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This grant to ClearPath will fund its work in nuclear power and decarbonizing heavy industry. ClearPath // BACK Overview The Giving Green Fund plans to award a restricted grant to ClearPath , a US-based nonprofit accelerating US innovation to reduce global emissions. We have restricted our grant to ClearPath’s work on either nuclear power or decarbonizing heavy industry. Nuclear power: We are supporting an ecosystem of nonprofits working on policies supporting advanced nuclear innovation in the US given that the US is important for designing and demonstrating these technologies before they are exported elsewhere. Heavy industry: This is one of a series of grants to support an ecosystem of nonprofits working to expand and decarbonize domestic industrial production through increased public and private investment, along with trade policy that favors cleaner industrial material imports. While most of ClearPath’s work is focused on US stakeholders, we think that since these efforts include trade policy, they can have a global impact. ClearPath falls within our impact areas of nuclear power and decarbonizing heavy industry. Please see Giving Green’s deep dive reports on nuclear power and heavy industry for more information about the general impact area, including risks and potential co-benefits, philanthropic strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties. Last updated: October 2024 What is ClearPath? ClearPath is a US-based nonprofit founded in 2014 to support global emissions reductions through US innovation. It focuses on right-of-center policies for decarbonization. Its focus areas include clean energy, carbon removal, clean manufacturing, and setting the US as a global leader in deploying clean energy technologies. We have looked specifically into its work on nuclear power and clean manufacturing. What are we funding at ClearPath, and how could it help reduce emissions? Nuclear power Nuclear power can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by replacing or avoiding carbon-emitting energy sources. It can work alongside renewable energy by providing a steady electricity supply, regardless of the season or environmental conditions. The future of advanced nuclear reactors, which are designed to be lower cost to build than traditional nuclear reactors and have advanced safety features, depends on technological progress and political conditions. ClearPath is promoting investment in nuclear projects by developing policies that reduce project financing risks and promote investment. It is also educating policymakers on the importance of support from U.S. financing institutions like the US International Development Finance Corporation and the Export-Import Bank. These efforts aim to remove key obstacles to building new nuclear projects both inside and outside the US, speeding up deployment overall. Industry Leading the Clean Industrial Technology Campaign (CITC): ClearPath runs a bipartisan coalition, CITC, focused on decarbonizing cement and steel production. Through educating policymakers and drafting legislation, the coalition highlights critical opportunities where US innovation meets industrial decarbonization. The coalition includes representatives from environmental groups, labor groups, and the private sector. Expanding its work to include chemicals and refining: ClearPath has focused its industry work on concrete/cement and iron/steel, however, it would like to expand its work to include chemicals and refining. In keeping with its focus on innovation, ClearPath, in coordination with key stakeholders, would like to identify and develop policies that would unlock public and private investment for research and development to decarbonize chemicals and refining. Why do we think ClearPath will use this funding well? ClearPath’s strong track record and its focus on US innovation enable it to build bipartisan support and reach a broad set of stakeholders. We think this is especially important for industrial decarbonization as it will largely be driven by the coordination of strategic policies and private-sector engagement. We are also excited to support its expansion into chemicals and refining, an area of heavy industry that has received relatively less philanthropic engagement. We're also excited about ClearPath's work on nuclear power because it has become a trusted and collaborative leader in crafting practical policies that tackle key obstacles. For more on the difference between the grantees of the Giving Green Fund and our Top Nonprofits, please see this blog post on the Giving Green Fund. ClearPath has 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities. As Giving Green is part of IDinsight, which is itself a charitable, tax-exempt organization, we are only offering an opinion on the charitable activities of ClearPath’s 501(c)(3) arm, and not on ClearPath’s 501(c)(4) entity. This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

At Giving Green, we research opportunities for high-impact climate giving. This document lays out our process for finding these opportunities in 2022. 2022 updates to Giving Green's approach and recommendations // BACK This report was last updated in November 2022. Contents Summary What we’ve accomplished and learned Our theory of change Organizational theory of change Research prioritization Our research process Updates to our process and products Our 2022 recommendations Top recommendations Re-evaluation of previous US policy recommendations Re-recommendation: Clean Air Task Force Re-recommendation: Evergreen Collaborative No longer recommending: Carbon180 New top recommendations Food systems: The Good Food Institute Nuclear energy: Good Energy Collective Decarbonizing heavy industry: Industrious Labs Our recommendations for businesses Key uncertainties and plans to address them Our plans for 2023 Appendix Additional uncertainties Summary What we’ve accomplished and learned: Since our 2020 launch, we conducted broad reviews on 20 climate change approaches and published 10 giving recommendations. We estimate we’ve directed around $3.6M to these recommendations. We’ve made some mistakes along the way and have continually refined our research approach and model. Our theory of change: At a high level, Giving Green’s theory of change follows a five-step process. We produce high-quality recommendations, supporters make donations based on these recommendations, and recommended organizations increase their activities. These activities remove or avoid atmospheric GHG, which subsequently reduces human suffering due to climate change. We think there are two ways our research and recommendations can be especially impactful: (1) Direct funding to highly cost-effective giving opportunities and (2) in high-interest giving areas, reallocate funding from low-impact opportunities to higher-impact opportunities. We think directing funding to highly cost-effective giving opportunities is the most important research Giving Green can focus on, since it’s our impression that these organizations are able to do substantially more with each dollar than some of the most well-known philanthropic opportunities. Our research process: Over the past year, we estimate we spent around 6,000 hours searching for, identifying, evaluating, and publishing research on our recommendations. To identify our 2022 top recommendations, we conducted a broad assessment of the climate philanthropy landscape, identified promising strategies, developed a longlist of organizations working on each strategy, conducted “shallow dive” and subsequent “deep dive” research on a subset of these organizations, and published recommendations. For our recommendations targeted to businesses, we followed a similar process that included user research to ensure our recommendations would be applicable to business-specific criteria and preferences. Updates to our process and products: In addition to thinking about what we should research, we’re also continually making efforts to improve how we conduct and communicate our research. Our improvements focus on two guiding principles: increasing the quality and increasing the transparency of our research. Updates include: formalizing our theory of change and research prioritization; publishing mistakes we’ve made; increasing our reasoning transparency; increasing public-facing research; and expanding citations. We plan to focus more on this in the years to come. Our 2022 top recommendations: We think our top recommendations are the most important way we can have impact. Though there is inherent uncertainty in assessing and comparing the cost-effectiveness of many of these funding opportunities, we believe these recommendations represent organizations and initiatives that can be highly effective with additional philanthropic funding. They include a re-analysis of our previous recommendations, as well as new recommendations focused on food systems, nuclear energy, and decarbonizing heavy industry. Our 2022 top recommendations are Clean Air Task Force, Evergreen Collaborative, The Good Food Institute, Good Energy Collective, and Industrious Labs. Our recommendations for businesses: In order of priority, we recommend businesses (a) consider cost-effective opportunities to directly reduce their own emissions, (b) donate to our top recommendations, (c) donate to carbon removal funds, and (d) purchase high-quality carbon removal or offset credits. Our specific recommendations for businesses include making catalytic investments in carbon removal though the Frontier or Milkywire funds; buying carbon removal from Mash Makes, Charm Industrial, or Climeworks; or buying high-quality carbon offsets from Tradewater or BURN. Key uncertainties and plans to address them: We aim to be highly transparent about the uncertainties we have in our approach and research. Some of our key overall uncertainties include: whether there is a better way to define and target human suffering due to climate change; how we should think about climate impact today versus tomorrow; and within our top recommendations, identifying the most cost-effective giving opportunity. Our plans for 2023: We look forward to continuing to engage with the broader climate community to learn and share in the year ahead. As always, we will remain focused on our mission to reduce human suffering due to climate change. Though we will remain flexible and may revise plans, our current top priorities include: executing our plans to address key uncertainties, publishing an annual report, publishing additional information on earlier-stage climate landscape research, expanding research into new topics, and continuing to generally improve the quality and usefulness of our work. What we’ve accomplished and learned Since Giving Green officially launched in 2020, we’ve been busy. Over the past two years, we conducted broad reviews on 20 climate change approaches to educate ourselves and our readers, as well as provide direction for our recommendations research.[ 1 ] We published 10 giving recommendations, including overall top recommendations (at the time, US policy change), recommendations for donors restricted to Australia opportunities, and carbon offsets/removal recommendations for businesses with net-zero goals.[ 2 ] We estimate we’ve directed around $3.6M to these recommendations, with around 90% going to our top recommendations.[ 3 ] We also did some light research to provide high-level guidance to investors.[ 4 ] Over this time, we’ve continually refined our research approach and model (see Our theory of change ). We’ve also made some mistakes . We’ve grown from a two- to six-person team, benefited from collaboration and engagement with a broad suite of stakeholders in the climate change space, and know that there’s plenty more work to be done. Below, we’re pleased to share our latest thinking on our approach to reducing climate change, our 2022 recommendations, our key uncertainties, and our plans for 2023 and beyond. Our theory of change Organizational theory of change Giving Green’s mission is to direct donors to highly impactful opportunities to reduce human suffering due to climate change. However, we don’t have a formalized definition of what human suffering means in practice, since it’s hard to define and measure, and is generally open to interpretation. As a proxy, we use greenhouse gas (GHG) atmospheric levels as our outcome of interest. We think this is a useful proxy because it’s easily measurable and, we think, generally leads us to the same conclusions we would’ve made if we tried to directly focus on reducing human suffering due to climate change. However, we’re uncertain about this and plan to explore ways in which we might improve this proxy (see Key Uncertainties and plans to address them ). At a high level, Giving Green’s theory of change follows a five-step process. We produce high-quality recommendations, supporters make donations based on these recommendations, and recommended organizations increase their activities. These activities remove or avoid atmospheric GHG, which subsequently reduces human suffering due to climate change. See Figure 1 for a high-level illustration. Figure 1. Giving Green organizational theory of change Research prioritization So what does our theory of change imply for how we should prioritize our research, given limited research capacity? We think there are two ways our research and recommendations can be especially impactful: (1) Direct funding to highly cost-effective giving opportunities and (2) in high-interest giving areas, reallocate funding from low-impact opportunities to higher-impact opportunities. We think directing funding to highly cost-effective giving opportunities is the most important research Giving Green can focus on, since it’s our impression that these organizations are able to do substantially more with each dollar than some of the most well-known philanthropic opportunities. These are our “ top recommendations ,” summarized below. Since high-interest areas attract substantial attention and financing, we also think focusing on these areas can have a positive impact. Our current high-interest research includes: carbon removal opportunities for businesses, carbon offsets for businesses, and Australia-specific recommendations.[ 5 ] For both our top recommendations and high-interest areas, we think donors sometimes have restrictions or self-imposed preferences that cause them to give less (overall and/or to specific initiatives) than they would otherwise give. For example, a business with net-zero goals might donate $10,000 to our Frontier carbon removal recommendation , but would never donate to our US policy recommendations due to fears of being perceived by customers as political or partisan. An Australia-based donor may be more likely to give to Australian nonprofits for tax-deductibility reasons. We also consider this when prioritizing some research areas above others. We’re uncertain about the tradeoffs we make when deciding how to prioritize research (see Appendix: Additional uncertainties ). We plan to reassess our approach in 2023 to ensure our research capacity is focused on where we can have the most impact. Our research process Over the past year, we estimate we spent around 6,000 hours searching for, identifying, evaluating, and publishing research on our recommendations.[ 6 ] To identify our 2022 top recommendations , we followed a six-step process, illustrated and detailed below. Assess philanthropy landscape: Before considering specific interventions or organizations, we created a list of potential climate solutions (e.g., geothermal energy, buildings, heavy industry). We then filtered this list by solutions that might be overlooked, underfunded, and/or generally promising.[ 7 ] Identify promising strategies: Within this list, we conducted desk research to further prioritize philanthropic strategies. We used the “Importance, Tractability, and Neglectedness” framework to roughly evaluate different strategies.[ 8 ] From this exercise, we created a shortlist of high-priority philanthropic strategies for further research.