News Brief

Bezos Funds Electrification, Embodied Carbon Reductions

The Rocky Mountain Institute has received $10 million from the Bezos Earth Fund for its building and industry decarbonization efforts.

Jeff Bezos

In his initial climate-change-focused Bezos Earth Fund grants, Jeff Bezos focused on environmental sustainability and justice.

Photo: Seattle City Council. License: CC BY-SA 2.0.
The Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) has received a $10 million grant from the new Bezos Earth Fund, which was founded with the goal of mitigating climate change.

Eighty percent of the funding will go toward RMI’s Carbon-Free Buildings campaign. This initiative advocates for all-electric new construction as well as deep energy retrofits for existing buildings. The other 20% is for the Mission Possible Partnership, an effort to decarbonize industry by focusing on the embodied carbon of building materials like aluminum, steel, and cement, along with the carbon footprint of the shipping and aviation industries.

“Addressing the climate crisis can start with the places we hold most dear—the buildings where we live and work—while also decarbonizing the way we produce and transport the materials that are the foundation of those buildings, as well as the backbone of our global economy, like steel and cement,” said RMI CEO Jules Kortenhorst in a press release.

In its first round of funding, the Bezos Earth Fund also granted money to the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Eden Reforestation Projects. Many of the grants are designed to advance environmental justice.

More on building electrification and embodied carbon

Meet the People Preparing to Amp Up Building Electrification

The Urgency of Embodied Carbon and What You Can Do about It

Changing Building Design for a Changing Electrical Grid

Wood: What’s Good?

For more information

Rocky Mountain Institute
rmi.org

Published January 11, 2021

Melton, P. (2020, December 17). Bezos Funds Electrification, Embodied Carbon Reductions. Retrieved from https://www.buildinggreen.com/newsbrief/bezos-funds-electrification-embodied-carbon-reductions

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