Opportunity Green: Deep Dive

Download the report:

Summary

• What is Opportunity Green? Opportunity Green is a UK-based nonprofit focused on addressing gaps in global climate policy. Founded in 2021, it began with a focus on the global decarbonization of aviation and maritime shipping via policy, economic, and legal avenues. It also aims to identify and address broader legal and regulatory gaps to accelerate decarbonization in sectors such as buildings, agriculture, and steel. We base our recommendation on Opportunity Green’s aviation and maritime shipping work and have not assessed its efforts in other sectors.

• How could Opportunity Green address climate change? Opportunity Green invokes three main strategies in its work to decarbonize maritime shipping and aviation: (i) facilitating a private sector coalition to promote sustainable fuels, (ii) increasing representation from climate-vulnerable countries in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to promote more progressive policies, and (iii) identifying and pursuing strategic legal action. Through these strategies, Opportunity Green aims to reduce emissions by decreasing demand for aviation and shipping, shifting industries to clean, alternative fuels, and ensuring that climate-vulnerable countries are supported in the transition.

• What is its cost-effectiveness? In 2024, we developed a highly subjective cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to estimate the costs and impacts of Opportunity Green’s engagement with the IMO to enact regulations that decarbonize international shipping. Overall, we estimate it could plausibly be within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider for a top recommendation. We have low confidence in the accuracy of this CEA, and an analysis focused on Opportunity Green’s IMO engagement is unlikely to generalize to its overall cost-effectiveness. However, we generally view it as a positive input to our overall assessment of Opportunity Green.

• Is there room for more funding? Opportunity Green could use additional funding to cover operational costs, hire more staff across projects, increase analytical capacity, and expand its communications team. In particular, Opportunity Green would use funds to open a Brussels office to assist them in influencing EU policy; having an EU entity will also allow its team to launch legal challenges against EU institutions. Opportunity Green’s leadership values a healthy work culture and would also use funds to help ensure employee security and progression.

• Are there major co-benefits or potential risks? We think Opportunity Green’s potential co-benefits and potential risks are linked to the technologies for which it advocates. For example, co-benefits of green hydrogen-derived alternative fuels include lower air pollution, and potential risks include toxicity and other safety concerns. See our deep dive, Decarbonizing Aviation and Maritime Shipping, for more information.

• Key uncertainties and open questions: Our key uncertainties include our ability to evaluate the effectiveness of a young organization, Opportunity Green’s potential difficulties attracting industry members to a coalition with ambitious climate targets, the effectiveness of legal action as a climate intervention, and the general feasibility of decarbonizing aviation.

• Bottom line / next steps: We classify Opportunity Green as one of our top recommendations for nonprofits addressing climate change. We think it has a strong theory of change that tackles multiple pathways of influence, including coalition and capacity building, policy advocacy, and legal action. Opportunity Green is a small organization with robust plans for growth and the ability to utilize significant amounts of additional funding.