Doris Duke Foundation Gives $100-Million to Help Slow Global Warming

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation announced last week that it plans to spend $100-million over the next five years to halt global warming, marking one of the biggest commitments by a single grant maker to that effort. But foundations are increasingly showing interest in the cause of climate change — though many experts say more private money is needed.

The New York foundation’s goal is to speed the development of new energy technologies that can reduce the threat of global warming.

“In our view the debate over global warming is settled,” says Andrew Bowman, director of the new grant-making program. “We now need to apply resources on how we are going to build a new, clean-energy economy. This is where philanthropy can be involved.”

“The issue is definitely gaining momentum, although one still needs to be sobered by the scale of the problem,” says Hal Harvey, environmental program director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Mr. Harvey estimates that, with the new Duke funds, total annual giving by foundations for energy and climate-change issues amounts to $120-million a year, while consumers in the United States spend $1-trillion on energy each year.

The Energy Foundation, in San Francisco — which was started by several grant makers, including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Pew Charitable Trusts — is perhaps the largest single supporter of climate-change projects. The Energy Foundation pays for scientific studies, policy analysis on energy issues, and public-awareness campaigns in the United States and in China, where a booming economy is driving increased fuel use.

“We’re absolutely focused on climate change as the biggest problem humanity faces,” says Eric Heitz, president of the Energy Foundation. “As an entire entity we’re focused on global-warming pollution reduction.”

The organization’s annual budget has increased from $24-million three years ago to near $40-million today, although Mr. Heitz says that “philanthropy is still underinvesting” in the overall topic.

The cause could garner more support soon from the Internet giant Google, which cited global climate change among the causes it plans to support as part of its new $1-billion philanthropic effort. Google has announced few details for that effort, however.

Policy Data

The majority of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s grants will go toward exploring ways that government policy can help spur the development and adoption of clean, climate-friendly energy sources, increase conservation, and lessen the demand for traditional fuels, such as coal.

“What we are really talking about is rewiring our entire energy system,” Mr. Bowman says. “It needs to be done at a scale that is far beyond our $100-million. In our view the best way to leverage these resources and have an impact would be to help get sensible policies in place to drive these markets the way they should be.”

For example, the foundation said it might finance efforts to examine whether governments should offer companies new tax credits for studying and developing alternative fuel sources, or to persuade localities to adopt new building codes that emphasize conservation and energy efficiency.

“Like all foundations, we need to be careful to never cross a line into any sort of lobbying work,” Mr. Bowman says. “We will never support a particular piece of legislation, but we want to make sure that these ideas are developed.”

This is the largest project the foundation has undertaken since it started awarding grants 10 years ago, and it is among the largest any group has made to deal with climate change. The foundation said it would increase its spending to pay for the effort, not cut the amount it awards to any of its other grant-making efforts, which focus on the performing arts, wildlife conservation, medical research, and the prevention of child abuse. The foundation has about $1.9-billion in assets, making it one of the 30 wealthiest grant-making institutions in the United States.

The Duke program’s focus on public policy is the “right move,” says Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, in San Francisco, one of the country’s oldest environmental groups.

“The energy sector of the American economy is huge and complicated, and not a free market in a conventional sense,” Mr. Pope says. “It’s a government-created mishmash that’s very static and noninnovative.”

Mr. Pope says climate change has become the preeminent issue at his 115-year-old organization.

“At this point probably half of our program budget is now going to energy and global-warming issues, and three years ago it was probably only 10 percent,” Mr. Pope says.

Widening Woes

Mr. Bowman says the Duke foundation’s interest in making grants on climate change goes back to 2005, when its board asked staff members to identify causes the organization did not support that “cried out for significant investment.”

“What rose to the top was global climate change.” Mr. Bowman says, noting that it can threaten wildlife and natural habitats, which Duke has so far spent more than $130-million to preserve.

“The board quickly came to realize that if we are also worried about health and child welfare, especially in places like Africa, that climate change is going to have a huge impact here as well,” Mr. Bowman adds.

The longer-term challenges climate change may present could be staggering. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored committee that includes many of the world’s top scientists, issued a report this month that details the dire impact that a gain of just a few degrees in global temperatures could have on human populations, particularly in poor countries.

A warmer world could lead to flooded coastal areas, lessening rainfall, widespread crop failures, and more than 100 million people facing food and water shortages by 2050, it said.

As the analysis of climate change’s potentially devastating impact continues, some charity leaders expect to see additional philanthropic dollars to come to the cause.

“It would not surprise me if organizations like [the Bill & Melinda] Gates Foundation, which has a strong global-development agenda, didn’t begin to think about the environmental conditions in which development occurs,” Mr. Harvey says.

The Gates foundation, in Seattle, is committing hundreds of million of dollars in Africa fighting disease and poverty, and has not spent much on climate-change issues.

The Rockefeller Foundation, in New York, which is working with the Gates foundation in a $150-million effort to improve African agricultural practices to increase food production, has a climate-change project under development.

“If you’re interested in health and if you’re interested in human welfare, then you have to take a look at global warming,” says Mr. Heitz of the Energy Foundation. “This is well beyond an environmental issue. It’s a moral and social issue.”