What federal agencies currently fund geoengineering research and what are their recent grants?
Executive summary
Federal involvement in geoengineering research has moved from near-absence to targeted support: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is the primary federal funder with roughly $22 million funneled into geoengineering-related projects across recent fiscal years and a Congressional earmark of at least $4 million to launch an explicit NOAA program [1] [2]. Other agencies — notably NASA, the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — play operational, coordinating, and regulatory roles rather than acting as the main grantmakers, while the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is driving a cross-agency research plan [3] [4] [1].
1. Which federal agencies are funding geoengineering research and how much has been committed
NOAA stands out as the principal federal source of funding for geoengineering research: reporting shows the agency provided around $22 million to geoengineering-related projects across the last three fiscal years, and Congress explicitly set aside at least $4 million for a NOAA-led research program to assess climate interventions [1] [2]. The broader federal picture is fragmented: while NOAA has direct obligations and a programmatic mandate, other agencies have been directed by Congress to coordinate with NOAA (for example, DOE and NASA), and OSTP is developing a five-year framework to guide publicly funded solar geoengineering work [4] [1]. Sources do not provide a comprehensive table of every agency’s dollar-for-dollar grants beyond NOAA’s figures and the Congressional earmark [1] [2].
2. NOAA’s recent grants and program focus
NOAA’s Energy and Radiation Balance (ERB) program and associated efforts since 2020 encompass atmospheric modeling, stratospheric observations, and laboratory work aimed at understanding stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) and marine cloud brightening (MCB), and Congress in 2024 further directed NOAA — in coordination with NASA and DOE where appropriate — to expand understanding of aerosols’ impacts on radiative forcing and cloud processes [4]. The Congressional language that produced at least $4 million for NOAA is intended both to fund initial research and to give NOAA oversight authority to review other proposed experiments [2] [4]. Public descriptions from NOAA also frame work on “early warning” detection systems for unusual aerosol plumes and emphasize observation and measurement capabilities [3].
3. NASA, DOE, EPA — roles, not always direct grantmaking
NASA contributes observational and airborne capabilities — high-altitude aircraft and sophisticated sensors — to detect and characterize potential aerosol releases, a capability that supports early warning rather than a standalone grant program to develop geoengineering deployment technologies [3]. DOE has been called into coordination with NOAA on specific workshops and research-gap identification for marine cloud brightening, indicating a supportive research role rather than being singled out as a major direct funder in the reporting available [4] [3]. EPA’s involvement is both regulatory and investigatory: its public materials document congressional directives for interagency study and note that planned or actual solar-geoengineering activities may trigger permitting or oversight requirements under existing statutes such as the Marine Protection, Research and Sanctuaries Act [4].
4. White House coordination, governance, and limits of public funding data
OSTP has been instructed to develop a five-year research plan guiding transparency, engagement, and risk management for federally funded solar geoengineering work, a move that could change funding trajectories but, as of the reporting cited, does not itself equal new grant dollars [1]. Multiple analysts and policy pieces note that most U.S. geoengineering work to date has been limited and piecemeal, concentrated in modeling and observational studies rather than outdoor deployment, and that private donors and university funds (e.g., Harvard’s program) have filled gaps where federal money has been limited [5] [2] [6]. Available sources do not provide a full, agency-by-agency register of every recent grant beyond NOAA’s summarized totals and the Congressional earmark, so a complete accounting would require direct agency grant databases or Freedom of Information requests [1] [2].
5. Contested claims, private funding, and watchdog notes
Advocates argue federal planning and NOAA funding are prudent steps for risk assessment and international intelligence (detecting unilateral experiments), while critics warn that any legitimization of geoengineering research risks premature normalizing of interventions that carry geopolitical and ecological risks [3] [6]. Some outside sources and watchdog sites allege far larger secret federal programs or massive grant totals managed through intermediaries like UCAR, but those claims — originating from a post-2025 whistleblower piece in the Climate Change Dispatch — are not corroborated in the reporting cited here and should be treated as unverified [7]. Meanwhile, civil-society trackers and monitoring groups report rising public and private funding streams for related carbon-removal and climate-intervention work, but those compilations mix different technologies (e.g., direct air capture, enhanced weathering) that are often labeled under the broad “geoengineering” umbrella [8].