Environment Program: Climate and Energy Grant

The Hewlett Foundation has been investing for a number of years in various strategies to avoid the worst effects of climate change and spare human suffering by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Our grants focus on cleaning up power production, using less oil, using energy more efficiently, preserving forests, addressing non-CO2 greenhouse gases, and financing climate-friendly investments. Our grantmaking is focused in developed countries with high energy demand and developing countries with fast-growing energy demand or high deforestation rates.

Goals

The following fundamental logic guides our grantmaking:

• We should focus our charitable dollars on mitigating climate change. The window for effective mitigation is rapidly closing, and the more society can reduce future warming, the less it will need to adapt.
• The most effective way to reduce GHG emissions is to focus on supporting progress in the biggest emitting countries and regions of the world: China, the United States, Europe, and India. These areas have both the largest potential gains and opportunities for spillover effects to other countries.
• Within these countries and regions, we should focus on the highest-emitting industries and sectors, including electricity and transportation, as well as industrial processes, the built environment, and forests and land-use.
• Philanthropy can speed emissions reductions by supporting a mix of analysis, advocacy, communications, technical assistance, innovation, business sector engagement, public-private partnership, and building public support and will for policy change. This work is largely national, and includes support for international agreements.
• The dramatic emissions reductions we need will not be possible unless we shift our thinking. We must get beyond our present focus on near-term, incremental efforts that reduce emissions today, and identify the longer-term, scaled-up, step-changes needed to mitigate the climate problem. To do that, we looked farther into the future—to 2050, rather than 2025 or 2030, and asked: What will energy and economic systems need to look like in 2050 to achieve the well below 2°C goal? And how can philanthropy support this transition?

Given this logic, we have five strategic imperatives for our grantmaking:

• Support work to reduce fossil fuels:
• We must continue to support current efforts to peak global use of fossil fuels as early as possible, including defending recent successes.
• Support work on energy systems:
• We must pivot from narrowly focusing on specific sub-elements of the energy sector to looking for systemic shifts that are potentially transformational. For example, instead of resting on the field’s success at bringing renewable electricity generation to market, we must now support work to overcome the complex, persistent, and interrelated regulatory, legal, social, and political barriers to deploying it at scale.
• Support work integrating across sectors.
• The work we support needs to be more broadly integrated across different problems and solutions. For example, transforming the transportation sector will require going beyond vehicle improvement and integrating it with the electricity, information, and land-use sectors.
• Support work to store carbon in the land.
• Climate models suggest that nearly a third of global emissions reductions must come from managing our lands, our agriculture, and our forests. To date, only a very small share of government or philanthropic resources has gone to support this work. Our society must increase that amount dramatically.
• Support and promote innovation.
• Climate philanthropy needs to invest more in research, analysis, and advocacy for policies that drive innovation in advanced energy systems and technologies. This includes finding ways to unlock public funding for the early stages of innovation and encouraging private investment for the commercial deployment of viable new technologies.