Methane and nitrous oxide are collectively responsible for over 0.5°C of warming and growing. Unlocking additional solutions and responses could significantly improve our climate trajectory when combined with existing mitigation efforts.
Even in the current climate moment, there are still large emissions sectors that don’t have widely-available solutions nor major efforts to holistically accelerate solution and field development. The flywheel of innovation, policy support, talent development, finance, and more has yet to kick off for all sectors, leaving potential additional solutions on the table. Yet some of these same areas have the potential for rapid mitigation at gigaton-equivalent scale. In this decisive decade, we not only need to deploy the solutions we have today, we also must develop the solutions and science we’ll need to further mitigate climate damages in the years to come.
We can accelerate the timeline for achieving additional climate solutions by initiating field-building support for emerging climate fields now, with the support of catalytic philanthropy
Our current programs focus on emerging fields with mid-term, large-scale mitigation potential to slow warming and bend the temperature curve. We hope to add more high-potential mitigation and adaptation fields over time.
Spark programs are the engines that build and coordinate fields to accelerate progress, including additional climate solutions, which involves:
Program funding enables us to achieve all of the above, including regranting and initiating new projects.
General funding for Spark enables us to support all of our programs, and spin up new ones to accelerate progress in additional climate fields. Program design is in the works for transformational nitrogen management and natural systems feedbacks.
In each of our program areas, as part of our field-building role, we spin up new initiatives to provide additional field support, build needed infrastructure for each field, and more. These each have dedicated funding. They are often incubated within Spark, and some may be their own standalone entities in the future.
The US federal government, a global powerhouse for innovation, could be doing a lot more to support livestock methane mitigation innovation and solution deployment, however advocacy organization expertise and capacity in this area remains low. Spark is building a cross-organization, funded National Livestock Methane Policy Coalition to build ecosystem capacity and distributed expertise to advance work in this area. Funding will be allocated to Coalition non-profit participants, as well as shared lobbying capacity, policy fellowships, and more.
For more information please contact us.
Spark is launching the Global Enteric Methane Industry Association (GEMIA)—the first and only industry association for enteric methane mitigation—to concentrate and magnify the effort of the dozens of companies working on enteric methane mitigation. GEMIA will facilitate pre-competitive work to unblock industry and highlight faster, more robust paths to market, while maintaining scientific credibility and building producer and consumer trust in these technologies, from breeding and vaccines to anti-methanogenic forages and feed additives.
For more information please contact us.
Current regulatory barriers and lack of a strong marketplace for enteric methane mitigation have made private investment in enteric methane mitigation technologies “higher risk”, yet we need more investment in these technologies in the lead up to 2030 than we ever have, and every year we wait, the adoption curve of these technologies toward 2050 becomes less and less impactful. In order to send a strong market signal for technology developers, Spark is starting to develop an Advanced Market Commitment for enteric methane.
For more information please contact us.
Research into atmospheric methane removal approaches and related science is still in its early days, with no dedicated public funding yet going into the field. Spark currently funds the majority of research in the field, with a goal to accelerate our collective understanding of potential atmospheric methane removal approaches, and ensure that the field is based from its inception on rigorous, independent science. The Atmospheric Methane Research Fund (more info) is a pooled research regranting vehicle, out of which we launch and fund scientific funding opportunities.
For more information is available here, if you want to learn more, please contact us.
There is important work ramping up in these fields across organizations, here are a few selected shovel-ready projects that would be highly impactful in each of their respective fields, and currently need funding to get started.
The Clean Air Task Force Methane program is gearing up to do more work in the livestock enteric methane mitigation space, with projects planned around advocacy and policy development to support low-methane breeding efforts (more info), accelerating adoption of methane reducing technologies by farmers (more info), and work in Brazil (more info) and Argentina.
For more information please contact us or Jonathan Banks at CATF.
This workshop, selected through a competitive call for proposal, will bring together 35 leading experts to evaluate the gaps in our capacity to monitor, model, and anticipate natural emission increases from wetlands, inland water bodies and thawing permafrost. Participants will evaluate the potential for an early warning system or other measurement framework to identify these emission increases and consider possible mitigation strategies arising from such a framework.
Convened by the Aspen Global Change Institute, this high-impact gathering is scheduled for 2025 or 2026. The workshop aims to advance our understanding of natural methane emissions and their response to climate change, ultimately informing more effective monitoring and mitigation strategies
For more information please contact us or Emily Jack-Scott at AGCI.
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