At Giving Green, we are always chasing answers to the question of where climate dollars can do the most good in a given year and ultimately improve human and ecological well-being. The climate landscape has seen considerable evolution over the past few years, leading us down new paths and pushing us to reexamine our priorities. 

The geography of emissions is shifting toward low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where energy demand is rising to fuel economic growth. U.S. federal climate policy is in flux. While our primary mission is to mitigate emissions, rising temperatures have prompted us to explore complementary philanthropic opportunities to improve human welfare through additional channels (e.g., supporting solutions to manage the risks of Earth system destabilization).

In 2025, we directed $26.9 million to five Top Climate Nonprofits and 30 grantees through the Giving Green Fund—our largest year of grantmaking to date. In 2026, we are already on track to top that growth.

This post is intended to provide a roadmap to scaling our impact with new research, refreshed strategies, a more nimble grantmaking cadence, and a sharper picture of where climate dollars can have an outsized impact in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

Here is what we’ll cover:

1. Our top research and grantmaking priorities for 2026
2. Why we are introducing sector reports, and how they will serve our donors 
3. The evolution of our approach to addressing growing emissions in LMICs
4. How and when we will make grants this year
5. How you can take action

Giving Green’s 2026 Priorities

This year’s grantmaking will action a set of new and updated strategies, while continuing to make grants across other high-impact climate strategies we assessed last year.

In 2026, we plan to publish new or refreshed research on:

• Reducing Food System Emissions: Strategy Report (updated)
• Scaling Carbon Dioxide Removal: Strategy Report (updated)
• Decarbonizing Heavy Industry: Sector Report (new)
  
  • Decarbonizing Steel: Strategy Report (new)
  • Decarbonizing Cement: Strategy Report (new)
• Accelerating Climate Mitigation in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs): Prioritization Brief (new)
  
  • Financing and Deploying Clean Energy in LMICs: Strategy Report (new)
  • Decarbonizing India’s Power Sector: Strategy Report (new)
  • Decarbonizing Indonesia’s Power Sector: Strategy Report (new)
• Managing the Risks of Earth System Destabilization: Sector Report (new)

These priorities are preliminary. As always, there is a possibility that we will not make grants in every area listed above, and we will update donors as our research progresses.

For existing strategies, we typically conduct a deeper reassessment every two years to make sure our recommendations reflect the current state of each strategy. This is why heavy industry, carbon dioxide removal, and food system emissions are all up for that refresh in 2026.

We will see through some remaining grantmaking across our Unleashing Clean Energy in the U.S. strategy, which was introduced last year. We are not currently planning to make additional grants across our Reducing Aviation Emissions and Reducing Maritime Shipping Emissions strategies this year, since we made several two-year grants last year and will not be doing any additional research on organizations in this sector this year. 

Introducing Sector Reports

Until recently, capacity constraints limited the depth of some of our strategy investigations. As our team has grown in size and efficiency, we now have the bandwidth to introduce more rigor and nuance into our analyses. One outcome is a new report format we are calling a “sector report.” 

A sector report is exactly what it sounds like: a single report that connects a set of related strategies under one sectoral umbrella, so donors and grantees can see the full landscape and how the pieces fit together. Sector reports help us achieve two goals:

1. More nuanced strategy research. Where we previously published a single strategy report, we can now go deeper into the individual strategies that ladder up to a wider segment of climate action and tailor our analyses to the very different approaches each may require.
2. Improved prioritization. Some questions are best answered above the strategy level. Before going deeper into solar radiation management (SRM), for example, we want to know whether it is the most promising approach to climate stabilization according to our scale, feasibility, and funding needs framework. A sector report lets us answer that question and treat SRM as one of several plausible levers.

Alongside the new sector reports, we are rebuilding our research dashboard. Before year's end, we plan to launch an interactive version that makes it easier to filter and explore the sectors and strategies that interest you most.

The dashboard organizes our research in three layers: sector (e.g., Heavy Industry), strategy (e.g., Decarbonizing Steel, Decarbonizing Cement), and sub-strategy—the solutions listed in the scale, feasibility, and funding-need tables of each strategy report (e.g., supporting trade policy for green steel, corporate procurement commitments for low-carbon cement, and government innovation funding to decarbonize industrial heat).

Below, we walk through our new heavy industry and Earth system destabilization sector reports as working examples and break down our evolving approaches. 

Heavy Industry: Sector Report 

How our approach has changed. We are going deeper into the highest-priority sub-sectors of heavy industry, tailoring priority countries and impact levers to each. We are also expanding the geographic footprint of our industrial work by deepening engagement with countries critical for industrial production, such as India, South Korea, China, and Australia. Our grantmaking will more intentionally focus on the highest-priority sub-sectors (cement and steel), while also exploring high-impact opportunities in ammonia, industrial heat, geologic hydrogen, and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). We are also leveraging a broader set of impact levers—such as advancing trade policy and supporting first-of-a-kind clean industry plants—in response to the current geopolitical moment and shifting oil dependence.

Why a sector report makes sense. A sector report lets us delve deeper into the most critical heavy-industry sub-sectors and the strategies best suited to address them, tailoring our theory of change to better target gaps and opportunities. It also serves donors and grantees focused on a single sub-sector, who can navigate directly to the material relevant to their work.

What we want to explore. We are exploring how philanthropy can catalyze research and development (R&D) dollars for transformative emerging technologies, support commercialization for established ones, build demand for clean industry products, leverage trade to stimulate global investment in green industries, and enable LMICs to develop new clean industries.

Example levers:

• Advancing trade policy on green steel.
• Building corporate procurement commitments for low-carbon cement.
• Expanding government innovation funding for industrial heat decarbonization.

