We are excited to announce ten new Giving Green Fund (GGF) grants totaling $5.4 million USD. We plan to disburse $3 million this quarter, with the remainder deployed over the following year. This round concentrates on two high-priority areas:

• Decarbonizing India’s Power Sector - formerly part of Supporting a Clean Energy Transition in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs)
• Unleashing Clean Energy in the U.S.

We also made two grants through our discretionary grants program, which funds time-sensitive, high-impact work that falls outside our core strategies.

In this blog post, we’ll break down the thinking and philanthropic strategies behind the disbursements in this grant cycle.

This is the last of our smaller grantmaking rounds before Giving Season—the largest and most consequential round of our year. Last year, your support helped us deploy approximately $26 million to high-impact climate nonprofits. This year, we are hoping to go further. 

If the grants in this cycle or any of our 2026 research and grantmaking priorities resonate with you, the Giving Green Fund is the most direct way to back this work and help us deploy more capital to high-impact climate solutions.

Q2 2026 GGF Grants

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Decarbonizing India’s Power Sector

India’s power sector sits at a pivotal moment. The country is the world’s third-largest electricity consumer and one of its fastest-growing energy markets. Structural barriers to clean energy growth—strained grid infrastructure, limited technical capacity at the state level, and underdeveloped regulatory frameworks—are slowing progress. These are solvable problems, and targeted philanthropic support can play a meaningful catalytic role.

In May 2026, we selected six grants focused on enabling subnational climate action—providing technical assistance to state energy institutions, planning and modeling support for state utilities, and facilitation of clean energy pilots and demonstrations. Across these grants, we are targeting a range of interconnected bottlenecks—from agrivoltaics (AgriPV) and community solar to battery storage, state energy finance roadmaps, industrial electrification, and regulatory reform to strengthen grid management.

This round builds on our 2024 Supporting a Clean Energy Transition in LMICs research. We are expanding that work into a prioritization brief and three intersecting strategy reports, with Decarbonizing India’s Power Sector as one of them. All of this research will be published in October. In the meantime, our 2026 research and grantmaking priorities post offers a window into how this work has evolved.

To learn more about our Q2 2026 grantees working to decarbonize India’s power sector, please follow the links below to spotlights describing the specific work each grant will support:

• Regulatory Assistance Project - $800,000 (Click to view spotlight)
• Vasudha Foundation - $500,000 (Click to view spotlight)
• Center for Study of Science, Technology, and Policy (CSTEP) - $1,830,000 (Click to view spotlight)
• International Forum for Environment, Sustainability & Technology (iFOREST) - $774,623 (Click to view spotlight)
• Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) - $200,000 (Click to view spotlight)

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Unleashing Clean Energy in the U.S.

Our Unleashing Clean Energy (UCE) in the U.S. strategy focuses on meeting growing U.S. energy demand with clean, reliable, affordable power. In Q2, we made two grants to the Land and Liberty Coalition and Greenlight America under the strategy’s barrier-removal pillar—targeting the local permitting and siting bottlenecks that kill clean energy projects before they break ground. These grantees’ work spans two of our prioritized sub-strategies: supporting government engagement and policy development, and building broad coalitions across issue areas.

The timing is important. A large pipeline of proposed solar and wind projects is racing to qualify for federal tax credits set to expire at the end of 2027. Local opposition and permitting delays are among the most common reasons projects fail at this stage. Removing those roadblocks now means more clean energy reaches the grid while the window is still open.

Our UCE strategy also prioritizes commercializing and deploying clean firm power—technologies that can supply reliable electricity around the clock. In Q2, we made one grant in this pillar targeting a foundational data gap that is slowing next-generation geothermal development. Reliable subsurface temperature data is essential for developers to assess project viability and for policymakers to evaluate geothermal’s potential, yet no comprehensive public resource currently exists for Canada. This grant will help fill that gap. While the work is based in Canada rather than the U.S., it is consistent with our strategy of supporting innovative next-generation geothermal technologies with the potential to have a global impact. This grant was made in collaboration with a family foundation that agreed to match Giving Green’s grant after reviewing our research. 

To learn more about the Q2 2026 grantees working on our UCE strategy, please follow the link below to the spotlight describing the work our grant will support:

• Land and Liberty Coalition - $400,000 (Click to view spotlight)
• Greenlight America - $500,000 (Click to view spotlight)
• Cascade Institute - $235,750 (Click to view spotlight)

Discretionary Grants

Our Discretionary Grants Program is built for opportunities that do not fit neatly into our core strategies but are too promising or too time-sensitive to pass up. This quarter, one grant responds to a narrow scientific window with long-term implications for how we understand warming, and the other helps preserve a young organization that works to grow the entire pool of climate philanthropy.

Spark Climate Solutions is a U.S.-based nonprofit that identifies neglected, high-leverage climate problems and coordinates targeted research efforts to address them. Our grant supports Spark’s program on Earth’s Energy Imbalance (EEI) and declining reflectivity—a pattern in climate data that existing models substantially under-predict, with potentially significant implications for future warming projections. To be considered for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Seventh Assessment Report (AR7), new research papers must be submitted by March 15, 2027. The next assessment cycle will not open for another seven to eight years. 

Climate Philanthropy Catalyst Coalition (CPCC) is a U.S.-based peer network of foundations, philanthropic advisory firms, and philanthropy networks with a goal of tripling U.S. climate giving by 2028. Our grant provides general operating support at a critical moment: CPCC’s anchor funder was unable to renew its commitment due to internal restructuring, creating a funding gap that threatened the organization’s survival. Giving Green is a member of CPCC and one of five member organizations stepping in to close that gap.

• Spark Climate Solutions - $100,000 (Click to view spotlight)
• Climate Philanthropy Catalyst Coalition (CPCC) - $50,000 (Click to view spotlight)

How You Can Support This Work

Donations to the Giving Green Fund are impactful and timely because we base our giving decisions on the latest research and respond nimbly to nonprofits’ evolving strategies and funding needs. As we continue to navigate a rapidly changing landscape, staying closely connected to emerging challenges and solutions remains essential.

For most donors, our Top Climate Nonprofits remain strong options for fighting climate change in 2026. If you are considering a major gift, we encourage you to reach out to us. While we aim to be as transparent as possible, there are limitations to what we can share publicly. In one-on-one conversations, we are able to share more nuance and details about funding needs and high-priority projects.

If you would like your gift to power our research and communications work, we welcome direct support for Giving Green’s operations. These donations enable us to dedicate the time and resources needed to ensure our research, recommendations, and grant strategies continue to evolve and meet the moment.

We are grateful to our donors for their continued support and look forward to working together to keep climate mitigation on a path toward progress.

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