Today, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) announced $44 million in funding to develop and scale promising technologies to help address climate change as part of an exploration of cutting-edge and emerging solutions, including carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Employing innovative financing strategies—including grants, investments, and making carbon removal purchases directly from companies—is part of CZI’s approach to accelerating action on climate change.
CDR encompasses a range of approaches that absorb existing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and store it in a stable form or use it in products like concrete, which can also help reduce emissions in hard-to-decarbonize industries. Alongside reducing existing sources of emissions as quickly as possible, carbon removal is one pivotal way to reduce harm from climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), all pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius rely on carbon removal.
“Scaling carbon removal to a consequential level will require massive advances in technology and innovation,” said CZI co-founders and co-CEOs Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg. “That’s why we’re supporting companies and researchers through a variety of financing methods. We also partnered with Watershed to purchase carbon removal credits from several companies to help scale promising technologies.”
More detail on this additional funding is as follows:
Elemental Excelerator:
Elemental Excelerator is on a mission to redesign the systems at the
root of climate change. Since its founding in 2009, Elemental has
supported more than 130 companies working to scale market-driven
solutions to climate change, including carbon dioxide removal and
beyond. By breaking down barriers to innovation alongside entrepreneurs,
Elemental gains unique insight into the policy, market, and technology
needs required to build systems that uplift people and communities
worldwide.
Elemental focuses on accelerating
solutions at the nexus of climate and social equity. The organization
has developed a Climate x Social Equity practice that includes a toolkit
for equitable project deployment. This Climate x Social Equity practice
also hosts EDICT (Empowering Diverse Climate Talent), an internship
program that provides individuals from traditionally excluded
backgrounds with career experience at organizations tackling the climate
crisis that have pledged to empower equity, diversity, and inclusion.
This $500,000 grant is part of CZI’s $500 million commitment to support organizations building just and sustainable systems that advance racial equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Twelve: Twelve is a chemical company that uses breakthrough technology to eliminate emissions by turning CO2 into products like jet fuel and electric car parts. Instead of creating these products from fossil fuels, Twelve sources carbon from existing CO2—replacing the fossil carbon in critical chemicals with renewable, recycled carbon from CO2. By combining CO2, water, and renewable energy, Twelve helps organizations like NASA reach climate goals. The transformation of carbon into other materials is a critical stepping stone in getting to a carbon negative economy and creating a robust market for carbon removal.
With CZI’s $20 million strategic program investment, Twelve will develop advanced capabilities for CO2 electrolysis, which will increase performance, accelerate timelines to large-scale deployment, mitigate supply chain dependencies, and reduce costs. Read more about Twelve’s work.
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Institute for Carbon Management: The Institute for Carbon Management (ICM) at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering focuses on developing breakthrough technologies to reduce carbon emissions and accelerate their commercialization. CZI’s $21 million grant will enable ICM to bring three promising carbon removal solutions from the lab to the field to validate real-world efficiency at scale.
Carbon removal purchases: CZI is committed to reducing our own emissions in 2022 and beyond. We’re working with Watershed, a software platform, to comprehensively measure our carbon emissions and execute on a plan to reduce them. For emissions that we can’t yet reduce, we are working on a plan to purchase rigorous carbon removals. We want these purchases to provide additional catalytic support to carbon removal companies that are working to demonstrate demand for their products. Making these purchases can help bring down the cost per ton of permanent carbon removal by accelerating the development and deployment of new carbon removal technologies, helping them scale in the future.
CZI also purchased $2.5 million in credits for removing carbon from the atmosphere from six innovative organizations:
About the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative was founded in 2015 to help solve some of society’s toughest challenges — from eradicating disease and improving education, to addressing the needs of our local communities. Our mission is to build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone. For more information, please visit www.chanzuckerberg.com.