Spark Climate Solutions: Grantee Spotlight (Q2 2026)

Grantee spotlight: Spark Climate Solutions

The Giving Green Fund plans to award a $100,000 restricted grant to Spark Climate Solutions to support its research portfolio on Earth’s declining reflectivity and Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI). Spark is a U.S.-based nonprofit that identifies neglected, high-leverage climate problems and stands up coordinated research and field-building efforts to address them.

This grant sits outside our core philanthropic strategies and is funded through our Discretionary Grants program, which supports catalytic, time-sensitive work that does not map neatly onto our current strategic priorities. Research on Earth system stabilization is also an area of emerging interest at Giving Green, and we are actively scoping whether and how this kind of work should sit within our core strategies in the future. 

Last updated: May 2026

What Is Spark Climate Solutions?

Spark was founded in 2021 to accelerate progress on emerging, high-impact climate challenges. Spark’s current programs are focused on specific neglected climate opportunities (such as enteric methane and agricultural nitrogen as well as better understanding climate feedbacks like emissions from warming permafrost and wetlands, and developing response options).  They are starting a new area of research on Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI). 

What Are We Funding, and How Could It Help Address Climate Change?

The work addresses an underappreciated puzzle in climate science: Earth’s reflectivity has declined sharply during the past quarter century, contributing a warming influence roughly equivalent to the cumulative effect of all human CO2 emissions since 1750. Existing climate models substantially under-predict these observed trends in reflectivity and EEI, raising the possibility that they are also under-predicting future warming. Spark’s EEI program funds external research teams to address two connected questions: what is causing observed changes in EEI and reflectivity, and what these trends imply for future warming.

Giving Green’s grant funds a time-sensitive research push designed to produce peer-reviewed results in time for inclusion in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Seventh Assessment Report (IPCC AR7). IPCC AR7 will include updated modeling to inform policy makers of our current warming trajectory so that climate policies and plans can be calibrated to the risks we face. This is a key opportunity to mainstream any new findings on the cause and consequences of EEI. There is a small window for new science to influence AR7: new papers need to be submitted for publication by March 15, 2027. The window for the next IPCC assessment cycle won’t open for another 7-8 years.

Spark will act as the central node of this effort. It has already identified a suite of research projects it considers critical and will provide oversight and funding for them. Giving Green’s grant will fund both Spark’s coordination work and their regranting to individual research projects.

Although we view this work as time-sensitive and critical, it comes with clear risks. The tight timeline means that the scientific outputs may not be ready in time for AR7, or may not be conclusive enough for inclusion in the climate models used by the report. However, we believe that the potential scope of the problem necessitates moving as quickly as possible, to influence AR7 as much as possible.

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Why Do We Think Spark Will Use This Funding Well?

Spark is well-positioned to coordinate such cross-institutional research efforts. The work will be led by Spark’s Chief Scientist Phil Duffy, who previously served as the Climate Science Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The advisory panel includes Tiffany Shaw of the University of Chicago, who is the Convening Lead Author of the primary IPCC chapter covering EEI. Spark has already identified the specific research projects and most of the teams to conduct them for the first phase of work, and several other prominent funders have joined the effort.  We therefore believe this time-sensitive work will hit the ground running. 

Giving Green believes that additional climate donations are likely to be most impactful when directed to our Top Climate Nonprofits. For several reasons, we may choose to recommend grants to other organizations for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. We are highlighting this grant to offer transparency to donors to the Giving Green Fund, as well as to provide a resource for donors who are particularly interested in this impact strategy. This is a nonpartisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.