By 2030, climate change will push 100 million people back into poverty according to the World Bank and cause 250,000 deaths per year according to the WHO. And there’s a 10% chance that temperatures will rise by over 6ºC (10.8 Fahrenheit) according to the IPCC.

We are crowdfunding for the Clean Energy Innovation program at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)—a top-ranked US think tank. Their policy research focuses on the effectiveness of higher and smarter clean energy R&D spending and communicating this to policy-makers. We have done hundreds of hours of research and believe that this is the most effective way to donate to combat climate change. Why?

Bill Gates explains it well in this very short video (less than 2 mins):

You can read our in-depth analysis below, but briefly:

Advanced economies like the US and EU are prioritizing reducing their own emissions. But by 2040, 75% of all emissions will come from emerging economies such as China and India. Only if advanced economies’ climate policies reduce emissions in all countries will we prevent dangerous climate change. The best policies to do this are those that stimulate innovation and make clean energy technology cheaper in all countries. We compared 10 climate policies that stimulate innovation (e.g. carbon taxes, deployment subsidies, cutting fossil fuel subsidies) and found that increasing government budgets for public clean energy research and development (R&D) is the most effective—even more effective than carbon taxes.

Public clean energy R&D is neglected: only $22 billion is spent per year globally. This might sound like a lot but consider that this is only 0.02% of World GDP. For comparison, world energy expenditure was 6% of the World’s GDP. This means we spend about 300 times as much on energy than on making energy better. We also spend $140 billion on clean energy deployment subsidies, when analysts say that the ratio of research to subsidies should be more like one-to-one. Many advanced economies (e.g. U.S., EU) could unilaterally increase this substantially without international coordination—which makes this much more politically tractable than carbon taxes.

Better yet, advanced economies can coordinate spending parts of their GDP on clean energy R&D. Many countries have already done so by signing an international ‘Mission Innovation’ agreement, but are not on track to fulfill their pledges. Donating to this campaign might lead countries to get back on track and increase clean energy R&D budgets. This would make low-carbon energy cheaper, carbon taxes more politically acceptable, and prevent dangerous climate change.