[ 9 ] Organization longlist: For each shortlisted philanthropic strategy, we developed a longlist of organizations working in this space that appeared to be generally well-regarded and have the capacity to effectively absorb additional funding. Organization shallow dive: For a subset of the most promising organizations, we conducted “shallow dive” research. Shallow dives focus on understanding an organization’s general level of promise across Giving Green criteria (e.g., evidence of effectiveness) and topic-specific criteria (e.g., alignment with strategy-specific theory of change). At this stage, a priority focus is identifying any reasons an organization may ultimately not be a strong fit (e.g., limited room for more funding). Organization deep dive: For organizations with promising shallow dives, we conducted “deep dives” to thoroughly examine specific giving opportunities. A deep dive includes developing an organizational theory of change, assessing whether we believe the theory of change is likely to hold, conducting a cost-effectiveness analysis, assessing room for more funding, considering any major co-benefits or adverse effects, and making a final recommendation decision. Publish recommendations and conduct outreach: Based on our deep dives, we published shorter recommendation write-ups and conducted outreach to Giving Green donors, media outlets, and our partners in the climate change community to maximize the impact of our research. At each step of this process, we make prioritization and deprioritization decisions so that we can continually reallocate our limited research capacity to the most promising opportunities. We sometimes also jump to later steps (e.g., to check whether funding opportunities actually exist within an effort), before going back to determine whether we think we can generally be impactful in a specific space in the philanthropy landscape. For our recommendations targeted to businesses , we followed a process that was similar in spirit but involved different steps. We began by conducting user research, which informed the basis of our multi-pronged business strategy. In this process, we determined that three sets of recommendations were likely most useful for businesses: funds for catalytic carbon removal, carbon removal purchases, and carbon offset purchases. Within each of these categories, we determined the most promising sectors, created shortlists of promising initiatives in those sectors, and wrote detailed recommendations for those we believe are most cost-effective. Updates to our process and products In addition to thinking about what we should research, we’re also continually making efforts to improve how we conduct and communicate our research. Our improvements focus on two guiding principles: increasing the quality and increasing the transparency of our research. They’re also more generally informed by our values (truth-seeking, humility, transparency, collaboration), which we developed earlier this year. See below for a few examples of changes we’ve made: Formalized theory of change and research prioritization (see above): We had previously developed a high-level internal theory of change and loosely discussed it in some forums.[ 10 ] Our latest theory of change provides us with a more detailed and transparent way to assess whether and how we are reducing human suffering due to climate change. Published our mistakes: As a cornerstone to embodying our values of humility and transparency, we now have a web page devoted to sharing what we believe are substantial mistakes we’ve made along our journey. This decision was inspired by several other organizations in the Effective Altruism movement, and we hope this page helps us reflect openly about ways we can continue to improve our work.[ 11 ] Increased reasoning transparency: Since challenges and opportunities in the climate change space can be especially uncertain and complicated, we think it’s essential that we practice high reasoning transparency.[ 12 ] Our increased focus on this is hard to quantify or explicitly identify, but includes: top-line summaries, increased emphasis on decision-relevant information, stating Giving Green’s level of confidence in our assessments, and additional explanation of how we rely on and interpret different pieces of evidence we use. Increased public-facing research: As outlined in our research process, we conduct a substantial amount of back-end research on potentially promising climate efforts and organizations that we ultimately decide to deprioritize due to limited research capacity. As of November 2022, we intend to publish 15 shallow dive reports summarizing preliminary assessments of promising organizations working on nuclear, food emissions, and decarbonizing heavy industry.[ 13 ] These are especially uncertain analyses, but we’re committed to openly sharing to (a) open ourselves to critiques and feedback that might update our thinking and (b) provide a public good for others in the climate change space to build off of when conducting their own research. In 2023, we’re planning to publish more information on our earlier-stage landscape analysis and climate strategy prioritization (see Our plans for 2023 ). Expanded citations: Previously, we’d included bibliographies and some in-line links in our reports. We now include endnote citations for all information we cite, so that readers can more easily follow our reasoning and learn more. We know there’s much more we can do to continually improve our process and products, and plan to focus more on this in the years to come (see Our plans for 2023 ). Our 2022 recommendations Top recommendations We think our top recommendations are the most important way we can have impact. Though there is inherent uncertainty in assessing and comparing the cost-effectiveness of many of these funding opportunities, we believe these recommendations represent organizations and initiatives that can be highly effective with additional philanthropic funding. Re-evaluation of previous US policy recommendations Historically, we focused our limited research capacity on US policy recommendations.[ 14 ] We re-evaluated these recommendations primarily based on (a) a shifting opportunity landscape, (b) a shifting political landscape, and (c) organization-specific changes. For past recommendations focused on passing US federal policy, we also specifically re-evaluated whether and how these organizations planned to shift strategies in light of the recent passing of the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.[ 15 ] Given the high likelihood that the Republican party would regain control of the House in the November 2022 midterm elections, we placed additional emphasis on organizations that could continue to be successful without a Democratic trifecta.[ 16 ] For organization-specific changes, we paid close attention to criteria that might’ve changed over the past year, such as whether an organization’s success may have crowded in additional funding and reduced its overall room for more funding. Re-recommendation: Clean Air Task Force Giving Green classifies Clean Air Task Force (CATF) as one of our top recommendations to reduce climate change. CATF is a nonprofit that advocates for public policies that (1) invest in climate-protecting technologies (e.g., low-emission energy sources), (2) curb fossil fuel emissions, or (3) enact pollution regulations. Although it continues to lead on US policy advocacy, it has also scaled its work on technology innovation and commercialization to a global level. We recommend Clean Air Task Force (CATF) because of its strong track record of policy accomplishments at the national level (including policies with bipartisan support), its growing international model, its focus on relatively neglected issue areas, the strength of its staff, and its ability to productively absorb additional funds in coming years. We previously recommended CATF in 2021 and 2020. For more information, see our Clean Air Task Force deep dive research report and Clean AIr Task Force rcommendation summary . Re-recommendation: Evergreen Collaborative Giving Green classifies Evergreen Collaborative as one of our top recommendations to reduce climate change. Evergreen Collaborative is a left-of-center insider policy advocacy group that was founded by former staffers of Washington State Governor Jay Inslee’s 2020 presidential campaign. Since its founding, Evergreen has focused its efforts on supporting policies that aim to power the economy with 100% clean energy, invest in jobs, support environmental justice, transition the US from fossil fuels, and influence US leadership to confront climate change. We first recommended Evergreen Collaborative in 2021, and focused our initial analysis on its federal legislative work. Evergreen successfully advocated for many initiatives that were included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) such as clean energy tax credits, the green bank, and environmental justice block grants. Following the passage of the IRA, Evergreen Collaborative is now planning to work on bill implementation, state-level policy, and influencing the Biden Administration and federal agencies to take further action on climate. We think Evergreen Collaborative will be impactful in these areas, given its track record of success, organizational strengths, strategic approach, and emphasis on aligning its work to what is most politically tractable. For more information, see our Evergreen Collaborative deep dive research report and Evergreen Collaborative recommendation summary . No longer recommending: Carbon180 Based on our re-evaluation, we decided to no longer include Carbon180 as a top recommendation. Our assessment is that Carbon180 has been highly effective in advancing its mission and securing additional funding, which suggests marginal donations may be less cost-effective relative to our other recommendations. Our impression is that carbon removal, in general, has also gained substantial philanthropic attention over the past year, and we believe it will continue to be a major focus of climate donors. In particular, we think the recent passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act increased the visibility of and financial support for carbon removal projects, and may pave the way for additional philanthropic support for carbon removal advocacy. We could be wrong if Carbon180 has longer-term room for more funding, recent carbon removal policy support increases the leverage of philanthropic dollars, or carbon removal becomes less of a philanthropic and government focus in the years to come. We plan to continue to monitor this, and are looking forward to following Carbon180’s progress. For more information, see our Carbon180 deep dive research report . New top recommendations Thanks to additional research capacity, we also expanded our recommendations to include new efforts we view to be especially promising: food systems, nuclear energy, and decarbonizing heavy industry. In general, these recommendations continue to focus on two overlapping strategies we consider to be highly cost-effective: policy advocacy and technology. In cases where these recommendations have a geographic focus, we assessed whether these efforts might result in global impact, e.g. by developing model regulation that could be replicated elsewhere or advancing technology that could be scaled worldwide. Food systems: The Good Food Institute Giving Green classifies the Good Food Institute (GFI) as one of our top recommendations to reduce climate change. Currently, livestock emissions play an outsized role in food emissions and are expected to increase in the future. Our take is that shifting demand from carbon-intensive conventional meat to alternative proteins (APs), such as plant-based and cultivated meat, could lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. GFI is a nonprofit that seeks to make APs competitive with conventional meat in terms of price and taste.[ 17 ] It supports AP development through scientific research, policy advocacy, and corporate engagement in the US and abroad. We recommend GFI based on its accomplishments, organizational strengths, strategic approach, and cost-effectiveness. We believe GFI has substantial room to grow in its three programmatic areas and across its various offices, and that it will increase the likelihood of alternative proteins going mainstream. Since AP production is still in its early stages, we plan to continue to monitor APs’ climate impact and look forward to following GFI’s efforts in this space. For more information, see our Good Food Institute deep dive research report and Good Food Institute recommendation summary . Nuclear energy: Good Energy Collective Giving Green classifies Good Energy Collective (GEC) as one of our top recommendations to reduce climate change. GEC is a policy research organization that supports “advanced” nuclear reactors, which are designed to be safer, cheaper, and more versatile than traditional reactors. Nuclear power can decrease greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions if it replaces or avoids dirtier energy sources. For example, it can reduce emissions by complementing renewables because, unlike wind and solar power, nuclear power can produce steady electricity regardless of seasonal or environmental factors. GEC advocates for progressive US policies that support equitable advanced reactor deployment, and engages with local communities to ensure there’s broad support for advanced nuclear. We believe GEC fills a neglected niche in increasing advanced reactor deployment, and that it can effectively absorb additional funding. Although GEC primarily focuses on the US, it also has an international diplomacy workstream. We believe its work could have global implications if scaled advanced nuclear power in the US gives other countries the policies, technology, and/or general confidence to also make advanced nuclear part of their clean energy portfolio. We believe GEC has substantial growth potential and that with increased funds, GEC could become more effective by adding staff and scaling its community engagement efforts. For more information, see our Good Energy Collective deep dive research report and Good Energy Collective recommendation summary . Decarbonizing heavy industry: Industrious Labs Heavy industries like steel and cement are the literal building blocks of the global economy. They account for around one-third of greenhouse gas emissions, but have not been a major focus of governments or philanthropists. Industrious Labs is a new organization dedicated to decarbonizing global heavy industry. In collaboration with partner organizations, Industrious Labs advocates to corporations to make low-carbon commitments, and applies legal and political pressure to governments to ensure there’s regulation and public funding to speed up the transition. As a new organization, Industrious Labs has a limited track record but big ambitions. We are excited about its potential for impact because it is focused on a highly neglected area, its leadership has a track record of success, and we think its comprehensive industry-specific strategies will pull on the right levers to drive industry’s transition. We also think Industrious Labs has substantial growth potential. It is building dedicated teams for each of its industry-specific campaigns, and there is considerable room to deepen existing campaigns and add new sectors. For more information, see our Industrious Labs deep dive research report and Industrious Labs recommendation summary . Our recommendations for businesses Businesses are increasingly interested in determining how they can reduce climate change.[ 18 ] However, businesses often have unique giving criteria (e.g., they may have net-zero goals or avoid donations that could be interpreted as partisan). In considering how businesses fit into our organizational theory of change (see above), we believe there is an opportunity to help businesses re-allocate funding from low-impact opportunities to higher-impact opportunities. We wrote a white paper and accompanying summary blog post outlining various high-impact corporate climate strategies that businesses can adopt, either through making investments in decarbonizing their own operations or donating to impactful organizations. In order of priority, we recommend businesses (a) consider cost-effective opportunities to directly reduce their own emissions, (b) donate to our top recommendations (see above), (c) donate to carbon removal funds, and (d) purchase high-quality carbon removal or offset credits. Our specific recommendations for businesses include making catalytic investments in carbon removal though the Frontier or Milkywire funds; buying carbon removal from Mash Makes , Charm Industrial , or Climeworks ; or buying high-quality carbon offsets from Tradewater or BURN . Key uncertainties and plans to address them We aim to be highly transparent about the uncertainties we have in our approach and research. Below, we highlight some of our key overall uncertainties, as well as ways in which we might reduce these uncertainties in 2023. For additional organizational uncertainties, see Appendix . For uncertainties specific to sectors and organizations, we list these within our “deep dive” research reports. Is there a better way to define and target human suffering due to climate change? Uncertainty: We currently use atmospheric GHG levels as a rough proxy for human suffering due to climate change. We think this is an imperfect indicator, but is relatively easy to objectively define, measure, and understand. There may, however, be ways to improve the accuracy of this proxy. For example, we might consider using climate damage functions or general estimates of the social cost of carbon.[ 19 ] Other climate change organizations compare funding opportunities based on broader outcomes (e.g., Founders Pledge focuses on “climate damage”), which gives us some confidence we may be able to better define and use our actual outcome of interest when making recommendation decisions.