Jeff Bezos said Monday he is giving $791 million to 16 groups fighting climate change, the first grants from his Earth Fund, saying the money was “just the beginning of my $10 billion commitment to fund scientists, activists, NGOs, and others.”

More than half of the donations went to established environmental groups, with $100 million donations each going to the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Nature Conservancy, the World Resources Institute and the World Wildlife Fund.

Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon, also bestowed money on groups concerned with environmental justice, including Dream Corps Green For All, the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, and the Solutions Project.

“I’ve spent the past several months learning from a group of incredibly smart people who’ve made it their life’s work to fight climate change and its impact on communities around the world,” Bezos said in an Instagram post. “I’m inspired by what they’re doing, and excited to help them scale . . . We can all protect Earth’s future by taking bold action now.”

Jeff Bezos

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos arriving to a news conference at the National Press Club in Washington in September 2019. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Bezos, the world’s richest man, owns The Washington Post.

Leaders of the groups receiving funds said they met earlier this year with Bezos and his partner Lauren Sanchez to discuss what they would do with the grants.

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“He asked a lot of questions. it was very clear that he had already learned a lot about climate change and was very knowledgeable,” said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund. “He had studied the issue, and he was very focused on having the biggest impact he could with his contribution.”

“Climate change is the biggest crisis facing humanity but despite lots of great work, [it] has been an underfunded area of philanthropy,” said Jules Kortenhorst, head of the Rocky Mountain Institute, which received $10 million. “Mr. Bezos’s grant highlights the urgency and importance of the work being done in civil society to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Krupp said that the $100 million grant to the Environmental Defense Fund would be spread over three years and much of it would go toward fully funding a satellite the organization plans to put into orbit to monitor methane emissions. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that can be up to 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The money would give a boost to the group, which ordinarily has a budget of about $230 million a year.

“Thanks to this and other funding, we will cut methane pollution from the oil and gas industry by 45 percent by 2025, which will be the same 20-year benefit of closing a third of the world’s power plants,” Krupp said.

Krupp also said that currently less than 2 percent of global philanthropy is directed at solving climate change.

“Solving the climate crisis requires investment in a wide set of solutions,” he said. “The obstacle isn’t finding solutions, it is securing the funding to scale solutions quickly. Our hope is that this gift encourages other philanthropists to support climate solutions on the scale needed.”

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