Carbon Removal Institute (CRI): Grantee Spotlight (Q3 2026)

The Giving Green Fund is awarding an unrestricted grant to the Carbon Removal Institute (CRI) for its work designing U.S. federal policies that create demand for carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and building policymaker support for them. CRI is a U.S.-based policy organization and the 501(c)(3) arm of the Carbon Removal Alliance, an industry association of carbon removal companies.

CRI's work falls within our philanthropic strategy of scaling novel carbon dioxide removal and, more specifically, our sub-strategy of creating demand for CDR through compliance mechanisms and/or alternative demand mechanisms. Please see Giving Green's strategy report for more information, including potential risks and co-benefits, recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties.

Last updated: September 2026

What Is the Carbon Removal Institute?

Founded in 2023, CRI addresses the gap between technical advances in carbon removal and commercial demand. Over the past decade, public research funding has moved various CDR methods from the lab to field trials on farms, in industrial facilities, and in waterways. However, neither governments nor corporations are currently obligated or incentivized to purchase removals at scale. To address this, CRI designs federal policies that generate demand for CDR and builds the political support required to enact them.

It works at the U.S. federal level and pairs policy design with sustained lawmaker education: drafting policy frameworks with input from the companies actually building removal projects, then making the case for them through congressional meetings, site visits, state-level analysis, and media.

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

We think climate philanthropy should help scale up carbon removal to mitigate hard-to-abate emissions and address legacy emissions. As part of our focus on creating demand for removals, we are funding CRI's work at the organizational level. Its plans center on two workstreams:

• Creating a U.S. federal demand policy roadmap: designing new demand-side policy mechanisms, socializing them with Congress and the administration, and working toward marker bills that could serve as building blocks for more ambitious legislation.
• Creating congressional and administration champions: holding educational meetings with lawmakers and committee staff, organizing project site visits, creating state-level fact sheets, and building coalitions with industrial trade associations, local economic development groups, labor unions, and conservative NGOs to build support for CDR.

The U.S. has the fiscal and legislative machinery to create demand at scale, and many removal companies are located there. Voluntary purchasing has carried the sector so far, but the largest voluntary buyers expect policy to take over within the decade. CRI plans to create and defend the policy mechanisms that enable policy-driven demand.

Our research is cautious about U.S. demand advocacy right now, given how unpredictable U.S. federal climate policy has become. CRI attaches removal to arguments about mineral independence, industrial modernization, and local jobs, which we think can get support from policymakers when climate arguments do not. 

Why Do We Think the Carbon Removal Institute Will Use This Funding Well?

Despite being a small organization, CRI has an impressive track record in U.S. federal policy. In three years it has helped defend more than $4 billion USD in existing programs, including a carbon removal tax credit and the Direct Air Capture Hubs program, while helping to secure government support for new initiatives. For example, CRI’s policy research and education efforts led to the inclusion of a carbon mineralization provision in a bill on mining technologies. 

We think that CRI can absorb additional funding well. CRI’s anchor funder dissolved in 2024, and CRI has run a lean budget since. CDR philanthropy has contracted more broadly, and U.S. removal advocacy has few well-resourced organizations able to work with both parties. We think CRI's congressional relationships, record of designing policy that both parties will introduce, and closeness to the companies that would build these projects position it well to have demand policy ready when the policy window arrives.

We publish grant spotlights to offer transparency to Giving Green Fund donors and resources for those interested in the impact strategies each grant supports. Giving Green believes our Top Climate Nonprofits have the greatest impact potential for large, unrestricted gifts. For several reasons, we also disburse and recommend grants to other organizations surfaced through our research process for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. 

This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

The Carbon Removal Institute is a registered nonprofit in the United States. The Carbon Removal Institute works closely with a 501(c)(4) entity, the Carbon Removal Alliance. As Giving Green is itself a charitable, tax-exempt organization, we are only offering an opinion on the charitable activities of the Carbon Removal Institute, a 501(c)(3) entity.