Funding Landscape for Reducing, Removing and Reflecting

To say that planetary sunshade research is underfunded is an understatement. Investment in this medium-to-long-term intervention is barely visible above the zero mark.

Let’s put this in perspective using numbers from 2024. How much did the world spend or invest in technology research, development, deployment, or general infrastructure in that year? We’ll organize this by the ‘Three Rs’ – reduce, remove, reflect.

Reduction of emissions, including energy efficiency, converting dirty appliances, and especially investments into EVs and solar power. According to the International Energy Agency, in 2024 the world hit $2 trillion in investment. (This is nearly twice the amount invested in fossil fuels, although the fact that over $1T went into fossil fuels is still alarming from a climate perspective.) Reduction is the largest category. It’s what most people and governments think when they think climate action. Heck, some climate philanthropies even define their mission in terms of emissions reduction.

Removal of emissions, including both natural methods like reforestation, and industrial methods like direct air capture. There are a myriad of methods on the ’natural’ to industrial’ spectrum, like enhanced rock weathering, ocean carbon removal and more. In 2024, this field earned $2 billion in sales for carbon removal credits according to CDR.fyi. Another way to measure this, by the Circular Carbon Network, is to capture all investment in CO2 removal, CO2 conversion, point source capture, and Circular Carbon market infrastructure. This slightly broader category topped $6.6 billion in 2024.

Before we look at the third ‘R’, reflection, let’s note two other key numbers.

Adaptation, or the modification of the built environment to guard against climate damages, including sea walls, fire hardening, etc. While this is difficult to measure, the World Resources Institute estimates that in 2024 adaptation bilateral agreements measured $15 billion.

Disasters attributed to climate change are costly. The group Christian Aid analyzed insurance payouts for disasters in 2024 and found $229 billion in damages that year, in addition to 2,000 deaths. This included two very large hurricanes hitting the US that year.

Funding for all reflection

With these benchmarks in place, let’s look at reflecting sunlight. The best data is collected by SRM360.org, which publishes a detailed funding tracker. In 2024, they show $31 million allocated across all sunlight reflection research methods. Below is the cumulative chart from SRM360 here as well to put 2024’s numbers in context. Note that the following year, in 2025, major private investment of stratospheric aerosol firm Stardust was announced at $70 million, and the UK’s ARIA agency announced $60 million in funding spread across five years.

Sunshade Funding:

While no dedicated tracker exists for sunshade funding, we’re pretty sure there isn’t a need for one yet. That’s because total sunshade funding across 2025 and 2026, the only years we are aware of any funding existing, was less than $1 million. The vast majority of this were two ARIA-funded grants to the Planetary Sunshade Institute ($500k), and to the University of Glasgow ($400k). Other work on sunshades occurs within university settings where professors can direct graduate student work, or by private individuals donating their time.

For a full picture of the sunshade research network, see our tracker.

Summary

To put this all in perspective, the methods which are necessary for long-term stabilization, (reduction and removal), also do almost nothing for near-term avoidance of tipping points. This is because carbon stays in the atmosphere for centuries, and only after we are remove gigatons do we improve the climate situation. Right now, reduction and removal are focused on bending the curve flatter — we are decades to a century away from the curve starting to ‘go negative’.

Climate disasters are costly, in financial terms, but also to human life and ecosystems. Preventing them is woefully underfunded, but even maximum funding at local adaptation is not a complete solution.

In the next decades, and likely until sometime in the next century, sunlight reflection may be the only way to prevent catastrophic climate tipping points by addressing the Earth radiation budget. Investment for reflection is lacking across the board, and particularly for the sunshade concept, which could provide the medium-term, stable, global shading while reduction and removal does the real work.