[ 20 ] Plan: We plan to consider ways in which we might better define our outcome of interest as part of our uncertainty regarding how we should think about climate impact today versus tomorrow (see below). How should we think about climate impact today versus tomorrow? Uncertainty: Currently, we don’t have a well-developed process for comparing the tradeoffs between current and future climate mitigation opportunities, as well as climate suffering. This is especially relevant when comparing funding opportunities targeting (a) short-lived climate pollutants versus (longer-lived) CO2 (e.g., comparing methane reductions attributable to the Good Food Institute to CO2 reductions attributable to Good Energy Collective) and (b) near-term GHG reductions versus expected future GHG reductions (e.g., business opportunities to purchase carbon removal credits today versus donating to Frontier’s advance market commitment ).[ 21 ] In our cost-effectiveness analyses, we also use a global warming potential of 100 years, which (though widely used) implicitly overweights GHG that have substantial impact within a 100-year period (e.g., refrigerants ).[ 22 ] As an initial attempt to explore part of this uncertainty, we wrote a preliminary short-lived climate pollutants report in April 2022, which we think is fairly simplistic and doesn’t take into account some new evidence.[ 23 ] We also don’t currently include a formal discount rate for future removed/avoided tCO2e. This may not actually be the best approach if, for example, we think it’s more important to reduce GHG atmospheric levels as soon as possible to avoid tipping elements.[ 24 ] On the other hand, reducing GHG atmospheric levels in a long-term worst-case scenario may actually be more important if we’re trying to avoid a scenario of going from 3 degrees to 4 degrees warming, which we think is likely to cause more human suffering than going from 2 degrees to 3 degrees of warming.[ 25 ] Overall, we currently make many qualitative implicit judgment calls on climate impact today versus tomorrow. Plan: We plan to make additional progress on this, but don’t expect to comprehensively formalize our thinking for two reasons. First, we think the majority of funding opportunities we investigate focus on relatively similar climate change reduction timelines. Second, it’s our impression that there is so much uncertainty regarding longer-term climate forecasts that it could be relatively intractable to have a higher-confidence opinion than we currently have. However, we plan to spend some additional time collecting our thoughts on this in 2023, including making updates to our short-lived climate pollutants report, better understanding the latest evidence on tipping elements, and improving our assessment of the relative neglectedness of different climate change scenarios. Within our top recommendations, what is the most cost-effective giving opportunity? Uncertainty: We currently have five top recommendations, and think some of these recommendations are probably more cost-effective than others. However, we’re uncertain about the specific cost-effectiveness of each recommendation and, thus, which recommendation is technically the most cost-effective giving opportunity. Plan: We think it’s unlikely we’d make so much progress on this that we would be able to recommend a single giving opportunity above others. Our current recommendations represent a range of giving opportunities that we think generally have similar levels of cost-effectiveness within a range of uncertainty.[ 26 ] Though some of this uncertainty is inherent to the types of recommendations we make (e.g., it is extremely difficult to understand what impact Clean Air Task Force had on the Global Methane Pledge), we plan to explore more ways to reduce relative uncertainty. For example, we may try to improve the rigor with which we compare the credibility of theories of change and/or improve our cost-effectiveness analyses.[ 27 ] Our plans for 2023 We look forward to continuing to engage with the broader climate community to learn and share in the year ahead. As always, we will remain focused on our mission to reduce human suffering due to climate change. We’ve outlined below what we think are the most important plans to execute for 2023 to advance this goal, though we will continue to remain flexible and revise priorities, accordingly. Execute plans to address key uncertainties (see above, as well as Appendix ). Publish an annual report, including an assessment of Giving Green’s operational expenses, money moved, and tCO2e removed/avoided so that we can increase our transparency on how we’re estimating Giving Green’s impact. Publish additional information on our earlier-stage landscape analysis and climate strategy prioritization. We may publish write-ups on our overall process, additional details on our methodology/reasoning, and/or lists of considered topics. Continue to expand the breadth of Giving Green’s research. For example, we may look into supply-side interventions (e.g., restricting fossil fuel financing), opportunities to support countries expected to be major future GHG emitters (e.g., India), and initiatives that are more exclusively applicable to worser-case scenarios. Expand our Australia research and outreach. Our focus on Australia has been made possible by restricted funding. We think Australia provides an exciting potential opportunity because (a) we think we can maximize donations from Australians by providing Australia-specific recommendations and (b) Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter, so there may generally be highly cost-effective giving opportunities that have a global impact. To date, our focus on Australia has been relatively capacity-constrained. In 2023, we are working with in-country partners who will hire and manage a full-time Australia coordinator to manage this workstream and more comprehensively test our hypothesis of Australia’s promisingness as an impactful audience for Giving Green. Investments: To date, we’ve made some shallow dive assessments on investment opportunities. The extent to which we focus on this work in 2023 will be influenced by funding. We may make light-touch updates to these assessments, though we are generally uncertain about (a) the impact of this analysis and (b) our relative value-add compared to others focused on climate change investments. Continue to generally improve the quality and usefulness of our work. If you have feedback, let us know! Appendix Additional uncertainties Where should we allocate our limited research capacity? Uncertainty: We have limited research capacity, and aren’t certain where it makes sense to allocate our research time. This depends on (a) how much financing we can influence in a given space and (b) how many tCO2e can be removed or avoided due to that financing. For example, we estimate our top recommendations avoid roughly one tCO2e per dollar donated. By contrast, we estimate a one-ton offset purchase via Tradewater costs around $17. As a rough heuristic, it might make sense to focus more research capacity on high-quality offset recommendations if we believe we can influence more than 17 times as much money as for our top recommendations. Plan: We don’t think it’s useful to try to improve a direct quantitative comparison such as the one above, as there are other factors that are difficult to quantify. For example: the marginal impact of an additional recommendation in the same sector (e.g., decarbonizing heavy industry ), the longer-term cost-effectiveness of early-stage funding for relatively expensive initiatives (e.g., direct air capture ), or the potential longer-term upside of reaching a broader audience by researching high-interest topics (e.g., forestry offsets ). However, we plan to more generally consider heuristics and guiding principles for how we allocate research capacity, which we hope will allow us to be more thoughtful and transparent about how we allocate research capacity. In mid-2023, we expect to make deliberate decisions about how much to focus on top recommendations versus other expectations for the 2023 giving season. What is Giving Green’s marginal value add? Uncertainty: Currently, we use money directed as a rough proxy for our impact. However, this doesn’t clearly (a) explain how we estimate, in the absence of Giving Green, the counterfactual impact of money influenced by Giving Green and (b) estimate the ultimate tCO2e removed/avoided. Plan: In 2023, we plan to publish an annual report that details how we estimate our marginal impact, estimates of pessimistic/optimistic/best guess impact scenarios, as well as provide an estimate of tCO2e removed/avoided due to Giving Green. Endnotes [1] Rough estimate, calculated by reviewing topics listed under Giving Green’s “Research” dropdown menu as of 2022-10. See US Policy Change | Giving Green's Research ; Australian Policy Change ; Carbon Offsets & Removals | Giving Green's Research ; Investments | Giving Green's Research . [ 2 ] See Recommendations | Where to Give | Giving Green for a current list of our recommendations. [3] To estimate the influence of our recommendations, we gather information from a few different sources: recommended organizations (e.g., Clean Air Task Force), donation platforms that use our advice (e.g., Sweden’s Ge Effektivt), and donors, themselves. We then estimate how much of the donation is directly attributable to Giving Green (i.e., how much of the donation would have occurred in the absence of Giving Green). We also make pessimistic and optimistic guesses, which currently give us a range of $1.3M-$4.9M. In 2023, we plan to publish our first annual report, which will outline our methodology and estimates in more detail (see What’s next). [4] See Investments | Giving Green's Research . [ 5 ] See Appendix: Additional uncertainties for additional commentary on why we view these research areas to be high-interest, and why we might be wrong about allocating limited research capacity to these topics. [ 6 ] This is roughly based on 2.5 FTE from January through May 2022, and 4.5 FTE from June to mid-November 2022. Calculation: ((2.5*5)+(4.5*6.5))*148 [hours per month] = 6,179. [ 7 ] This list, in various forms, has been in development since Giving Green’s inception. However, its 2022 refinement was primarily split into three stages: development (January - May 2022); filtering (June 2022, including an all-staff retreat); prioritization (June - September 2022). We developed this list via both quantitative and qualitative means. For example, we used Project Drawdown’s solutions list and roughly calculated potential cost-effectiveness based on net first costs to implement the solution and potential tCO2e avoided in different climate scenarios. We also added solutions based on overview documents (e.g., government decarbonization strategies ) and emerging evidence (e.g., feasibility assessments ). We also relied on interviews with key climate stakeholders, including philanthropists, researchers, and policy experts. As part of our expected 2023 updates, we plan to publish a longer list of potential climate solutions we have considered, or may consider in the future. [ 8 ] For a fuller explanation of this framework, see ITN framework - EA Forum . This framework is a commonly-used approach to evaluate which issue areas to work on across a variety of domains, particularly among those using Effective Altruism methods. [9] This process happened concurrently with our assessment of the philanthropy landscape. For example, our philanthropy landscape assessment flagged nuclear policy as a potential climate solution, and our promising strategy identification highlighted the potential importance of advanced nuclear policy advocacy. Our 2022 refinement was primarily split into three stages: development (January - May 2022); filtering (June 2022, including an all-staff retreat); prioritization (June - September 2022). As part of our expected 2023 updates, we plan to publish a longer list of potential climate solutions we have considered, or may consider in the future. [ 10 ] For example, see Climate Recommendations in EA: Giving Green and Founders Pledge . [ 11 ] For example, see Our Mistakes | GiveWell and Our mistakes - 80,000 Hours . [ 12 ] For more on reasoning transparency, see Open Philanthropy: Reasoning Transparency (2017) . [ 13 ] These shallow dives include research on organizations working in food sector emissions , decarbonizing heavy industry , and nuclear power . [ 14 ] For example, see Giving Green's Approach to Policy Change Recommendations (Wayback Internet Archive 2022-11-01) . [ 15 ] This is primarily based on 10+ conversations with policy stakeholders, among whom there was broad consensus that no major climate change legislation will pass until 2025 at the earliest; Inflation Reduction Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5376/text ; Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684/text . [16] Our assessment of whether an organization could continue to be successful was based on a mix of quantitative and qualitative analysis. We conducted interviews with experts (including politicians, political staff, and climate philanthropists), used proxies (e.g., whether the organization participates in a coalition self-identifying as bipartisan), and assigned scores to organizations’ bipartisan engagement. To assess the likelihood of no Democratic trifecta, we primarily relied on FiveThirtyEight 2022 election forecasts . Though likelihoods varied over time, forecasts have consistently predicted that Democrats would lose the trifecta. For example, a 2022-11-01 forecast (Wayback Internet Archive) estimated an 18% chance that Democrats win both chambers. [ 17 ] GFI has 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities. As Giving Green is part of IDinsight, which is itself a charitable, tax-exempt organization, we are only offering an opinion on the charitable activities of GFI’s 501(c)(3) arm, and not on GFI’s 501(c)(4) entity. [ 18 ] For example, a 2021 McKinsey report found that the number of corporate net-zero commitments doubled between 2019 and 2020, and estimated that the carbon credit market could increase by a factor of 15 by 2030 to around $50 billion. For additional information, see McKinsey: A blueprint for scaling voluntary carbon markets to meet the climate challenge, 2021 . [19] For example, Diaz and Moore 2017 summarizes climate damage modeling approaches and their limitations. Halstead’s 2022 “ Climate Change & Longtermism: new book-length report ” includes a review of evidence estimating the social cost of carbon. [20] “This leads to what might be a surprising conclusion -- the goal of high-impact climate philanthropy is not to maximize emissions reductions but to minimize climate damage.” Navigating the changing landscape of climate philanthropy | Founders Pledge . [21] “[Short-lived climate pollutants] persist for a short time in the atmosphere but can be extremely potent in terms of their global warming potential compared to long-lasting greenhouse gases such as CO2.” World Bank: Short-Lived Climate Pollutants, 2014 . [22] “The Global Warming Potential (GWP) was developed to allow comparisons of the global warming impacts of different gases. Specifically, it is a measure of how much energy the emissions of 1 ton of a gas will absorb over a given period of time, relative to the emissions of 1 ton of carbon dioxide (CO2). The larger the GWP, the more that a given gas warms the Earth compared to CO2 over that time period. The time period usually used for GWPs is 100 years.” Understanding Global Warming Potentials | US EPA . “The time period usually used for GWPs is 100 years” Understanding Global Warming Potentials | US EPA . For additional information on refrigerants, see our refrigerants report . [23] For example, it doesn’t take into account emerging evidence on “tipping elements” (e.g., McKay et al 2022 ) or how reducing short-term warming could “bend the curve” on longer-term warming (e.g., Carmichael et al 2013 ). [24] For example, McKay et al 2022 suggests that some tippling elements may be likely to occur within relatively low temperature increases. We haven’t investigated this literature in detail, and it’s our understanding that the exact likelihood and expected damage of tipping elements is highly debated. “Current global warming of ~1.1°C above pre-industrial already lies within the lower end of five [climate tipping point] uncertainty ranges.” McKay et al 2022 . [25] For more on probabilities of temperature increases, see Raftery et al 2017 , Figure 3. [26] As a heuristic, we consider something to plausibly be within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider for a top recommendation if its estimated cost-effectiveness is within an order of magnitude of $1/tCO2e (i.e., less than $10/tCO2e). [27] Examples of ways we might try to improve our CEAs: conduct higher-quality sensitivity checks; include (better) leverage and funging estimates (for an explanation of these terms, see: Revisiting leverage - The GiveWell Blog ); improve the precision/accuracy with which we estimate policy advocacy influence.

