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Leadership is often talked about, but it is rarely explored in great detail within the philanthropic community. When it is, the discourse tends to focus on philanthropic donors like Bill Gates or Mackenzie Scott. However, what about the leaders and senior leaders of philanthropic grant-making institutions – this is one of the questions asked by Alliance Magazine in its recent edition.

As part of the March 2024 edition, Carbon Technology Research Foundation founder, Stig Arff met Alliance author Andrew Milner at the Nordic Foundations Conference in Kristiansand to discuss his aims and the goals in establishing CTRF, which the article summarises as, ‘to finance research research into nature-based processes to enhance the capture of atmospheric greenhouse gases – to see if similar processes of carbon capture that over millions of years led to the creation of reservoirs of fossil fuels, can be used and intensified to restock and relock Pandora’s Box. “

Andrew was keen to understand Stig’s motivations for setting up CTRF and the model behind it as well as the work of the foundation and why attracting funding from other investors is so important. In the piece, Stig explains,

“If you look at carbon capture, there’s thousands of possible research projects but because what we’re doing is targeted, it’s easier to bring it forward to funders and say, ‘look, here’s a possibility that  we haven’t really looked at yet’, and funders really are often visionary people and like innovative ideas, as do I. At the moment, the funding isn’t there. If you add up all the existing funding in this space it’s minuscule compared to everything else.

If people are well-known philanthropists who have created a foundation, it’s their funding that enables that and these are the people I want to come into a dialogue with.”

The wide ranging conversation reflects on his family office, Fremr, which provided the investment to kick start CTRF and the vision to “find other institutions and companies that are willing to inject on a par with what Fremr has done, which is 10 million euros.” 

 

As the conversation turns to models of funding climate action, Stig explains how the idea for CTRF had been developing in his mind for many years, long before carbon removal was on the radar for many. Recognising the urgency of the climate challenge and the critical need to fund robust research in the greenhouse gas removal space he is optimistic that other philanthropic leaders will share this vision, concluding that  “a fantastic model would be one where we siphon proceeds off from the global investment community and put them to use for climate change.

The interview is printed in full in the March 2024 edition of Alliance Magazine