The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has announced that it will give $44 million for companies to develop technologies that can fight climate change. Removing carbon is the newest tech that is being adopted to fight global warming as carbon dioxide (CO2) is considered to be the main culprit behind climate change.
CZI, the philanthropic organization that was founded by Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg along with his wife Priscilla Chan, is donating $44 million to find solutions to combat climate change. It will fund technologies that would capture carbon dioxide build up in the atmosphere.
The CZI is giving UCLA $21 million, a company called Twelve $20 million and $2.5 million will be used to buy carbon removal credits from a range of projects. Carbon transformation is the new technology that is being developed to combat climate change due to high levels of CO2 in the air.
The UCLA Institute for Carbon Management Chancellor Gene Block said that the “Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative’s generous investment” would help the institute to develop revolutionary technologies that become more “accessible, affordable and sustainable for communities.”
Chancellor Block also said that the gift would help students and faculty to “strengthen” their positions as leaders on “carbon management and the fight against climate change.”
Twelve is a company that changes carbon dioxide emissions into building blocks that are commercially useful. These blocks can be used instead of fossil carbon. The renewable carbon from the carbon dioxide is used instead of conventional products and pure oxygen is the only byproduct.
This is not the first time that the CZI has donated tens of millions for combating climate change. In 2021, the Chan Zuckerberg foundation had given $23 millions to organizations that were developing carbon removal technology. They also gave $10 million to Breakthrough Energy Fellows who are entrepreneurs and researchers whose mission is to develop decarbonization technologies. The CZI Initiative, founded in 2015, says that its “mission is to build a more inclusive, just, and healthy future for everyone.”