Giving Green recommends Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio as one of the top donation opportunities for businesses. Milkywire // BACK Milkywire’s Carbon Removal Portfolio This report was last updated in November 2022. Giving Green believes that donating to our top recommended nonprofits is likely to be the most impactful giving strategy for supporting climate action. However, we recognize that contributing to policy advocacy (as most of these nonprofits do) may not be tenable for all donors, especially businesses. Taking this into consideration, we recommend Milkywire specifically for businesses given its focus on carbon removal and more direct alignment with corporate net-zero ambitions. We believe Milkywire to be a high-impact option, but we are unsure of the extent to which its cost-effectiveness approaches that of our top nonprofits. Summary Overview of Milkywire Theory of Change Additionality Co-Benefits Cost-Effectiveness Room for more funding Key uncertainties/open questions Conclusion How to contribute to Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio Summary Giving Green recommends Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio as one of the top donation opportunities for businesses. Climate models indicate that emissions reductions alone may not be adequate to mitigate climate change; studies by the IPCC demonstrate a need for carbon removal to grow to the gigaton (billions of tons) scale by 2050 in order to limit warming to 2°C. The carbon removal sector is in its early stages, both in terms of technological readiness as well as supply; available carbon removal supply is too expensive to create broad demand. Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio provides a widely accessible, catalytic investment opportunity to enable future net-zero pledges by supporting the growth and development of carbon removal. Overview of Milkywire Milkywire is a platform [1] that hosts and manages the Climate Transformation Fund , a fund for businesses that consists of a portfolio of climate projects within three areas: restoring and protecting nature, carbon removal, and decarbonization. Given that Giving Green has developed a distinct set of recommendations for top climate nonprofits, we restrict our recommendation of Milkywire to the carbon removal portion of the Climate Transformation Fund. The fund is described as an “impact first approach… an alternative to traditional carbon offsetting solutions. ” [2] Klarna , a Swedish fintech company, has contributed $2.7 million to projects selected for the fund as part of its climate strategy . Other contributors include SilverLake, Pangaia, Wastebox and BioGaia. Projects in the carbon removal portion of the portfolio are assessed based on additionality, social and environmental sustainability, durability, scaling potential, and consideration for catalytic effect and co-benefits. [3] An independent advisory group consisting of experts in decarbonization solutions, equity issues, nature- and technology-based carbon removal solutions, and carbon markets provides feedback on the selection of projects; [4] Giving Green is part of this group. While the Milkywire team holds the decision-making power, it largely follows the guidance of the advisory group. [5] Milkywire chooses carbon removal projects with medium- to long-term durability (100-1000+ years). As a result, it includes pathways such as biochar in addition to more permanent technological carbon removal like DAC and mineralization. Carbon removal included in the fund’s first cycle (2021) consisted of two biochar projects – Mash Makes and HUSK , two direct air capture (DAC) projects – Climeworks and Heirloom , and the Carbon Removal ClimAccelerator , an initiative to help European carbon removal start ups. During the next cycle (2022), Silicate – a company using returned concrete to capture CO 2 , and Inter.Earth – a company that removes and stores carbon through biomass burial, will be added to the portfolio. Climeworks [6] and the Carbon Removal ClimAccelerator will no longer be included as these projects have a higher relative level of funding and consequently the impact of additional contributions is lower. Milkywire divides its support for carbon removal projects into two categories, which it describes as ‘research tons’ or ‘scale tons,’. Research tons support carbon removal projects that are in the earlier stages of the innovation cycle, while scale tons support projects that have been tested and are ready to grow supply. Milkywire releases an annual report to provide updates on the progress of projects within the portfolio as well as how funds have been spent. Our Take on Milkywire’s Theory of Change Climate models indicate that in order to limit warming to 2°C, emissions reductions alone may not suffice; reaching net-zero in the necessary timeframe will likely require gigaton-scale deployment of carbon removal by midcentury. [7] Carbon removal may be especially useful in balancing emissions from hard-to-abate sectors like aviation, shipping, and industry. [8] In addition, it is our impression that removing more carbon than we emit via net-negative goals may be a important strategy to curb future climate damage. This is a view shared by some members of the private sector, [9] government, [10] and scientific community, [11] and would only be made possible through the development and deployment of carbon removal. Carbon removal as a sector is quite varied both in terms of the types of pathways as well as the technological readiness of each pathway. In addition, not much carbon removal is available, [12] and that which is available is too expensive to create broad demand. In fact, we have only reached about 0.0062% of a projected 10 gigaton by 2050 deployment goal, and only around 4% of the carbon removal purchases ever made have been delivered. [13] Much of the carbon removal sector remains in the R&D phase, and projects that have higher technological maturity are still navigating economic viability and the logistics for deployment at scale. In short, the current market is young, small, [14] and relatively uncertain. As a reflection of this, Milkywire supports carbon removal through “research tons” or “scale tons,” depending on the technological readiness of a particular pathway or project. Through this approach, Milkywire aims to catalyze the development of carbon removal projects and pathways and enable carbon removal to become cheaper so that it can be scaled effectively as a climate mitigation tool. Milkywire is not prescriptive regarding the number of research vs scale tons for any given year; in this way it can remain agile and reflect the most current needs of the quickly evolving carbon removal market. Below, we discuss and evaluate each of the assumptions related to Milkywire’s theory of change. For each of the assumptions identified, we rank whether we have high , medium , or low certainty. [15] Importantly, a number of the stages of Milkywire’s theory of change are not amenable to easy measurement or quantification, or are expected to occur in the future but have not occurred as of yet. For each assumption, we assess whether the best available evidence, primary or secondary, suggests whether the assumption will plausibly hold or not. We have high certainty that Milkywire will help advance carbon removal research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) as it intentionally directs funds towards projects in earlier stages of innovation. We have medium certainty that Milkywire will catalyze more mature technologies to scale. While the fund will purchase scale tons to incentivize increased supply, these purchases are decided upon annually; we believe that longer-term demand certainty at this stage may be important for the timely scale-up of carbon removal deployment. We have low certainty regarding the extent to which Milkywire will influence the price trajectory of carbon removal. We believe the magnitude of Milkywire’s impact will depend on its ability to secure substantially more investment, how strategically the research tons are distributed to improve existing technologies, and the quantity of scale tons that are funded. Additionality Project-level additionality is satisfied if a project would not have happened without the sales of offsets. This requirement tends to be satisfied by projects run by non-profits who solely rely on offset revenue in order to operate. However, it can be very difficult to determine for projects with multiple revenue streams such as those undertaken by carbon removal companies. We have high confidence in Milkywire’s assessment of additionality in its process of selecting carbon removal projects. In terms of the larger carbon removal sector, we believe Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio to be additional in that we find it to be a uniquely accessible, catalytic investment opportunity for businesses. As far as we are aware, it is the only opportunity for businesses to contribute to both research and scale tons without requirements on the minimum size of the contribution or length of the contract. This is distinct from other aggregators of private sector investment for carbon removal such as Frontier (also recommended by Giving Green ), First Movers Coalition , and South Pole . Additionally, in contrast to Frontier, Milkywire’s medium to long term durability criteria enables the inclusion of a broader array of carbon removal pathways such as biochar into its portfolio. Co-Benefits Projects selected by Milkywire must demonstrate that they do not cause social or environmental harm. In addition, “projects are given a higher priority if they create benefits for people in poverty, or if they help ecosystems in other ways beyond storing more carbon.” [16] In order to ensure that this criteria is faithfully evaluated during the selection process, the advisory board includes experts in equity issues. Cost-Effectiveness We tried to develop a quantitative model for cost-effectiveness, but decided that it would not be useful given our high uncertainty regarding assumptions and estimates for parameters that we deem central to Milkywire’s theory of change. In particular, given that we are providing this recommendation in the specific context of a business looking to make an investment toward carbon removal, we believe that Milkywire is highly likely to be relatively cost-effective as we think that supporting its model of funding research and scale tons across pathways will have higher impact than purchasing tons from just one carbon removal project. We find the emphasis of catalytic investment over quantity of tons purchased to be a notable value-add considering the early stage of the carbon removal market at present. For reference on how we have attempted to account for catalytic potential, see our cost-effectiveness analysis model in the context of DAC . Room for more funding Investment in carbon removal remains orders of magnitude away from the trillions of dollars [17] needed to achieve and sustain gigaton-scale deployment by midcentury. [18] We have confidence that Milkywire is positioned to absorb more funding effectively by increasing support of selected carbon removal projects and/or expanding the list of selected projects. Key uncertainties/open questions We are uncertain to what extent, if any, the absence of longer-term purchase agreements will affect Milkywire’s impact on growing the carbon removal market. We are uncertain that the investment from Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio will result in sufficient reduction in cost and scaling of deployment to substantially contribute to climate change mitigation. Although we are aware that co-benefits are taken into account during the selection process, we are unsure to the extent to which they are weighted in the final decision making. Conclusion Setting net-zero and, eventually, net-negative goals are important, but we do not believe that they are achievable at present [19] given the current state of technology, infrastructure, systems, and policies in place today. Therefore, we think that supporting the change and advancement to make these goals possible is among the most effective ways to contribute directly to robust climate action and, when possible, should be favored over ton-ton accounting; investment in emerging yet valuable technologies like carbon removal is one such way to contribute. We believe that Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio provides a widely accessible catalytic investment opportunity to enable future net-zero pledges by supporting the growth and development of carbon removal. How to contribute to Milkywire’s carbon removal portfolio Given that Milkywire’s theory of change centers around spurring innovation in the carbon removal field and lowering prices for the future, it encourages businesses to contribute to its carbon removal portfolio outside of any net-zero framework. [20] Businesses will be able to contribute directly through a forthcoming direct link where credit card payments are accepted; for bank transfers email partnerships [at] milkywire [dot] com . We thank Robert Höglund, Climate Transformation Fund Manager at Milkywire, for a series of conversations that informed this document. Endnotes [1] Donations to Milkywire are distributed to projects through the WRLD Foundation , a registered nonprofit [2] “ An impact-first approach opens possibilities to support pioneering solutions.” https://www.milkywire.com/climate-transformation-fund [3] See Requirements and Criteria https://www.milkywire.com/giveone/climateinitiative-readmore [4] “ In the selection, we have worked with an advisory group to help us choose the most impactful and sustainable climate projects for the portfolio.” https://www.milkywire.com/giveone/climateinitiative-readmore [5] “ In the selection, we have worked with an advisory group to help us choose the most impactful and sustainable climate projects for the portfolio. Final decisions on chosen projects are made by Milkywire but the ambition is to follow the advisory group’s guidance as far as possible.” https://www.milkywire.com/giveone/climateinitiative-readmore [6] Giving Green recommends Climeworks as a carbon removal supplier; see here for our recommendation . [7] “All available studies require at least some kind of carbon dioxide removal to reach net zero; that is, there are no studies where absolute zero GHG or even CO2 emissions are reached by deep emissions reductions alone.” IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Chapter 3 [8] “ These difficult-to-decarbonize energy services include aviation…production of carbon-intensive structural materials such as steel and cement…To the extent that carbon remains involved in these services in the future, net-zero emissions will also entail active management of carbon.” Davis et al. 2018. [9] “ While the world will need to reach net zero, those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so.“ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-be-carbon-negative-by-2030/ [10] “I believe that it’s important for all the developed countries to talk about, not net zero, but about removing more carbon from the atmosphere than they are adding — net negative is what they need to talk about.” Minister Singh, IEA-COP26 Net Zero Summit [11] “The world will be net negative once removal exceeds emissions. If it takes us more than a decade or two to lower the level of CO2, we definitely will have overshot our targets and will need to maintain net negative emissions for decades into the future. Therefore, time is of the essence.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/feliciajackson/2021/08/30/net-zero-is-no-longer-enough--its-time-for-net-negative-policy-coherence-and-robust-esg/?sh=73c495c06a34 [12] “ There is an extremely limited supply of reliable, permanent carbon removal available, and what exists is extremely expensive.” Stanford Social Innovation Review. Racing to Net-Zero: A Captivating but Distant Ambition (2022) [13] As of August 30, 2022; see cdr.fyi for live updates. [14] “The market for durable carbon removal does not exist. Yet. What we have is a heterogenous space consisting of hundreds of companies with ideas on how to remove carbon.” https://roberthoglund.medium.com/the-carbon-removal-market-doesnt-exist-3e28b9ed14cc [15] We describe our certainty as low/medium/high to increase readability and avoid false precision. Since these terms can be interpreted differently, we use rough heuristics to define them as percentage likelihoods the assumption is, on average, correct. Low = 0-70%, medium = 70-90%, high = 90-100%. [16] “Sustainable from a social and local environmental perspective. The deployment of the project does not cause harm to people or local ecosystems…Projects are given a higher priority if they create benefits for people in poverty, or if they help ecosystems in other ways beyond storing more carbon.” https://www.milkywire.com/giveone/climateinitiative-readmore [17] “The carbon-removal market will probably need to reach $1 trillion a year, Ransohoff told me, a figure that places it well outside any company’s reach.” https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2022/04/big-tech-investment-carbon-removal/629545/ [18] “ The carbon-removal industry is tiny, with less than $5 million in revenue last year. That figure will need to reach about $1 trillion by midcentury, scientists say.” https://www.wsj.com/articles/carbon-removal-industry-draws-billions-to-fight-climate-change-11654640329 [19] “All available studies require at least some kind of carbon dioxide removal to reach net zero; that is, there are no studies where absolute zero GHG or even CO2 emissions are reached by deep emissions reductions alone.” IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Chapter 3 [20] Milkywire encourages donating to its wider Climate Transformation Fund as a first option, but accepts donations earmarked for carbon removal.

Securing America’s Future Energy // BACK

Why is decarbonizing heavy industry important, and are there opportunities for philanthropic donors to support this work? Read Giving Green's research. Decarbonizing Heavy Industry // BACK This report was last updated in October 2024. This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes. Download the report: Decarbonizing heavy industry .pdf Download PDF • 8.20MB Executive summary What is heavy industry? Heavy industry is a loosely defined term that generally applies to capital- and energy-intensive industries involving complex production processes, such as cement, steel, aluminum, and petrochemicals. Heavy industry accounts for around one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions but has historically been seen as a hard-to-decarbonize sector. Reasons for this include high heat requirements, decentralized CO2 emissions, low profit margins, high capital costs, increased operating costs, and long infrastructure lifetimes. How could efforts to decarbonize heavy industry reduce greenhouse gases? Technical interventions to reduce heavy industry emissions include switching to lower-carbon production processes (e.g., replacing fossil fuel inputs with hydrogen or direct electrification); carbon capture, utilization, and storage (capturing process emissions and storing them or converting them to value-added products); development of alternative materials (e.g., substitutions for cement and fossil-based plastic); and increasing material usage efficiency and adopting a circular economy approach. Theory of change for decarbonizing heavy industry: We think that supporting nonprofits advocating for governments to accelerate heavy industry decarbonization is a powerful lever for impact. We also think that supporting nonprofits working in regions with high heavy industry production is a promising strategy. Our impression is that some of these regions have less developed civil society ecosystems, and so individual nonprofits are likely to have a greater marginal impact. Specific philanthropic sub-strategies vary depending on the industry sub-sector, but we think the most promising sub-strategies increase research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) funding; low-carbon purchase commitments; or heavy industry policy support or regulation. We think that this would result in reduced production costs for low-carbon products compared to the counterfactual, and therefore more producers opting for low-carbon production. What is the cost-effectiveness of decarbonizing heavy industry? We developed a highly subjective, rough-guess cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) to estimate the cost-effectiveness of efforts to decarbonize heavy industry (in terms of dollars per metric ton of CO2-equivalent reduced/avoided). As a proxy for these efforts, we estimated the effect that an advocacy campaign might have on increasing the cement emissions reduction targets of the US Federal Buy Clean Initiative, as well as such policies’ subsequent impact on cement emissions reductions worldwide. Overall, we think that efforts to decarbonize heavy industry could plausibly be within the range of cost-effectiveness we would consider for a top recommendation. Though we have low confidence in this CEA to estimate the cost-effectiveness of this specific philanthropic effort, we generally view it as a positive input to our overall assessment of decarbonizing heavy industry. Is there room for more funding? It is our general impression that philanthropic support for decarbonizing heavy industry has increased but continues to remain underfunded, at an estimated 2.6% of total foundation climate funding. Within heavy industry, certain subsectors and geographies are also comparatively underfunded, such as cement and chemical decarbonization and regions outside of the US and EU. Overall, we think this sector likely has significant room for more funding. Are there major co-benefits or adverse effects? We think decarbonizing heavy industry could significantly reduce local pollution. It could have unclear employment effects as global industries grow, shrink, and change due to decarbonization. Key uncertainties and open questions: In general, we are uncertain about the cost-effectiveness of R&D efforts, the efficacy of government funding support, geographic focus, general equilibrium effects, and heavy industry regulatory code. Bottom line / next steps: We have identified heavy industry as a priority impact area and therefore plan to consider organizations working on industrial decarbonization for both Top Nonprofits as well as grants from the Giving Green Fund. Heavy industry is a substantial contributor to emissions, and we think there are relatively high-leverage opportunities to affect government decision-making and increase the geographical diversity of actors working on heavy-industry decarbonization. We may expand the scope of our investigation in the future by focusing on specific high-potential decarbonization subsectors and generally plan to devote more research capacity to exploring organizations and initiatives that are based in countries where substantial future heavy industry production will be located.

Read Giving Green's research on insider policy advocacy's role in addressing climate change. Insider Policy Advocacy: Overview // BACK This report was last updated in November 2020. It may no longer be accurate, both with respect to the evidence it presents and our assessment of the evidence. We may revise this report in the future, depending on our research capacity and research priorities. Questions and comments are welcome. What are the key techniques of insider advocacy? When is insider advocacy effective in influencing policy? What does the academic literature on insider advocacy suggest is important to effective work? In this document, we address these questions and present our overall take on the use of insider advocacy to influence US national climate policy. This review of the literature forms the basis of our work reviewing and recommending insider advocacy organizations. In Giving Green’s document How We Determined Our 2020 Research Priorities , we identified insider policy advocacy as one of our priority research areas for 2020. In this document, we summarize the state of evidence on insider advocacy and its promise as a method for working towards policy change that dramatically reduces the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Advocacy refers to engagement in the legislative or regulatory process in order to shape priorities and influence specific pieces of legislation or regulation [1] . In this document, we provide an overview of insider advocacy, in which “insiders” with connections and experience in the policymaking process seek to influence legislators or consequential regulators. Insider advocates use techniques including: One-on-one lobbying and meetings with decision-makers Engagement with policymakers through seminars and events focused on policy issues Direct policy support through the creation or editing of policy proposals and draft legislation Policy research and dissemination focused on providing an intellectual basis and talking points to support the creation of policy. Some evidence suggests that insider advocacy can be a highly effective strategy to influence the shape and success or failure of legislation and regulation, including climate legislation aimed at reducing the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (Meng & Rode, 2019). However, each story of successful insider advocacy is matched by many comparable stories of failure (or success of the opposing side). The success of insider advocacy efforts is highly dependent on a number of contextual factors impacting the policy process. These include: The policy status quo Interest group organization and funding Political conditions and the positions held by crucial decision-makers or median legislators The tactics and sophistication of opposed groups (See Baumgartner et al., 2009, for a useful and detailed overview of how these factors influence advocacy efforts). Effective insider advocacy organizations are those who understand these context factors well, exercise superior judgement and skill in constructing an advocacy strategy appropriate to their context, know their allies and have the right relationships with decision-makers to facilitate a given goal, and are able to adapt to the constantly shifting demands of the policy environment surrounding their goal. Based on the ubiquity of insider advocacy in shaping legislation and regulation across all policy domains along with evidence that insider advocacy can determine the success or failure of climate legislation (discussed below in greater detail), we believe that insider advocacy is an important part of shaping climate-change legislation to reduce the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases. This is especially true since insider advocacy is an established and ubiquitous part of the policy creation process, and so any legislation eventually brought to a vote will necessarily reflect the work of insider advocates and experts. Insider advocacy efforts, when successful, have a high maximum potential to influence policy. However, insider advocacy overall has a moderate to low probability of achieving success. In addition, insider advocacy is inherently difficult to evaluate definitively given the context-dependent nature of insider advocacy work and the often diffuse nature of inputs to legislation from specific groups advocating for the same goal. Introduction: What is insider advocacy and how does it work? Advocacy refers to engagement in the policymaking process, both legislative and regulatory, in order to shape priorities and influence specific pieces of legislation passed. Legislative advocacy focuses primarily on impacting legislation through working with and influencing politicians and bureaucrats already in power. Advocates influence how these officials shape legislation and regulation and which pieces of policy they support. Common approaches to advocacy include: Registered one-on-one meetings between legislators and professional lobbyists or citizen groups Direct policy creation support such as providing drafts of legislative or regulatory proposals on behalf of politicians and bureaucrats Producing research that provides intellectual input to legislators for shaping or deciding how to vote on legislation Informal sector influence in which policy insiders host seminars, events, and other informal meetings and interactions to spread ideas to legislators and regulators in power. Advocacy can be usefully grouped into two different types of activity: insider advocacy and outsider advocacy (Mykkänen, 2019), each of which represents a unique approach to engaging in the legislative process. Insider advocacy involves activities undertaken by policy “insiders,” most often registered lobbyists, former political figures or staffers, or think-tank researchers who have extensive and well-developed networks with members