The Rockefeller Foundation to invest over $1bn into tackling climate change
Melanie May | 18 September 2023 | News
The Rockefeller Foundation is to invest over USD 1 billion over the next five years into climate change: specifically into advancing the global climate transition and helping everyone participate in it.
The investment is part of a new strategy, which the Foundation says is the first of its kind in its 110-year history. Its two central pillars are to: “bring the world together to address climate change in a more concerted manner and seize the climate transition’s opportunities and benefits for the billions of people who have historically been denied them.” The Rockefeller Foundation is also prioritising achieving Net Zero for its operations globally.
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Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, President of The Rockefeller Foundation commented:
“The Foundation has made many big bets in its history, and we believe climate change’s threats and the climate transition’s opportunities—especially for the most vulnerable—justify what will be the biggest and most impactful bet in our history. The strategy is designed around a simple idea: humanity does not have to choose between addressing climate change and advancing human opportunity, we simply have to work in new ways and at a bigger scale and with new people and in new places to make sure everyone cannot just survive the climate crisis but thrive.”
Under the strategy, it is working to integrate climate across its four core focus areas of power, health, food, and finance; and to catalyse global action for solutions that will speed up transformations within these systems.
This includes providing additional resources, advocacy, and strategic support to a series of Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet (GEAPP) initiatives, which were co-launched with the IKEA Foundation and Bezos Earth Fund during the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2021 (COP26). At the time, The Rockefeller Foundation committed $500 million: its largest single investment to date.
The Foundation has announced a series of resources and support for several collaborations with GEAPP, including:
- $5 million to operationalize the global Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) Consortium.
- $1 million to jumpstart the development of 1,000 minigrids in Zambia.
- Leveraging its expertise to help develop metro-grids in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The new strategy will also see The Rockefeller Foundation work to bring together partners needed for climate action, both in-person and virtually.
In addition it is providing:
- $35 million for climate-finance investments, including $5 million for grants, to accelerate nature-based solutions, decarbonisation, and carbon removal strategies globally.
- $20 million for Invest in Our Future to accelerate climate-smart infrastructure development in the United States.
- A series of new grants and initiatives that will include accelerating opportunities to protect the health of those most vulnerable to, and least responsible for, climate change, and mainstreaming health priorities into the climate negotiations as a member of the COP28 Health Day Steering Committee. It will also convene a series of meetings focused on food solutions that are good for people and planet in the lead up to COP28.
Net Zero
The Rockefeller Foundation headquarters in New York City have already been renovated to comply with LEED gold certification and WELL Accreditation, and it will take additional steps toward reaching Net Zero for its all of facilities, which includes its headquarters and locations in Washington, D.C.; Nairobi, Kenya; Bangkok, Thailand; and Bellagio, Italy, and across all other areas of its operations worldwide.
Steps taken by The Rockefeller Foundation in recent years include committing to divesting its endowment from existing fossil fuel interests and to making no future fossil fuel investments.
Adm. (ret.) James Stavridis, Chair of The Rockefeller Foundation Board of Trustees said:
“The climate crisis is humanity’s gravest threat—and for a Foundation dedicated to its well-being, this strategy is both logical and necessary. Right now, only about 2% of philanthropic capital worldwide is focused on climate change; everyone here at the Foundation is 100 percent committed to doing what we can to help.”
The Foundation’s philanthropic history began with an original endowment of $100 million from John D. Rockefeller, founder of Standard Oil, which once controlled more than 90% of petroleum production in the United States. Since 1913, it has invested $24 billion of philanthropic capital, with a vision of encouraging scaled investments and seeking creative and science-based solutions to intractable problems.
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.