New Support for Slashing Super Pollutant Emissions, as Major Green Funders Pledge $450 Million

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One of humanity’s best chances of rapidly slowing climate change is to slash emissions of methane and other super pollutants — and a growing pile of philanthropic funding is being devoted to the cause.  

Eleven top philanthropies announced Saturday they have budgeted $450 million through 2026 to reduce such emissions, which are responsible for roughly half of global climate change, with methane — which is 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — accounting for roughly a quarter of all warming.

Made public during the first days of the United Nations climate change summit, known as COP28, the pledge builds on a long philanthropic history of funding the fight against such pollutants, including helping to establish the Global Methane Hub two years ago and supporting the Kigali Amendment that works to phase out hydrofluorocarbons.

The commitment is the latest sign of surging support for confronting such emissions. Funding for super pollutants grew 60% in 2022, the fastest of any segment in climate mitigation philanthropy, reaching approximately $120 million, though it still accounted for less than 4% of the sector’s funding, according to ClimateWorks Foundation’s yearly report. 

The new pledge means these 11 funders alone will spend, on average, more than $112 million annually to reduce emissions of super pollutants, with the majority dedicated to methane abatement and the rest to phasing out fluorinated gases, nitrous oxide, black carbon and ground-level ozone. Spending started this calendar year, but organizers could not say how much had been deployed to date.

“This is not a ‘nice to have,’ it’s ‘a need to have,’” said David Beckman, president of the Pisces Foundation, one of the pledging institutions, in an email. “The pledge is important because it signifies that more foundations are adopting an ‘all-pollutants’ approach, and not a minute too soon. But with less than 4% of philanthropic dollars directed to super pollutants, which are causing about half of current warming, there remains much more to do.”

Carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for centuries, while methane lasts only about a decade, which means eliminating leaks and other emissions can reduce warming in the short-term.

Others in the group include the Ballmer Group, Bezos Earth Fund, Children's Investment Fund Foundation, High Tide Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Larsen Lam Climate Change Foundation, Quadrature Climate Foundation, Sequoia Climate Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

“Methane is the tip of the spear in climate protection,” said Paul Bledsoe, a professorial lecturer at American University, former Clinton White House climate advisor and a past foundation consultant. “To see the major foundations finally more directly involved in methane is absolutely crucial.”

The commitment came amid a series of major methane announcements at COP28. About 50 top oil and gas companies pledged to reduce operational methane emissions to “near zero” by 2030, though that effort was criticized as “insufficient” and a “smokescreen” for lack of progress in phasing out fossil fuels in an open letter signed by more than 320 nonprofits, including 350.org, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Bloomberg Philanthropies, another pledger, last week announced a $40 million grant for work by the Environmental Defense Fund, RMI and others to track companies’ progress on that pledge and provide accountability.

Closer to home, the Biden administration recently finalized a rule that is expected to reduce methane emissions from the country’s oil and gas industry by nearly 80% by 2030. The announced funding aims to advance more such country-wide rules and their implementation, among other goals.

The philanthropic pledge’s headline figure appears to be made up of both existing foundation budgets for super pollutants being extended into coming years, as well as additional funding on top of those baseline funding levels. For example, Pisces has increased its spending by roughly a quarter over the period, according to Beckman. A spokesperson for the pledge said the funding was a mixture of “unannounced and new funding,” but were unable to share an overall breakdown.

“I would emphasize it’s a floor and not a ceiling. This is not the total amount that will be spent,” said Christie Ulman, president of Sequoia Climate Foundation. “A commitment creates momentum and it raises the priority of a set of topics … and near-term warming should be prioritized.”

With the pledge money flowing through nearly a dozen foundations, it is expected to support a diverse range of initiatives on super pollutants. Those will include helping implement government phase-down plans and incorporating such pollutants into the National Determined Contribution process — each country’s plan to reduce their emissions — laid out by the 2015 Paris Agreement. The partners also hope to triple the amount of climate finance available for non-CO2 pollutants by 2030 by leveraging additional funding.

The funding will also stretch well beyond work focused on oil and gas production. Methane is produced by a wide range of sources, from the digestive systems of cows — sometimes called methane farts and burps — to food rotting in landfills. 

Reducing super pollutants will not just slow warming, but save lives around the world. As laid out in a study in The Lancet, measures targeting black carbon would prevent about 2.4 million deaths annually. Reducing ozone exposure — currently responsible for about 150,000 deaths each year — will have similar impacts. Rising temperatures, of course, also cause loss of life through famine, floods and fires.

“Every tenth of a degree matters,” said Ulman, in a call from COP28. “Obviously, it’s important to delegates sitting here in Dubai, but it’s more important to vulnerable communities and future generations that don’t have a voice.”