… Maybe [you could] argue we shouldn’t be flying, [but that’s] tough from equity perspectives.”
This is where Stein theorizes technological innovations will need to come in.
Some climate activists argue that we currently have all of the technologies necessary to decarbonize our society and that our core focus should be on deploying those technologies. Stein says this overlooks crucial factors. Yes, contemporary technologies might be capable of decarbonizing the entire U.S. grid in the next decade. But, take a place like Bangladesh, Stein says, a densely populated country severely lacking in open land. It would be impossible to construct enough domestic solar and wind power to serve that country’s energy needs. This is where innovations and technological solutions come in.
Stein understands the skepticism around tech solutions and acknowledges that not every bet might pay out. Perhaps, for instance, alternative proteins will prove a difficult sell not just ten years from now, but forty years from now, too.
Even so, because each organization is taking such big swings at sizable and difficult-to-abate emissions, Steins argues that even if only one bet pays off, it has the potential to have an outsized impact on reducing total global emissions overall.
This thinking parallels the approach of venture capitalists who place multiple bets on promising upstarts, hoping to see one return 10x their investment.
It’s a long game, indeed.
Read about Giving Green’s recommendations for 2023 below, which also offer a glimpse into emerging climate tech we should expect to grow more prominent in the years to come. s
You are of course encouraged to contribute directly to one or more of the standout organizations named below.
As part of the shortlist criteria, the organizations that Giving Green selects must each pass a test: Could an additional $100,000 in funding be catalytic? In this way, Giving Green can direct your resources to promising climate solutions that might otherwise not make it off the ground.
“What makes our work exciting in terms of really making a difference,” Stein told Hothouse, “is being part of a young organization’s journey to being at the point where they're sort of struggling, and they have a really great idea, but the future is a little murky, to them becoming a really legit org.”
Stretch your money even further by contributing to the Giving Green Fund, or others like it, empowering experts to direct your funds to climate organizations at the moment they’re most needed.
Finally, parting with your hard-earned dollars isn’t the only way to advance climate solutions. You could also get in touch with Giving Green to nominate climate organizations to be considered for their open-sourced longlist of opportunities to be evaluated for 2024.
Without further ado, please enjoy:
Giving Green’s 2023 Recommendations
Project InnerSpace
What is it?
Project InnerSpace is a non-profit working to accelerate geothermal energy development globally.
Project InnerSpaces does this by collaborating with oil and gas companies knowledgeable in the kinds of drilling technologies and techniques that can be applied to access the naturally occurring heat deep below the Earth’s crust. They are working to support opportunities to derisk and accelerate the adoption of new geothermal technology.
The latest:
This year, Project InnerSpace launched a public map assessing swaths of land for potential geothermal energy exploration. The resource, developed through a partnership with Google, was launched in beta at COP 28 in Dubai.
The project also emphasizes identifying these opportunities in precisely the kinds of countries still coming online, where energy consumption is forecasted to grow the most. The first case study, for example, spotlights Nigeria and the Lagos metropolitan area. Project InnerSpace hopes to release maps correlating to the world’s 100 most populous cities by December 2026.
Opportunity Green
What is it?
Opportunity Green is a team of lawyers, economists, and policy experts using their knowledge of our global political and judicial systems to pursue legal and industry actions to drive down emissions. To date, this has entailed a dedicated focus primarily across two industries—international shipping and commercial aviation—where demand is only expected to grow, and little in the way of solutions have yet to be pioneered.
Opportunity Green does this by motivating policymakers and building coalitions between activists and industry to both regulate existing industry as well as support industry-specific technological innovation, such as in green aviation and marine shipping fuels.
The latest:
On the marine shipping front, Opportunity Green leverages an international body known as the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which regulates all international shipping, to push for a more climate-conscious maritime policy.
In September of this year, Opportunity Green also released a report shedding light on the greenwashing perpetrated by the cruise industry for their deceptive promotion of liquified natural gas as a ‘transitional’ fuel, while downplaying its true impacts on climate.
Opportunity Green is also seeking to leverage the power of consortiums—earlier this year pulling maritime shipping and aviation companies together into the Skies and Seas Hydrogen Accelerator Coalition—to advocate for policies to drive innovation in alternative fuels.
Good Energy Collective
What is it?
