Climate Change

Our 2009 Climate Change grantees are listed below.  We awarded $240,000 to eight organizations doing work in Washington and Oregon. 

• Cascadia Region Green Building Council (http://www.cascadiagbc.org/) $30,000 to advance building energy efficiency standards and educate builders, architects, real estate brokers and appraisers on the advantages of energy efficient structures.
• Climate Solutions (http://www.climatesolutions.org/) $30,000 to advance climate change policy in Washington and Oregon and to promote carbon cap and invest mechanisms with the Western Climate Initiative
• NW Energy Coalition (http://www.nwenergy.org/) $20,000 to continue implementation of their "Efficiency Works!" program and uncover barriers to energy efficiency measure adoption
• Oregon Environmental Council (http://www.oeconline.org/) $30,000 to advance climate change policy in Oregon and to promote carbon cap and invest mechanisms with the Western Climate Initiative
• Pacific Forest Trust (http://www.pacificforest.org/) $20,000 to advance the thinking of forests as a sector within cap and invest mechanisms and to promote forests as part of the solution for climate change policy
• ShoreBank Enterprise Cascadia (http://www.sbpac.com/) $40,000 to develop an innovative financing approach for energy efficiency (one of the key barriers to adoption) with emphasis on solutions for low income households
• Sightline Institute (http://www.sightline.org/) $40,000 to develop climate policy research and solutions and to create communication messages for use with key influentials
• Washington Environmental Coalition (http://www.wecprotects.org/) $30,000 to advance climate change policy in Washington and to promote carbon cap and invest mechanisms with the Western Climate Initiative.  Additionally to drive adoption of energy efficiency measures in Washington.

The Climate Change Fund Advisory Committee of the Laird Norton Family Foundation reaffirms its commitment to the issue of climate change and working toward creating a healthy and productive environment for current and future generations.  We believe the cornerstone of a move to a low carbon economy is a policy commitment to reducing fossil fuel dependence.  The other pieces are conversion of energy use to renewables and energy efficiency.  As a small family foundation it is important for us to find a way for our limited resources to have as much of an impact as is possible.  We have to find the appropriate way to leverage ourselves in solutions which will have as much scale impact as possible.  As we’ve analyzed the role that a foundation can play in this national imperative at a more regional and local level, we have concluded there are two near term (3 year time horizon) opportunities to reduce CO₂ emissions:

1. Policy work supporting the Western Climate Initiative – a seven state and four Canadian province effort to establish a carbon cap policy; and
2. Energy Efficiency

We will fund nonprofits in Washington and Oregon.  We will also lean toward being a strategic funder instead of taking a “charitable banker” approach.  We wish to invest more deeply with organizations to achieve greater impacts rather than spread smaller amounts to lots of organizations.  Additionally, we will commit to developing our expertise and other funder relationships. 

A cap on fossil fuel use, which declines over time, is critical to achieving CO₂ reductions.  Establishing a carbon cap policy will create the private sector investment predictability needed and a public infrastructure investment path.  It will also create incentives for new products and services and a new green economy.  From a timing perspective, this is a “now” situation and foundation support can be critical to achieving a defined framework. 

By most accounts and studies, energy efficiency is the best near-term opportunity to reduce fossil fuel consumption.  In fact, it is the first “alternative fuel” we should be reaching for as it typically has cost benefits to consumers.  Energy efficiency is the bridge to get us to a renewable energy based economy (as these technologies mature and achieve cost parity with fossil fuels).  There are a plethora of areas in which to work, from addressing regulatory barriers (creating incentives for utilities to encourage energy conservation), to market barriers (figuring out how to address the landlord-tenant conundrum – where tenants pay the electrical bill but landlords don’t have incentive to install energy efficiency measures) to “green” job creation in our tough economy (training people to work on low income household weatherization and energy efficiency installation). 

We would like to be able to clearly measure our impact, though we will be taking a long-term view.  We have decided to focus on the mitigation side of the climate change issue (which means seeking ways to reduce CO₂ emissions) rather than the adaptation side (helping all species deal with the consequences – temperature rises, changes in rainfall patterns, land changes – of  global warming).  In theory, we would be able to point to specific indicators (regulatory changes, policy adoption, projects executed) which led to reductions in CO₂ (fewer tons emitted).  In reality it is hard to attribute particular efforts to specific outcomes and harder to measure.  However, we will be rigorous in applying as many quantitative criteria as we can to our choices and tying specific indicators to our grants, so that over time we might get clear feedback on the results of our investments.