of Congress or other decision-makers and, in some cases, who have extensive expertise in a given policy area. “Outsider” methods generally involve individuals or groups without close personal contacts with members of Congress, such as groups of voters in a Congress member's constituency, who pressure legislators to act in a particular way. In this article, we focus on “insider” methods. We include “outsider” advocacy methods under the heading of Activism, which we discuss in a separate document. The table below, reproduced from Baumgartner et al., 2009 provides a useful overview of the many different tactics used by practitioners of insider and outsider advocacy. Below, we investigate a number of unique insider advocacy techniques as well as the history of how these techniques have been used to influence climate policy. Lobbying and 1-1 meetings In the United States, lobbying generally falls into two categories: formal and informal lobbying. Formal lobbying refers to lobbying that takes place when an entity such as a corporation or interest group hires a professional lobbyist for pay in order to advocate for a particular policy, normally from a dedicated bi-partisan lobbying firm that lobbies on behalf of paying clients. Informal lobbying involves the general use of insider networks to advocate for particular policy positions, outside of formal registered lobbying meetings between a professional lobbyist and a decision-maker. For example, a staff member of an environmental organization may meet with a legislator to share ideas and insight or contribute to the creation of a piece of legislation. Such an individual is not a professional lobbyist hired specifically for the task of advocating for a particular legislative goal, but nonetheless may exert significant influence on the policy process. In the United States, lobbying for pay, known colloquially as “K Street Lobbying” after the street in Washington, D.C., where many prominent lobbyist offices are located, is an officially regulated activity. Under the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995, lobbying by any entity that involves hiring a professional lobbyist for pay to advocate particular policy positions or outcomes must be fully publicly disclosed, and strict rules govern the kinds of activities that can take place between legislators and lobbyists in the context of official meetings as well as requirements for reporting expenditures on lobbying-related activities. Notably, much empirical research on insider advocacy makes use of these legal requirements, analyzing the data collected as a result of the formal registering and reporting of lobbying activities. Formal, professional lobbying is a significant politically-focused industry in the United States, with a market size of $3.2 billion in 2019. While early work on lobbying understood it primarily as a form of persuasive activity or as facilitating a quid-pro-quo relationship between politicians and organized groups impacting their reelection and financial prospects, the current dominant framework for assessing lobbying emphasizes its role as a form of legislative subsidy: policymakers seek out the assistance of ideologically-aligned lobbyists and experts, who in turn provide services in drafting legislation and provide research and advising work on behalf of an organized interest relevant to the politician or bureaucrat they work with. Through this process, they are able to shape agendas to a considerable degree (Hall & Deardorff, 2006). For example, a conservative politician may delegate some of the work of shaping a legislative proposal to a staff member of a group such as the Heritage Foundation that shares the legislator’s ideology. Or such a politician may pay special attention to a lobbyist who represents an interest group that is relevant within the constituency the politician represents. While the model of lobbying as a legislative subsidy provides a useful guide to understanding lobbying activity that is not well represented in mass discourse on lobbying, research by McKay (2018) demonstrates that some amount of quid-pro-quo is in fact a relevant part of the lobbying process, as changes to legislation disproportionately accrue to lobbyists who help host fundraisers for politicians. Thus, lobbying helps signal the policy positions of organized groups that can affect a politician’s political fortune through donations or votes, and helps facilitate information sharing and direct quid-pro-quo arrangements between politicians and groups. In summary, lobbying works in a variety of intertwined ways, including as a form of quid-pro-quo between politicians and the interests they are responsive to for electoral support and financing (a function that is well-represented in popular discourse around lobbying) and as a form of legislative subsidy in which legislators receive useful help from the representatives of interests they already share (a function that is not well-represented in popular discourse on lobbying). Lobbying and climate change Lobbying on climate is a small part (approximately 4%) of overall formal (official) lobbying expenditure, and existing climate-focused insider advocacy efforts concentrated in advocating for fossil-fuel linked interests exceed the scope of efforts to advocate for stronger climate policy (Brulle, 2018). Meng & Rode (2019) show that lobbying played a decisive role in defeating the passage of the Waxman-Markey bill for a national carbon cap and trade scheme during 2009-2010, one of the most ambitious climate bills with the highest probability of passing in the United States due to the favorable political environment of Democrat-controlled legislative and executive branches. Their research convincingly suggests that lobbying activity, specifically professional (registered) lobbyist meetings by firms expecting to lose revenue should the Waxman-Markey bill be passed into law, played an important role in causing the failure of the proposal, demonstrating the crucial role of lobbying in shaping national climate policy in the United States. The majority of spending on climate-policy in recent years has lobbying came from utilities, fossil fuel, and transportation companies. In general lobbying on behalf of pro-climate regulation outspends pro-climate lobbying by a factor of 10 to 1 [2] . Climate lobbying tends to be most intense whenever changes to greenhouse gas regulations are more likely, highlighting the importance of underlying political context in driving legislative advocacy activity (Brulle, 2018). Corporate lobbying (which is broadly in favor of less intense climate change policy) tends to be not only larger in sums of money spent but also in duration (Brulle, 2018). Together, these facts show that lobbying has been, to date, dominated by interests largely opposed to strong pro-climate legislative change. In addition to the facts highlighted above, corporations and other organizations often engage in highly sophisticated strategies, and it is not uncommon for corporations and organizations to appear to be supporting certain kinds of climate regulation that they in fact oppose. For example, in 2009-2010, firms that were opposed to the introduction of carbon pricing and lobbied against it also joined the pro cap-and-trade coalition lobbying for carbon pricing in order to help shape the form carbon pricing legislation might take if it were passed against their wishes (Grumbach, 2015). This complex nature of the link between policy interests and advocacy activity shows that identifying promising advocacy efforts requires detailed research, as efforts that are supposedly intended to promote pro-climate legislation may be a front for more complicated interests aimed, ultimately, at weakening the potential for meaningful reductions in greenhouse gases to occur. Overall, lobbying on climate change is a complex arena in which different interests make their policy preferences known and support the legislative process, all the while seeking to bend policy outcomes to their will. Direct policy support (Creating or editing policy documents) Legislators and regulators alike are highly time- and attention-constrained. For this reason, they often offload some of the work of preparing draft legislation to trusted insiders. This sometimes includes paid lobbyists, such as when lobbyists paid by banks directly wrote portions of Dodd-Frank reforms in 2010, which received an investigation in the New York Times and coverage by NPR and Mother Jones among others. Some instances of legislation written directly by advocates occur on a case-by-case basis for particular legislative initiatives, while others derive from “ Model Acts ” (sometimes called “Model Legislation”), which are pre-drafted pieces of legislation that are disseminated with the intent of fostering wide adoption by state legislators and at the national level through incorporation into proposed bills and regulations. In some cases, legislation may be close to a proposal by an interest group or other insider advocate and may differ linguistically but not substantively from the initial proposal (see McKay et al., 2018, for an interesting analysis of this phenomenon). Overall, due to the difficulty of determining who wrote particular pieces of legislation, there is little literature on the effectiveness of direct policy support or whether it causes outcomes that would not occur otherwise. In addition, we have not, to date, discovered any concrete instances of climate change legislation or regulation directly traceable to the authorship of individual lobbyists or insider organizations. Nonetheless, the scope for influence in direct legislative work, especially when paired with other advocacy techniques like 1-1 lobbying meetings, may be significant. Research and general sector influence (seminars, events, etc.) The creation of legislation often requires an intellectual basis, as policymakers strive to create policy using a combination of theory and “facts,” or evidence from rigorous studies. Experimental evidence from other contexts beyond US policy has established the potential for research work and evidence to causally, significantly shift policy (Vivalt & Coville, 2020; Hjort et al., 2019; Beynon et al., 2012). Much of the intellectual work feeding into policies is completed by think-tank type organizations, which can either be ideologically-oriented or ostensibly neutral in their orientation. These groups often explicitly seek to create research that can form the basis of legislation and regulation, and their research priorities and output thus reflect their ideological commitments. Overall, the marginal contribution of a given think-tank’s work or a specific research output is often difficult to determine, particularly since think-tanks are often used for ideological posturing in addition to any use for substantive policy formulation, and in fact, come into being in part to play the role of ideologically committed experts (see Bland (2020) for preliminary evidence on the different ways in which members of Congress mobilize research groups to achieve primarily ideological objectives that may be unrelated to a need for accurate or objective evidence). Nonetheless, research and related general sector influence work like seminars and other research-focused events may have an impact on policy in two distinct ways. First, in specific cases, research work disseminated publicly might lead legislators or regulators to take action they would not otherwise, whether motivated by ideological or purely empirical concerns raised by a given piece of research. Second, large-scale work in a particular vein may have broad influence over establishing a “common sense” around particular policy issues among both the public, elites, and specifically policymakers involved in regulation or legislation. For example, the work of numerous conservative think tanks, aligned with business interests, in establishing and disseminating climate denialist narratives and discourse may be an example of a diffuse way in which research-focused organizations substantively shaped the policy environment to the success or detriment of particular policy outcomes, in this case, the enactment of policy that regulates greenhouse gas emissions (see Brulle, 2014). Is insider advocacy effective? Overall, the literature on insider advocacy suggests that its effectiveness is mixed. Lowery (2013) provides an excellent overview of this literature, in which individual studies very often conclude that organizational impact on the legislative process through insider advocacy is minimal or non-existent. In addition, the relationship between total funding and advocacy success is not one-to-one, especially as funding may be correlated with other characteristics such as the size and internal coordination of groups (Baumgartner et al., 2009). The literature as a whole suffers from difficulties inherent in its subject matter: it is very often nearly impossible to convincingly construct a counterfactual of what kind of policy outcome would have been reached absent insider activity, though some studies have managed to exploit transparencies in the policy process for certain initiatives to explicitly infer changes due to insider advocacy (see, for example, McKay 2018). In addition, interest groups very often engage in advocacy as part of coalitions, which may increase their effectiveness under certain conditions (Nelson and Yackee, 2012). This poses difficulties for assessing the unique contribution of a given organization or initiative among many closely related ones. Facing these difficulties, many studies rely on expert testimony, often from decision-makers themselves or privileged observers of the policy process, to try and determine with precision the impact of particular organizations on the policy process. Despite the overall uncertainty in the literature, a number of studies (such as Nelson & Yackee, 2012; Naughton et al, 2009; McKay, 2018, Meng & Rode, 2019) have claimed to uncover instances in which insider advocacy made a decisive difference to the passage or shape of both legislation and regulation, including changes related to climate change specifically, as shown in Meng & Rode (2019)’s research on the effect of lobbying in facilitating the failure to enact the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill into law. Overall, the literature supports the statement by Baumgartner and Leech (2001) that “the unavoidable conclusion is that PACs and direct lobbying sometimes strongly influence