Google has launched its 2026 R&D awards, putting more than $6 million behind early-stage science on carbon dioxide removal and methane abatement. Applications close on 25 September, with money distributed by year end.
Google has opened a research call worth more than $6 million, covering carbon dioxide removal and the abatement of superpollutants such as methane. The 2026 Google Carbon Removal and Superpollutant Elimination R&D Awards launched on 11 August, as Carbon Herald reported.
Applications close on 25 September 2026. Successful teams should have the money in hand by 31 December, so the whole cycle runs inside a single calendar year.
What the money is for
The award funds research and development rather than deployment. Google wants work that advances the underlying science of a mitigation strategy, or that makes an existing strategy workable in the field. Because the brief is deliberately wide, eligible disciplines run from theoretical and laboratory work to field-based academic research. Literature reviews, meta-analyses, engineering research and prototyping all qualify, as do modelling and data analysis.
Two themes run through the priority list. The first is certainty, meaning how confident researchers can be about a method’s climate effect and how well they can measure it. The second is scale. Google has set the target at gigatonne-level carbon removal and megatonne-level superpollutant abatement, so marginal gains are unlikely to win a grant.
Removal pathways on the priority list
Ocean alkalinity enhancement gets prominent billing. Google is asking for assessments of its environmental and ecological impacts alongside its scaling potential, two questions that have dogged the pathway for years. Meanwhile, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage has its own line, with a call for next-generation CO2 capture systems at BECCS facilities.
Biochar features too, although the framing is about supply rather than kilns. Researchers are asked how underused biomass feedstocks could be brought into play at scale. Nature-based removal appears in several guises, including mangrove restoration that can survive sea-level rise, tidal wetland restoration and better land-use decisions on nature-based projects.
Methane and the measurement gap
On the superpollutant side, methane dominates. Google wants solutions for abatement in diffuse emission streams, where gas leaks from many small sources rather than a single stack. Researchers are also invited to tighten the constraints on methane’s atmospheric lifetime and on the mechanisms that destroy it.
Measurement threads through much of the rest. Monitoring, reporting and verification for open-system landfill interventions is a named priority, while climate impact verification for perennial crop systems sits alongside field validation of those same systems. Elsewhere, the call covers the energy penalty of capturing CO2 at low concentrations, still one of the stubborner problems in the sector.
Why the timing is important
Corporate money has become one of the steadier sources of funding for early removal science, and Google is among the technology firms that have already committed heavily to scaling the sector. This call sits upstream of that spending. Research grants are cheap next to offtake contracts, yet they shape which pathways become purchasable in five years.
The deadline gives applicants roughly six weeks, which is tight for a multi-institution bid. Therefore teams sitting on existing datasets or half-finished experiments are best placed. Still, the breadth of the priority list leaves room for groups outside the usual carbon removal circuit, from landfill engineers to agronomists working on perennial crops.
