About Us

The Planetary Sunshade Institute advances the world’s understanding of space based sunlight reflection by working to answer the question, ‘how could the world build a planetary sunshade?’

To do this, we:

Organize world experts, including aerospace engineers, climate scientists, and governance leaders.
Participate in governance development by engaging with the forums developing climate and space policy.
Develop research funding, working with donors to advance priority areas.
Design a sunshade system, constantly improving our understanding of the likely technical pathway.

The Planetary Sunshade Institute is a U.S.-based, registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
Our EIN is 87-1564467

Core Values:

First Principles & Science. Our understanding is that humanity stabilizes the climate by reducing emissions, removing greenhouse gases, & reflecting sunlight. If these conclusions turn out to be incorrect, we’ll adjust accordingly.
Solutions Thinking. We start by imagining what would work, and work backwards from there.
Integrity. We invest in building trust with our collaborators & community
For the public benefit. A sunshade is only possible with legitimate governance. Only governments can authorize and fund geoengineering deployment.

History

The planetary sunshade concept was introduced to the world by James Early of the Lawrence Livermore National Labrotory. He wrote in the British Interplanetary Journal that “A thin glass shield built from lunar materials and located near the first Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system could offset the greenhouse effects caused by the CO2 buildup in the Earth’s atmosphere”. Researchers continued to study the concept, although it received very little attention.

In 2018, climate change was causing increasingly greater impacts, the risk of climate tiipping points was becoming obvious, and re-usable rockets had drastically reduced the cost of access to space. The Planetary Sunshade Foundation (later renamed to Institute) was founded to connect the nascent global field and organize research around the most promising technical pathways.