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Jeff Bezos’s $10bn philanthropic fund has stopped backing the world’s leading voluntary climate standard setter, following rising scrutiny over its influence on the body, in a move seen as the billionaire’s latest effort to curry favour with US President Donald Trump.
According to three people familiar with the decision, the Bezos Earth Fund has ended its support for the Science Based Targets initiative, a globally renowned body that holds sway over how companies such as Apple and H&M can achieve a credible “net zero” label.
The move comes after SBTi staff members raised concerns about the influence of the Bezos fund last year, and following reports by the Financial Times that both the fund and advisers to former US climate envoy John Kerry had backed a push for the organisation to allow widespread use of controversial carbon credits by companies.
The Bezos fund previously told the FT it did not “make decisions” with the SBTi or have any involvement in its stance on offsets.
Two people familiar with the funding relationship said they believed the move to pause funding of SBTi after December 2024 was partly down to Bezos not wanting to annoy Trump, who has previously described climate change as a hoax.
Bezos, alongside other Big Tech bosses such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, has rushed to build ties to the Trump administration as their companies seek relief from pressure around antitrust, deals and artificial intelligence.
“Once upon a time a tech billionaire started a foundation on a regular basis and many were interested in climate,” one person said. “I can’t imagine that anyone with anything to lose is going to think three times about doing anything on climate change in the US right now.”
The global climate standard setter had also separately chosen to step away from the perceived influence of the Bezos foundation, people familiar with the relationship said. SBTi has “been working to diversify their funding . . . they’re thinking about other sources”, said a third person familiar with the funding relationship.
The Bezos fund said it remained committed to its work and mission. The SBTi said: “Our donors do not intervene in our processes to develop standards — and nor would they seek to.”
Climate non-profits have become increasingly reliant in recent years on grants from tech billionaires. The Bezos fund was set up by the Amazon founder five years ago to help “scientists, activists, NGOs” find solutions on climate and nature issues. It has been one of the largest funders of the SBTi, to which it extended $18mn in 2021.
“Obviously Jeff Bezos and the tech companies have changed compared to 8 years ago . . . they were more in opposition back then and now are at least trying to work closely with [Trump’s current] administration,” said another person.
The break comes as Bezos fund president Andrew Steer said on Saturday he was stepping down as head of the body after nearly four years. Steer said Bezos and his partner Lauren Sánchez had been a “consistent source of ideas, insight and support”.
Steer said last month on Cleaning Up, a podcast about the energy transition, that the fund had paid out $2.5bn so far, in part to help professionalise climate bodies. “There is still a pretty strong legacy in some mainstream environmental organisations against capitalism quite frankly,” including opposition to carbon markets as a climate solution, he said.
SBTi’s chief executive Luiz Amaral left last year after months of dissent inside the organisation around the carbon credit issue. David Kennedy, a partner at EY, is due to replace him in the second quarter of this year. A person close to SBTi said Kennedy would be assessing the size of the organisations and who to take funding from in future.
Since its creation, the Bezos fund has become one of the most prolific backers of climate groupings, including the World Resources Institute, which Steer used to run.
The Bezos fund and companies including Amazon, Meta and Google have all previously funded the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, a voluntary carbon accounting oversight body co-administered by WRI.
WRI said it would continue to engage with the Bezos fund “under a business-as-usual scenario”. A person close to WRI said it was assessing the broader effects on climate philanthropy of a freeze on US foreign aid. “The world is turning upside down . . . We’re trying to make sense of it.”
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