The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has announced funding totaling nearly $33 million in support of efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

The funding includes $10 million in support of the Breakthrough Energy Fellows program, which aims to identify promising entrepreneurs and researchers working to develop, scale, and commercialize decarbonization technologies that have the potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 500 million tons per year by 2050. In 2021, fellows will focus on hydrogen, electrofuels, cement, steel, and fertilizer.

In addition, CZI has committed nearly $23 million in support of organizations building the field of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which encompasses a range of approaches — from direct air capture to mineralization — that absorb existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in a stable form. Recipients include the Bipartisan Policy Center, which is developing a framework for a potential carbon management program focused on CDR and carbon capture, transport, utilization, storage, and accounting, and working to bring together diverse policy and industry stakeholders to learn about new technologies and develop solutions to fulfill net-zero commitments; Carbon180, which will regrant $1 million to environmental justice organizations and work with scientists, businesses, and policy makers in support of efforts to help countries remove more carbon than they emit; and CarbonPlan, which relies on public data and open science to accelerate climate action.

"We believe in the power of innovation and collaboration to drive impactful change and are proud to support the new Breakthrough Energy Fellows to create and scale climate and clean energy technologies that will help us reach net-zero emissions by 2050," said CZI co-founders and co-CEOs Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg. "Climate change is one of the most urgent challenges of our time, and we're hopeful that supporting leading scientists and entrepreneurs to bring their inventions from the lab to broad scale will accelerate the pace of advancements and the move toward a clean energy future."

(Photo credit: Carbon180)