‍Earth System Destabilization: Sector Report 

How our approach has changed. Our prior work on solar radiation management (SRM) governance raised a bigger question of whether SRM is the most promising lever for stabilizing the climate. We decided to take a closer look at the sector and adjusted our approach to situate SRM within a broader framework of climate stabilization—defined as the necessary, focused effort to manage risks posed by destabilized Earth systems (e.g., permafrost thaw, ice sheet collapse).

Why a sector report makes sense. The framing helps expand the scope of our research, prompting us to investigate opportunities to mitigate climate damages beyond the traditional emissions-reduction lens, including consideration of natural feedback mechanisms and tipping points.

What we want to explore. Strategies to minimize damages from natural feedback mechanisms and to govern prudent and effective SRM research and decision-making appear to be the most neglected relative to their potential impact.

Example levers:

• Building international governance frameworks for SRM to reduce the risk of unilateral deployment.
• Funding field research on permafrost and boreal wildfire strategies ready for near-term deployment.
• Supporting scientific work to better integrate natural feedback mechanisms into climate models and carbon budgets.

The Evolution of Our LMICs Workstream

Emissions in low- and middle-income countries are large today and projected to keep climbing as energy demand grows. As a result, grants in LMICs are becoming a much more significant part of our portfolio. 

This year, we hired an India-based researcher to lead and expand this work. To anchor it, we plan to publish a new prioritization brief—a one-off report that makes the case for geographic focus of climate philanthropy on emissions in LMICs—and three intersecting strategy reports.

Before the year’s end, we plan to publish two country-specific reports that will build on the work we started in our 2024 strategy report on Supporting a Clean Energy Transition in LMICs, assessing opportunities for power sector decarbonization in India and Indonesia. 

We are also excited to introduce a new strategy in 2026 that will intersect with and add to this body of work, focused on financing and deploying the energy transition in LMICs. 

Below is a breakdown of the new prioritization brief and strategy report we plan to publish this year. 

Accelerating Climate Mitigation in LMICs: Prioritization Brief 

How our approach has changed. We have moved from a broad, LMIC-wide theory of change toward more targeted, country-specific sub-strategies focused on the bottlenecks to power sector decarbonization in our priority countries—starting with India and Indonesia. We are also exploring opportunities in China.

Why a prioritization brief makes sense. The brief serves two purposes. First, it lays out how we prioritize particular countries—and now the sectors within them—anchoring our strategy reports on the country-sector pairs where philanthropy can move the needle most. Second, because a country lens alone would miss high-impact opportunities, we pair it with complementary workstreams, such as an analysis of the barriers to climate finance flowing from high-income to low- and middle-income countries. Together, these lenses give a fuller picture of where dollars can do the most good and a clearer view of the methodologies behind each set of recommendations.

Example levers:

• Providing technical assistance and building institutional capacity through sustained, execution-focused engagement at the sub-national level.
• Launching pilots and demonstrations to test new deployment models and generate the context-specific evidence needed to attract capital.
• Conducting research and techno-economic analysis on electrification bottlenecks where decision-makers lack credible analysis.
• Designing policy and regulatory frameworks to enable new and emerging deployment models.

Financing and Deploying Clean Energy in LMICs: Strategy Report

The challenge. Clean energy deployment in LMICs is severely underfunded. The financing needed to meet growing electricity demand with clean energy is not flowing at the required scale, and without action, the default pathway favors fossil fuels.

The solution. To increase and hasten clean energy deployment in LMICs, two things need to happen at once: mobilization of more financing and development of an expanded pool of financially viable projects.

What we want to explore. We are exploring two themes in this work: (1) increasing the flow of public funding and catalyzing private capital toward clean energy projects in LMICs, and (2) developing and derisking electricity markets, clean energy infrastructure, and projects to attract additional financing and deployment.

Example levers:

• Using philanthropic dollars as concessional finance to de-risk projects.
• Educating private investors on multilateral development bank (MDB) guarantee instruments and co-investment structures.
• Implementing grid-planning and management best practices.
• Providing technical assistance for project development.

A More Nimble Grantmaking Cadence

In previous years, the Giving Green Fund concentrated most of its grantmaking at the end of each calendar year. In 2026, we are spreading it out.

We have updated our grantmaking process in two ways:

Quarterly grant rounds. Rather than running a single annual cycle, we now have the option to run quarterly rounds. This increased cadence allows us to invite timely proposals from organizations working on our top-identified strategies and sub-strategies and optimizes our team’s capacity by creating more time and space for grantmaking beyond giving season. We already made grants in Q1 and will announce Q2 grants next month.

Discretionary grants program. We have also set aside a small portion of the Giving Green Fund for discretionary grants that let us move quickly when timely, high-impact opportunities arise. You can read more in our recent post on the discretionary grants program.

How You Can Take Effective Climate Action

Wherever you are in your climate philanthropy journey, there are concrete ways to support our work if you’re excited about our plans and priorities for 2026:

• Donate to the Giving Green Fund. The Giving Green Fund regrants to highly effective giving opportunities our team identifies, with no management fees—one of the simplest ways to back the most effective climate nonprofits across our research portfolio.
• Give directly to a Top Climate Nonprofit. You can also donate directly to any of our Top Climate Nonprofits—our list of high-impact climate nonprofits we believe have the strongest potential to drive systemic change.
• Support Giving Green’s research. Each year, we spend thousands of hours finding the most effective climate nonprofits to fund. We do not take a cut of donations to our recommendations, so we rely on generous donors to fund our research and communications work. Historically, every $1 donated to Giving Green’s operations has unlocked roughly $25.90 in additional donations to high-impact climate nonprofits. Support our work and help us multiply climate impact.

Questions? Want to collaborate? Wherever you are in your climate giving journey, we would love to hear from you. Contact us here.