$40 million gift from Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya to solar geoengineering research

Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF), the philanthropic arm of London-based quant hedge fund Quadrature Capital (QC) that is owned by Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya, is planning to invest $40 million over three years in solar geoengineering research.

Solar geoengineering is the development and use of science and technology to reflect solar radiation (sunlight) back into outer space to help offset human-caused global warming. A

The QCF commitment—which will focus on academic research and the development of global oversight structures—is double what all foundations and wealthy individuals provided to such efforts from 2008 through 2018 and roughly on par with what the United States government has funded to date. Created in 2019 by QC founders Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya, the foundation commits a portion of QC’s annual profits to “fighting the climate emergency.”

To date, Quadrature has provided solar geoengineering funding to Colorado State University, the University of Exeter, and the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project at Rutgers University, as well as SilverLining, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that pools funding for solar geoengineering research around the world and has pushed for greater government support and funding for the field.

QCF intends to invest only in nonprofit efforts that are “used solely for public benefit and not for private gain,” the foundation’s chief science officer Greg De Temmerman told MIT Technology Review.

In the absence of largescale government investment, Temmerman noted: “we think we can have a very strong impact in accelerating research, making sure it’s happening, and trying to unlock some public money at some point.”