Why the U.K. is betting $76 million on solar engineering to help cool the planet

Fast Company

3 days ago

The climate crisis is worsening. Last year was the warmest on record, global sea ice levels are at a record low, and the economic toll of extreme natural disasters continues to mount.
Just this week, the World Meteorological Organization said the global average temperature is likely to rise nearly 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels within the next five years, with 'growing negative impact on our economies, our daily lives, our ecosystems and our planet.' Experts are adamant that the only way to slow the warming is to stop burning the fossil fuels that create the greenhouse effect.
And yet, in 2024, emissions reached a new high. As the WMO's Secretary-General Celeste Saulo put it: 'We are heading in the wrong direction.' And as the temperature rises, so does the chance that Earth's natural systems will cross thresholds that trigger irreversible and cascading destruction.
The encroaching threat of these tipping points is why the British government's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA) is pouring £57 million ($76 million) into studying 'climate cooling approaches.' That's a fancy way of referring to climate geoengineering, or intentionally tinkering with the Earth's weather systems in an attempt to cool things down. More specifically, ARIA is examining whether we might be able to reflect some sunlight away from the surface of the Earth and back into space.