The Good Energy Collective is a non-profit policy research organization that works with communities and policy-makers to build grassroots support for the deployment of “advanced” nuclear energy. Good Energy Collective accomplishes this via awareness campaigns and policy advocacy. Historically, little philanthropic support has gone toward nuclear power due to public skepticism and fear.
The latest:
In 2023, Good Energy Collective was hoping to see some acceleration in advanced nuclear reactor adoption. But advanced nuclear didn’t hit the milestones this year some expected it to hit.
In a blow to proponents of nuclear, six small modular nuclear reactors planned in Utah were canceled due to inflation and the increasing cost of construction materials.
While this setback is a disappointment, Stein reiterates that each of these technological avenues is a long game, and ups and downs are to be expected.
In the meantime, Good Energy Collective received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to work on consent-based siting of nuclear waste and began repurposing retired coal plant sites into nuclear plants.
Good Food Institute
What is it?
The Good Food Institute is a non-profit engaged in supporting alternative protein innovation, betting that they can make alternative proteins competitive with conventional meat in terms of both price and taste.
Agriculture constitutes 10 percent of global emissions, with livestock making up the lion's share. And global meat production is only projected to double by 2050, according to the United Nations. Alternative proteins would be a convenient solution. But, to date, alternative proteins have failed to convert all but the most zealous environmentally-conscious consumers.
The latest:
To succeed in the marketplace, Stein says, the taste and quality of alternative proteins must meet or exceed that of traditional meats. Instead, Stein says the last few years saw venture capital’s appetite for alternative proteins exceed consumer demand for its contemporary quality, taste, and price.
As a result, alternative proteins have had a setback in the public consciousness. The share price of Beyond Meat Inc. is $9.99, down from $234.90 at its peak in July 2019.
Still, like other innovation-based climate solutions, Stein says he expects alternative proteins to mature over a long time. But there is momentum for the road ahead. In 2023, GFI was awarded millions in the U.K. and EU for research and development funding. GFI also dramatically expanded its network of universities collaborating on the research to 53, up from 36 last year.
Industrious Labs
What is it?
The non-profit Industrious Labs combines high-level policy, corporate campaigns, and grassroots activism to create a robust response to industry emissions.
Heavy industry contributes nearly one-third of annual carbon emissions, yet most federal policies don’t address the four largest sources of industrial emissions: the production of steel, concrete, aluminum, and fertilizer.
Industrious Labs targets these and other industrial emissions by driving coalition-building between government actors and industry members to implement policy and raise sustainability standards.
The latest:
This year Industrious Labs highlighted the health hazards of Detroit carmakers' use of steel made from burning coal. The campaign also included motivating industry players to promote a transition to green steel, a coalition that has ballooned to 45 organizations and 130 advocates as of this fall.
This work has successfully resulted in a temporary pause by Cleveland-Cliffs, a North American steel producer, on an investment in coal while the coalition works to permanently shift the investment to green steel.
Further, in 2023, IL built out a robust public dashboard that monitors emissions of the thousands of unregulated industrial plants across the country, including emissions from burning wood in the paper industry to the release of nitrous acid at chemical facilities.
Clean Air Task Force
What is it?
Established in 1996, the Clean Air Task Force is an international nonprofit focusing on driving scalable technological and policy-based solutions to the climate crisis.
CATF’s holds the dual goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 while also doubling the global energy grid’s capacity to provide energy access to billions of people in developing countries.
Over the last nearly three decades, CATF has played an important role in shaping policy on sources of emissions, including methane.
“Clean Air Task Force focuses on policy to move the needle on neglected technologies that aren’t getting attention from government or industry,” says Stein. “They’ve got an exciting bunch of wins under their belt.”
The latest:
In 2023, CATF continued its campaign against methane and expanded its Superhot Rock Project Map and other supplemental resources for geothermal technology, including directing $20 million to explore superhot rock pilot demonstrations.
CATF is also shepherding the future of hydrogen production stateside. In October of this year, the Biden Administration allocated $7 billion to seven regional hubs for hydrogen production, hubs that Clean Air Task Force anticipates will support hydrogen implementation via community engagement and other activities.
Hothouse is a newsletter catalyzing climate action edited by Cadence Bambenek with additional editing of this issue by Peter Guy Witzig. We rely on reader contributions, support us today:
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