Congressional voting, sometimes have marginal influence and sometimes fail to exert influence.” Based on our review of the literature, we believe that insider advocacy has the potential to be highly effective under the right circumstances and with the right organization, but that the overall probability of a given insider advocacy effort achieving success is low. Overall, this leads us to conclude that insider advocacy has a medium to high potential impact and is therefore a high-potential option among the many approaches to policy change [3] . Assessing insider advocacy organizations requires understanding their internal organization and their track record of success (as much as can be determined with certainty). There is no one correct or clearly superior way to engage in advocacy. What counts as effective insider advocacy depends entirely on context. Their ability to navigate the important context factors that shape what the right approach to insider advocacy is for a given policy idea. The relevant context factors include political context, status-quo bias, opponent tactics, and organization + resources as key factors which impact the potential of insider advocacy, with implications for determining the likely effectiveness of advocacy campaigns (Baumgartner et al., 2009 provide an excellent overview of each of these factors). The “legislative subsidy” model of insider advocacy, in particular lobbying and policy creation, suggests that much insider advocacy takes place between an interest group and an already sympathetic legislator. This points to the overall importance of underlying political reality in shaping the scope for insider advocacy work. If the swing-vote senator voting for a climate policy bill is sympathetic to the idea of introducing effective climate policy that reduces atmospheric greenhouse gases, then advocacy directed towards this senator by environmental groups to improve the senator’s policy proposal or stance on particular climate policy issues may be highly impactful compared to the same efforts directed towards anti-climate candidates. Advocacy is, at its core, a practice in sharing information about policies and arguments for positions and building political relationships between relevant interest groups and funding groups and legislators or regulators in order to shape their thinking on what should be done around a particular issue and their own final proposals or decisions. The right approach to advocacy is thus highly dependent on who the relevant decision-makers on a given policy goal are and who they are likely to trust and listen to, conditions that constantly shift as political fortunes change. Another key feature of insider advocacy is a persistent status-quo bias impacting legislation. In general, status-quo policies already represent the outcome of previous rounds of policy negotiations and decisions, and advocacy around maintaining the status quo thus often faces fewer barriers to effectiveness (Baumgartner et al., 2009). In general, advocacy that challenges the status quo is fundamentally different from pro-status quo advocacy, with challengers spending more time drafting legislation, engaging with committees, and meeting with legislators than those who support status quo policy outcomes. Changing the status quo often requires a more significant mobilization of resources than status-quo preservation. Since Climate Change policy generally involves changes to the status quo, pro-climate insider advocacy may need more funding than anti-climate insider advocacy to be effective. Advocacy efforts are, in addition, strongly aided by the organization of the interest groups that seek to engage in insider advocacy around an issue. To provide one example, “airlines are more likely to be present in the lobbying community than the diffuse group of people who often suffer through terrible service as airline customers” (Baumgartner et al., 2009). Advocacy in general benefits from tight organizational decision making and funding dedicated to a particular issue and policy position. For this reason, companies, trade associations and unions, and particularly popular and well-organized interest groups are in a strongly advantageous position to lead insider advocacy efforts due to their significant pre-existing organization and coordination. This is not only because these groups command large amounts of funding, but because they represent tightly organized interest groups that are capable of coordinated action for or against a politician (which may be more important than funding) (Baumgartner et al, 2009). A final important feature of insider advocacy is that it is often a game between two or more sides with opposed policy preferences. Thus, the success of an advocacy effort may depend to a large extent on the effectiveness of one’s opponents in developing a sophisticated and well-organized strategy and reacting to one’s own moves. For example, if an opponent has effectively managed to control the framing around an issue, then an advocacy effort may be constrained in its ability to re-frame an issue. What counts as “effective” advocacy is highly dependent on this environment. In the case of climate change policy, anti-climate insider advocates and interests have shown considerable adroitness in setting framing around climate issues. In addition, these groups have spent more to date than pro-climate interests (though this does not guarantee their success, as politicians develop their policy positions for a variety of factors such as public opinion, not just in response to which interest groups targeting them are best funded). In summary, insider advocacy is a highly context-dependent activity, and the success of an advocacy effort depends in large part on: The policy status quo Interest group organization and funding Political conditions and the positions held by crucial decision-makers or median legislators The tactics and sophistication of opposed groups To assess an insider advocacy strategy as “effective,” one must understand all of these pieces of the policy context, which may at times be opaque to outsiders. What counts as a best-practice approach in one year may be highly likely to fail in another. The best insider advocates, both formal and informal, are those who understand these context factors well, exercise superior judgement and skill in their craft, and know their allies and have the right relationships with decision-makers to facilitate a given goal. Overall, we believe that insider advocacy is an important part of shaping climate-change legislation to reduce the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases. This is especially true since insider advocacy is an established and ubiquitous part of the policy creation process, and so any legislation eventually brought to a vote will necessarily reflect the work of insider advocates and experts. Insider advocacy efforts, when successful, have a high maximum potential to influence policy. However, insider advocacy overall has a moderate to low probability of achieving success. The success of insider advocacy is difficult to predict in advance and difficult to analyze retrospectively due to the importance of context, which may shift suddenly. For this reason, our analysis of insider advocacy organizations includes the following components Focus on personnel - personal connections and experience are a crucially important input to effective insider advocacy Assess past wins across contexts - an ability to adapt to multiple political contexts and secure wins in many contexts suggests the necessary adaptability to succeed as political conditions inevitably change Evaluate overall organizational strength - organizational strength is required to effectively engage in the process, which requires discipline and coordination. The landscape of insider advocacy What does the landscape of insider advocacy look like? Overall, the climate insider advocacy space is made up of both the so-called “Big-Greens” and smaller organizations, all of whom act together at times and also do important independent work. The “Big-Green” organizations include large and well-funded interest groups such as the Sierra Club, EDF, NRDC and well-established climate and energy focused think-tanks like the World Resources Institute. Often, these groups combine multiple tactics and layers of organization into one: the Sierra Club, for example, has both local membership chapters and a DC-based national chapter, all of which engage in a mixture of insider and outsider advocacy along with grassroots mobilization and activism. Often, these groups are focused on a large range of issues rather than specific policy priorities, though their work may change over time to reflect some level of internal prioritization. These groups are well-known, well-funded, and often serve as a go-to source for policymakers, especially since their status as interest groups means they often represent a sizable portion of the organized electorate. In many cases, the staff of these organizations are policy insiders who come from administration backgrounds (for example, the current head of the NRDC is Gina McCarthy, former head of the EPA under the Obama administration). This ensures these groups have insider status, but may also mean that these groups could conceivably function as holding places for potential administration members waiting for changes in political power [4] . We believe that these groups play an important role in influencing climate policy, however, given their large size and the fact that they are generally well-funded, we believe there is a higher marginal impact available for donors who choose to donate to smaller organizations that have a proven track record and ambitious plans. Small organizations with annual revenue in the $2-6 million range like the Clean Air Task Force – a think-tank and advocacy group that works on influencing specific pieces of legislation and regulation and providing high-quality research aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions – may have important additional inputs into the policy process and have a higher need for funding to make a difference to policy. For this reason, we identify and review a number of smaller groups of this sort in our Shallow Dives document on insider advocacy organizations. Note: This is a non-partisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes. [1] Regulation may often form the bulk of important rule-making around climate, and is an important channel for lobbying and other advocacy activities; Nelson & Yackee, 2012. [2] https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-interests-have-outspent-environmental-advocates-101-on-climate-lobbying#:~:text=More%20than%20%242%20billion%20was,published%20in%20the%20journal%20Climatic [3] For further details on other approaches to influencing policy, see our overview document available here . [4] Expert interviews conducted by our team suggested this may be the case. References Baumgartner, F. R., & Leech, B. L. (2001). Interest niches and policy bandwagons: Patterns of interest group involvement in national politics. The Journal of Politics, 63(4), 1191-1213. Baumgartner, F. R., Berry, J. M., Hojnacki, M., Leech, B. L., & Kimball, D. C. (2009). Lobbying and policy change: Who wins, who loses, and why. University of Chicago Press. Beynon, P., Chapoy, C., Gaarder, M., & Masset, E. (2012). What difference does a policy brief make. Full report of an IDS, 3ie, Norad study: Institute of Development Studies and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie). Bland, T. B. (2020). Predators and Principles: Think Tank Influence, Media Visibility, and Political Partisanship. Working paper. Brulle, R. J. (2014). Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of US climate change counter-movement organizations. Climatic change, 122(4), 681-694. Brulle, R. J. (2018). The climate lobby: a sectoral analysis of lobbying spending on climate change in the USA, 2000 to 2016. Climatic change, 149(3-4), 289-303. De Figueiredo, J. M., & Richter, B. K. (2014). Advancing the empirical research on lobbying. Annual review of political science, 17, 163-185. Delmas, M., Lim, J., & Nairn-Birch, N. (2016). Corporate environmental performance and lobbying. Academy of Management Discoveries, 2(2), 175-197. Drutman, L. (2015). The business of America is lobbying: How corporations became politicized and politics became more corporate. Oxford University Press. Grumbach, J. M. (2015). Polluting industries as climate protagonists: cap and trade and the problem of business preferences. Business and Politics, 17(4), 633-659. Hall, R. L., & Deardorff, A. V. (2006). Lobbying as a legislative subsidy. American Political Science Review, 69-84. Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D. C., Baumgartner, F. R., Berry, J. M., & Leech, B. L. (2012). Studying organizational advocacy and influence: Reexamining interest group research. Annual Review of Political Science, 15, 379-399. Hjort, J., Moreira, D., Rao, G., & Santini, J. F. (2019). How research affects policy: Experimental evidence from 2,150 Brazilian municipalities (No. w25941). National Bureau of Economic Research. Kim, S. E., Urpelainen, J., & Yang, J. (2014). Electric utilities and American climate policy: lobbying by expected winners and losers. Journal of Public Policy, Forthcoming. Lowery, D. (2013). Lobbying influence: Meaning, measurement and missing. Interest Groups & Advocacy, 2(1), 1-26. McKay, A. M. (2018). Fundraising for favors? linking lobbyist-hosted fundraisers to legislative benefits. Political Research Quarterly, 71(4), 869-880. Meng, K. C., & Rode, A. (2019). The social cost of lobbying over climate policy. Nature Climate Change, 9(6), 472-476. Mykkänen, M., & Ikonen, P. (2019). Media strategies in lobbying process: A literature review on publications in 2000-2018. Academicus: International Scientific Journal, 2019 (20). Naughton, K., Schmid, C., Yackee, S. W., & Zhan, X. (2009). Understanding commenter influence during agency rule development. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 28(2), 258-277. Nelson, D., & Yackee, S. W. (2012). Lobbying coalitions and government policy change: An analysis of federal agency rulemaking. The Journal of Politics, 74(2), 339-353. Vivalt, E., & Coville, A. (2020). How Do Policymakers Update Their Beliefs? Working paper. Yackee, J. W., & Yackee, S. W. (2006). A bias towards business? Assessing interest group influence on the US bureaucracy. The Journal of Politics, 68(1), 128-139.

