Harnessing the power of invention and innovation to accelerate climate action and improve lives around the world.
We believe the tools of invention and innovation can be applied to address and counteract climate change.
The Foundation understands the urgency of the climate crisis and the immediacy with which we must respond.
Our Approach
The Foundation’s Climate Initiative focuses on innovation, justice, and learning.
Our goal is to combine the tools of innovation, invention, and climate justice to blaze and widen the pathways to drawing down emissions by 2030 and attaining net zero emissions by 2050. We work with partners in the climate action space, learning and collaborating to build a better future.
Our Goals
A decarbonized economy will fall short if it continues to marginalize the communities left behind since the industrial revolution. Therefore, throughout our climate action work, we prioritize these communities through inclusive decision-making, investing in their resilience, creating a diverse green workforce, and aiming for shared prosperity.
Global South
In the global south, our climate action strategy is focused on energy and opportunity. We support sustainable and renewable solutions that will prevent emissions spikes and ensure equitable access to energy; we support the storage of biological carbon in forests such as the Amazon and Congo, critical for reaching global emissions targets; we support efforts to build green industrial sectors and workforces; we support efforts to abate methane emissions; and we seek opportunities to advance regional decarbonization strategies.
Global North
In the global north, we focus on leverage and leadership. Recent U.S. Congressional legislation has the potential to significantly transform the domestic energy landscape by bringing substantial federal resources to bear. While public budgets shift with political change, the private sector is also poised to inject billions into decarbonizing. We are committed to maximizing and leveraging these existing resources, both public and private, to advance the technology and policies necessary to decarbonize. We also work to foster the leaders, both North and South, who are innovating and imagining a thriving, decarbonized economy worldwide, and efforts to abate methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure.
Strategic Focus
The Lemelson Foundation’s strategic climate focus is on supporting innovative approaches to decarbonize the global economy, guided by our core values of innovation, justice, and learning.
Innovation
Forestalling the worst impacts of the ongoing climate disruption requires transforming the way we power and build our homes, factories and businesses; the way we produce food, travel and transport goods; and the way we treat our land. The Foundation believes the technology exists today to help make these transformations. To accelerate and scale up climate solutions, we work with strategic partners to identify targeted investments in technology, innovative finance solutions, and new research. The Foundation brings deep expertise about how to build entrepreneurial ecosystems, improve access to catalytic capital, and train the next generation of game-changers.
Justice
While achieving emissions reductions is critical, the Foundation realizes that such gains are not sustainable without thriving frontline communities, and not ethical without climate justice. The Foundation works with international and local partners to help spur innovation in frontline communities, focusing on Native and Indigenous communities, as well as underserved urban and rural communities. Where possible, the Foundation seeks to address both adaptation and mitigation efforts.
Learning
The climate crisis is amplifying social, economic, and ecological uncertainty. The Foundation understands the limits of our knowledge and endeavors to be in a constant state of learning and adapting to new conditions by taking risks, exploring gaps, and catalyzing additional resources with partners in the climate action space. We seek to learn and share our experiences in collaboration with peers, partner communities, and other experts supporting climate action. We bring a commitment to three qualities that our founder, Jerry Lemelson, described as essential for an inventor: creativity, vision, and perseverance.
“Sustainability describes fundamental changes in the ways we power our world and interact with the Earth and each other on an individual and societal level — a globally decarbonized society that is more equitable, hopeful, and just.”
Eric Lemelson
President, The Lemelson Foundation
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Climate Action
The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth
We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.
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Climate Action
Indigenizing Catalytic Capital
First Peoples Worldwide (FPW) studied the role that catalytic capital plays in “forwarding self-determination and non-extractive investing” for Indigneous Peoples in the United States. “Native Peoples have built economic power; Native businesses are flourishing; and there are ample opportunities to fund successful Native enterprises both on and off reservations,” according to the new report, Indigenizing Catalytic Capital.
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Climate Action
Funding trends 2024: Climate change mitigation philanthropy
The report traces the evolution of climate philanthropy and highlights ways to support bold climate action.
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Climate Action
AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023
The IPCC finalized the Synthesis Report for the Sixth Assessment Report during the Panel’s 58th Session held in Interlaken, Switzerland from 13 – 19 March 2023.
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Climate Action
ACE/CIRCLE: Growing and Diversifying Youth Climate Activism
The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) and Action for the Climate Emergency (ACE) partnered to examine how climate-focused organizations can reach a wider diversity of young people, both to strengthen their efforts and to deepen youth civic and political engagement.
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Climate Action
Clear Path to A Clean Energy Future
This second edition of “Clear Path to a Clean Energy Future” updates the inaugural edition, tracking the power sector, clean technology, and policy trends in America. In our previous report, we identified that utility commitments contribute to significant additional reductions in emissions beyond what was projected in our reference case. Still, underinvestments in new technologies and retirement of the existing nuclear fleet could result in a rebound in emissions out to 2050.
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Climate Action
Insurance and climate risks: Policy lessons from three bounding scenarios
This report identifies policy lessons based on the investigation of three bounding scenarios designed to address the question of how near-term (1 to 3 y) policy and regulatory choices surrounding insurance markets in Florida could influence medium-term (3 to 15 y) risk levels, disaster recovery, housing markets, and local economic outcomes.
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Climate Action
Sustainable Cooling for All in Kenya
Cooling and cold chains are vital for healthcare and vaccines, for nutrition and agricultural value chains, for thermal comfort at home, work, school, in transportation, and for industrial processes and data centres. Affordable and sustainable cooling is essential for a thriving society and a healthy nation, sitting at the intersection of the Paris Climate Agreement, the Kigali Amendment of the Montreal Protocol and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Climate Action Grantees
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ClearPath
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Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy
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Oil Change International
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Rocky Mountain Institute
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Action for the Climate Emergency
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Environmental Defense Fund
