Garden Grants - Greenhouse Gas Removal (GHGR)

Garden Grants - Greenhouse Gas Removal

Program Status: 2025 cohort funded and announced (July 2025); next cycle status unknown as of April 2026

Geographic Scope: International (11 funded projects across multiple countries)

Focus Areas:

• Biological methane removal and measurement
• Bio-enhanced rock weathering
• Photosynthesis efficiency improvement
• Direct air capture technologies
• Soil carbon sequestration
• Microbial carbon capture and utilization
• Tree-based atmospheric methane removal
• Enzyme engineering for GHG reduction

Sub-Focus Areas Identified:

• Bio-enhanced rock weathering: Early-stage, concept-phase research with Gt-scale potential
• Biological methane removal: Nascent area with high impact potential

Program Innovation - RIFS Cycle:
Roadmap-Ignite-Fund-Synthesize cycle designed to create feedback loops:

• Roadmap: Expert interviews and workshops to co-create problem statements
• Ignite: Community engagement, subject matter expert amplification, convenings
• Fund: Deployment of research grants
• Synthesize: Learning synthesis back into field

Key Features:

• Surfaces important problems as mutually reinforcing to funding solutions
• Creates virtuous feedback loops (similar to marketplace dynamics)
• 70% of 2025 awardees are solving collaboratively-identified problems from Problem Statement Repository
• Over 50 applicants chose to share problem statements publicly
• Convened 35 world experts in November 2024 workshop on biological methane removal
• Published 10 new problem statements with contributions from 14 co-author attendees
• Demonstrates exponential growth potential for climate biotech

Funding Partners (2025):

• Homeworld Collective (lead funder: ~$1M)
• Spark Climate Solutions (co-funder)
• Grantham Foundation (co-funder)
• Quadrature Climate Foundation (program support)
• Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (supporter)
• Schmidt Futures (supporter)

Eligibility:

• Early-stage research in greenhouse gas removal biotechnology
• Projects addressing frontier challenges in GHGR
• Can focus on development of new tools, monitoring, biosensors, or engineered biological systems
• International participation welcome

What They Fund:

• Monitoring tools and biosensors for methane and carbon detection
• Engineering biological systems for carbon removal
• Foundational research on methane-consuming bacteria and enzymes
• Soil enhancement and biochar approaches
• Plant microbiome engineering
• Subterranean microbial processes

2025 Funded Cohort (12 projects):

1. Hendrik Schaefer (University of Warwick) - Which methanotrophs drive methane degradation in the phyllosphere of trees?
2. Carol Baumbauer (Boise State University) - Low Cost Sensors for Soil Methane Uptake
3. Neil Dalvie (Harvard Medical School) - Continuous siderophore-mediated olivine weathering
4. Christopher Gisriel (University of Wisconsin-Madison) - Enhancing Carbon Sequestration By Improving Photosynthetic Efficiency
5. Michael Konopka (United States Naval Academy) - Profiling in vivo pMMO activity and lipid order in methanotrophs using designed fluorescent biosensors
6. Hiroki Yoshida (The University of Tübingen) - Coupling of microbial carbon capture and utilization (microCCU) and direct air capture (DAC)
7. Jane Willenbring (Stanford University) - Worms at Work: Scoping Natural Carbon Sequestration at Scale
8. Doug Call (North Carolina State University) - Highly-sensitive, real-time enzyme methane oxidation rate measurements using an electrochemical assay
9. Dimitar Z. Epihov (University of Sheffield) - Lithogardens: lithoautotrophy-powered microbial communities for improved carbon capture with enhanced rock weathering
10. Hinsby Cadillo-Quiroz (Arizona State University) - Biomapping of Tree-based Atmospheric Methane Removal (TAMR) for Technological Development
11. Carlos Acevedo-Rocha (Technical University of Denmark) - Compound I-based design of methane monooxygenases
12. Pok Man (Bob) Leung (Monash University) - Underground solutions for aboveground climate challenges: leveraging subterranean microbial processes for GHG removal

Application Process

Timeline (2025 cycle):

• Announcement: Fall 2024
• Application period: Not explicitly specified
• Awardee announcement: July 2025

Application Structure - Dual Submission Model:

1. Public Problem Statement:
   • Describe the important greenhouse gas removal challenge
   • Can be disclosed publicly (over 50 applicants chose public sharing in 2024)
   • Enables community collaboration and knowledge sharing
   • Forms foundation for research proposals
2. Private Solution Statement:
   • Technical details of proposed approach
   • Confidential submission (protects intellectual property)
   • Only reviewed by Homeworld team and funding partners

Ignite Phase Activities:

• Expert interviews to co-create problem statements
• Workshops with subject matter experts
• Amplification of expert voices through media (e.g., Climate Biotech Podcast)
• Large-scale convenings (November 2024 workshop had 35 world experts)
• Collaborative ideation around frontier challenges

Review Process:

• Collaborative expert review
• Transparent evaluation against frontier challenges
• Feedback provided to applicants
• Multi-stakeholder review (Homeworld + partner organizations)

Selection Criteria:

• Addresses collaboratively-identified frontier challenges
• Solves problems from Problem Statement Repository (70% of 2025 awardees met this criterion)
• High-quality scientific approach
• Potential for significant GHG removal impact
• De-risking potential for foundational concepts
• Feasibility and innovation

Award Structure:

• 2025: $1.52M total
• Individual grants: $50k - $150k range
• Co-funded by multiple organizations
• Support for 12 research teams

Platform:

• Powered by Experiment.com
• Project pages serve as public-facing proposals
• Separation of disclosure and IP-sensitive information

Post-Award Support:

• Connection to broader funding ecosystem
• Potential linkage to additional funders
• Community of practice with other grantees
• Synthesis phase to document learnings and field impacts