Giving Green classified Carbon180 as a top climate nonprofit in 2021. Read our research into Carbon180's work supporting carbon removal. Carbon180: Recommendation // BACK Note: This is our recommendation of Carbon180 as published in November 2021. As of November 2022, we no longer recommend Carbon180, largely due to their success in fundraising. See more in our Carbon180 deep dive report. Summary Carbon180 is an insider policy advocacy organization that focuses on accelerating the development of carbon removal technologies and practices, which would remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and lock it away for at least hundreds of years. Its four initiatives include (1) building and enacting federal policy to scale up carbon removal solutions, (2) accelerating the adoption of soil carbon sequestration practices, (3) encouraging community engagement between carbon removal researchers, and (4) stimulating innovation. Its tactics include research, policy advocacy, and ecosystem building. Carbon180 also centers equity and justice in its work to ensure that carbon removal can be scaled up in a way that is sustainable with equitably-distributed benefits. Image courtesy of Carbon180 Although Carbon180 is a relatively young organization, it already has a significant track record of success. In 2021, for example, it successfully advocated for the inclusion of billions in funding in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for carbon removal research, development, and deployment (RD&D); CO2 infrastructure; and biologically-driven carbon removal (e.g. forestry). Its future work includes an effort to drive federal procurement of carbon removal technologies and products, which could catalyze scale-up and set a model for corporate investment. Based on Carbon180’s accomplishments, strategic approach, organizational strength, and cost-effectiveness, we recommend Carbon180 as one of our top charities in combating climate change. For more information on Carbon180, please review our Deep Dive report on the organization . Why we recommend Carbon180 We believe Carbon180 is an effective organization working on an important problem: carbon removal. It uses insider tactics to produce legislation that supports carbon removal, and has shown success in getting legislation passed under both Democratic and Republican administrations. It is a small organization with room to grow and absorb additional funding. Here, we present our reasons for recommending Carbon180. We also recommend that interested persons read our Deep Dive report on Carbon180 . 1. Carbon removal is necessary for preventing the worst possible outcomes of climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we need both emissions reductions and carbon removal in order to keep global warming below the Paris Agreement’s climate target of less than a 2ºC rise in average global temperature. In fact, the IPCC’s 2021 Sixth Assessment Report estimates that we will need to remove somewhere between 100 billion to a trillion tons of carbon by 2100 to prevent the worst effects of climate change. Delays in driving down emissions will increase the risk of warming exceeding 1.5ºC and also increase our need for negative emissions. 2. Carbon removal is neglected as a field and needs significant financial investment. Although federal support for carbon removal technologies has increased over the past few years, these technologies are currently in their early stages of development and are too expensive to scale widely. Additionally, there has been limited demand for carbon removal technologies other than from corporate social responsibility efforts by companies such as Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify. Support for carbon removal research, development, and deployment (RD&D) is crucial because investing in carbon removal technologies can drive down their cost and eventually enable them to scale. 3. Carbon180’s federal policy development and advocacy have been highly successful in securing support for carbon removal. Carbon180 has successfully advocated for the inclusion of carbon removal in a number of bills, including the Energy Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Build Back Better Act. Policy provisions that were passed through the Energy Act and infrastructure bill include authorization of a comprehensive carbon capture R&D program, carbon capture demonstration plants, regional direct air capture hubs, and an extension of the Section 45Q tax credit for carbon capture and sequestration. 4. Carbon180 is cost-effective in removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere (in expectation). We estimated that Carbon180’s work on federal policy can remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a cost of $0.66 per metric ton (in expectation), which compares favorably to other high-performing organizations that we have analyzed. Because our CEA model only includes short term effects of Carbon180’s work on federal legislation, it seems likely that we may even have underestimated Carbon180’s impact and cost-effectiveness. Our results should be viewed as rough, indicative estimates given the uncertainty in our different model inputs. 5. Carbon180 has a strong policy focus and an experienced staff well-suited to influence policy. Carbon180’s team is experienced in policy and its leadership maintains close ties to policy insiders, which helps improve the organization’s chances of success. Importantly, its president Noah Deich was recently appointed to the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, which works to improve the US Department of Energy's research and development portfolio and program activities. 6. Carbon180 can productively use additional funds. Although Carbon180 has limited room for more funding through the end of 2021, it anticipates a gap in funding of around $2.5 million for its 2022 budget, which is estimated to reach $6 million total. Carbon180’s general operations is its biggest gap in funding. Risks to Carbon180 The largest points of uncertainty in our recommendation of Carbon180 are related to its need for more funding and ability to scale. For example, an expert in the donor community said that it is likely that Carbon180 will be able to meet its funding goals in 2022 through grants from large foundations. However, given Carbon180’s past performance and current funding gap, we believe at this point it can still benefit from individual donations. Nonetheless, this may change in the future if Carbon180 can indeed raise more money than it can spend effectively. Another risk to Carbon180 is the inherent uncertainty in whether R&D will sufficiently drive down the costs of carbon removal technologies and enable them to scale. However, because Carbon180 supports a wide portfolio of carbon removal technologies and practices, we are optimistic that it would be able to pivot if it became clear that one or more of its programs does not meet expectations. Conclusion For the reasons above, our team concluded that Carbon180 is likely a high-impact organization, and has decided to recommend it as a top-performing climate change organization.

This grant to Evergreen Collaborative will fund its work in industrial decarbonization, including trade policy, regulation, market shaping, and federal funding. Evergreen Collaborative // BACK Overview The Giving Green Fund plans to award a restricted grant to Evergreen Collaborative, a US-based, climate policy advocacy group. This is one of a series of grants to support an ecosystem of nonprofits working to expand and decarbonize domestic industrial production through increased public and private investment and trade policy that favors cleaner industrial material imports. While most of Evergreen Collaborative’s work is focused on US stakeholders, markets, and policies, we think that these efforts, when combined with trade policies such as a carbon border adjustment mechanism, can have a global impact. This falls within our philanthropic strategy of decarbonizing heavy industry. Please see Giving Green’s deep dive report for more information, including risks and potential co-benefits, recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, funding need, and key uncertainties. Last updated: October 2024 What is Evergreen Collaborative? Evergreen Collaborative is a US-based climate policy advocacy group that was founded by former staffers of Washington State Governor Jay Inslee’s 2020 presidential campaign. Since its founding, Evergreen has focused its efforts on supporting policies that aim to power the economy with 100% clean energy, invest in jobs, support environmental justice, transition the US from fossil fuels, and influence US leadership to confront climate change. Building on its strong track record of influencing federal legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act, Evergreen has expanded its advocacy efforts to federal regulatory agencies and state policy. Why are we funding Evergreen Collaborative, and how could it help reduce emissions? Evergreen Collaborative is building its work on industrial decarbonization, leveraging its expertise and experience to target key policy, legal, and regulatory mechanisms. We think this multi-faceted approach could be highly effective in decarbonizing heavy industry production in the US. Its ongoing and future work includes: Promoting robust and equitable trade policy : Evergreen Collaborative is supporting legislative efforts toward a carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM), a tax on imports based on carbon intensity intended to increase the competitiveness of clean, domestic industrial production and incentivize decarbonization internationally. Evergreen Collaborative emphasizes the need to complement trade policy with initiatives to protect LMICS, such as strong international finance commitments, robust technology transfer, and exemptions for least developing countries and small island developing states. Pushing for increased environmental regulations and enforcement : Through the Clean Air Act, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can regulate air pollution from industrial sources. Evergreen Collaborative is bringing attention to the fact that EPA has not updated its rules for decades and is pushing the agency to take specific action on updating New Source Performance Standards to include greenhouse gas emissions. Advancing market shaping efforts : The Buy Clean initiative, a federal procurement effort for low-carbon materials such as steel, cement, asphalt, and glass, includes commitments from 12 leading states. Evergreen Collaborative is working to expand and strengthen state programs to amplify the effectiveness of these federal-state partnerships. In addition, Evergreen Collaborative is advocating for a federal advance market commitment that may be more suitable than procurement for emerging clean technologies and materials. Advocating for new and increased federal funding for industrial decarbonization: Evergreen Collaborative advocates for increased funding for existing programs such as the Department of Energy’s Industrial Demonstration Program and the Buy Clean initiative mentioned above. In addition, Evergreen Collaborative is promoting the adoption of a performance tax credit to subsidize clean industrial products such as low-carbon cement and steel. Why do we think Evergreen Collaborative will use this funding well? We think Evergreen Collaborative’s strong track record, legal and policy expertise, network, and partnerships will enable it to effectively drive critical industrial decarbonization efforts domestically that could have a significant impact beyond US borders. For more on the difference between the grantees of the Giving Green Fund and our Top Nonprofits, please see this blog post on the Giving Green Fund. Evergreen has 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) entities. As Giving Green is part of IDinsight, which is itself a charitable, tax-exempt organization, we are only offering an opinion on the charitable activities of its 501(c)(3) arm, Evergreen Collaborative, and not on its 501(c)(4) entity, Evergreen Action. This is a nonpartisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

Do biochar carbon offsets sequester CO2 emissions? Our independent analysis finds the best offsets and carbon removals to reduce climate change. Biochar // BACK Please see our most updated research on biochar at this new link.

Nuclear Power: Other Grantees // BACK Outside of our Top Nonprofits, the Giving Green Fund has awarded or plans to award grants to the following organizations in support of their work on advanced nuclear power: Energy for Growth Hub Good Energy Collective ClearPath Nuclear Innovation Alliance To understand how we identify high-leverage opportunities for philanthropists to support advanced nuclear power, such as the above, please see Giving Green's deep dive on nuclear power.

SRM: Grantees // BACK The Giving Green Fund has awarded or plans to award grants to the following organizations to support their work advancing the governance of solar radiation management: The Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering (DSG) International Center for Future Generations (ICFG) To understand how we identify high-leverage opportunities for philanthropists to support advancing solar radiation management governance, please see Giving Green's deep dive on solar radiation management .

Our work is funded by donors like you who believe in high-impact climate giving and evidence-based giving advice. We find high-impact climate initiatives. You can turbocharge them. I want my gift to support… Top Nonprofits & Giving Green Fund DONATE NOW Giving Green’s research DONATE NOW I’m not sure - what’s the difference? LEARN MORE GG Fund Climate nonprofit recommendations Top Nonprofits: Give to directly advance climate action Highest impact: Donate to the Giving Green Fund The Giving Green Fund offers a convenient way for you to support several high-impact climate strategies with a single transaction. The Fund enables us to allocate your gift to where it will have the most impact, even as the climate landscape evolves. This is why we believe donating to the Giving Green Fund is our highest-impact giving option. DONATE TO THE GIVING GREEN FUND By check/mail Please note that all checks should be addressed to IDinsight Inc, with a memo indicating use for Giving Green. Address: IDinsight, P.O. Box 689, San Francisco, CA 94104-0689 By bank transfer Please contact us for transfer details. We especially encourage reaching out for gifts over $1000, so that we can minimize processing fees and maximize the impact of your gift. Other ways to give To dedicate your gift to a loved one or to start your own fundraiser for Giving Green, please visit this page. To give tax-efficiently from Australia, the Netherlands, or the UK, give through Giving What We Can. Direct Support Top Nonprofits directly Read more about why we recommend these organizations here . Giving Green is only offering an opinion on the activities of these charitable organizations and not on the activities of any other affiliated entity. By check/mail Please note that all checks should be addressed to IDinsight Inc, with a memo indicating use for Giving Green. Address: IDinsight, P.O. Box 689, San Francisco, CA 94104-0689 By bank transfer Please contact us for transfer details. We especially encourage reaching out for gifts over $1000, so that we can minimize processing fees and maximize the impact of your gift. Other ways to give To dedicate your gift to a loved one or to start your own fundraiser for Giving Green, please visit this page. To give tax-efficiently from Australia, the Netherlands, or the UK, give through Giving What We Can. Giving Green’s research: Support our work to make high-impact climate giving easier Your donations to Giving Green’s research help us produce high-impact climate giving recommendations, and introduce them to more high-impact climate donors like you. Giving Green is a project incubated by IDinsight , a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the US. We receive no funding from and have no formal relationship with any of the organizations we study or recommend. By check/mail Please note that all checks should be addressed to IDinsight Inc, with a memo indicating use for Giving Green. Address: IDinsight, P.O. Box 689, San Francisco, CA 94104-0689 By bank transfer Please contact us for transfer details. We especially encourage reaching out for gifts over $1000, so that we can minimize processing fees and maximize the impact of your gift. Other ways to give To dedicate your gift to a loved one or to start your own fundraiser for Giving Green, please visit this page. To give tax-efficiently from Australia, the Netherlands, or the UK, give through Giving What We Can. GG Operations Difference I’m not sure—what’s the difference? Our Top Nonprofits are climate charities that directly work on advancing the systemic change we need to halt the climate crisis. If you want your gift to support work like: Successfully advocating for air quality regulations in Southern California that direct food manufacturers to shift to zero-emissions ovens ( Industrious Labs ) Providing expert guidance helping to shape the US Environmental Protection Agency’s newly proposed regulations on carbon emissions from power plants ( Clean Air Task Force ) Conducting technical analyses to identify the most promising pathways to electrifying high-temperature industrial processes, and the policies that can support them ( Future Cleantech Architects ) …then give to our Top Nonprofits, through the Giving Green Fund or directly through each nonprofit. Supporting Giving Green means supporting the team behind this website. We conduct comprehensive research into the climate landscape to find organizations that we think are doing high-impact work on climate change. If you want your gift to support work like: Thousands of hours of research to find organizations where your dollar will make a real difference for the climate Communications campaigns that raise millions of dollars for these high-impact nonprofits Keeping this guide public and available for anyone who wants to give to climate charitie s …then we humbly ask you to support our work here at Giving Green. Top Nonprofits & Giving Green Fund DONATE NOW Giving Green’s research DONATE NOW