Accelerating New Solution Development for Methane and Nitrous Oxide

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.

Learn More →

Sector	Challenge	Stage
Livestock Enteric Methane Mitigation	Livestock enteric methane emissions are currently 3 Gt CO2e (9 Gt CO2e GWP20) annually and growing.	Program →
Transformational Agricultural Nitrogen Management Solutions	Agricultural nitrous oxide emissions are currently 1.6 Gt CO2e annually and growing.	Exploratory Learn More →
Natural Systems Feedbacks	Tropical wetland and permafrost thaw methane emissions will potentially emit up to an additional 4 Gt CO2e GWP100 (12 Gt CO2e GWP20) annually by 2100 as the climate changes.	Exploratory Learn More →
Methane Removal Research	These rising natural methane emissions motivate researching methods to remove methane from the atmosphere as an additional risk management tool on top of crucial emissions reductions.	Program →

Spark Programs

Spark programs are the engines that build and coordinate fields to accelerate progress, including additional climate solutions, which involves:

Catalyzing scientific research
Advancing innovation-forward policy
Developing appropriate incentive structures
Supporting social science, governance, and policy development
Building talent capacity across the field, including within existing organizations

Program funding enables us to achieve all of the above, including regranting and initiating new projects.

Livestock Enteric Methane Mitigation Program →Methane Removal Program →

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.

Spark-Initiated Projects and Funding Opportunities

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.

Livestock Enteric Methane Mitigation

Methane Removal

Field funding opportunities

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.