Workshop Report: Commercial Actors and IP in Sunlight Reflection

Executive Summary

• Private companies are beginning to invest in research and development into sunlight reflection technologies. While private R&D could drive innovation, private actors raise difficult but important public policy questions about the effect that intellectual property or commercial incentives will have on safety research and public trust in sunlight reflection, including:
  • Will researchers and governments be able to access and study proprietary sunlight reflection technologies?
  • Will sunlight reflection technologies be objectively and independently evaluated?
  • If sunlight reflection is deployed, will the public sector be beholden to single providers?
• Workshop participants questioned whether intellectual property protections are actually the critical lever to address these important public policy questions.
  • Similar concerns about IP stifling research in other fields (i.e. fears of litigation over research methods in biological research) never materialized. Enforcement actions may be unlikely to materialize in the sunlight reflection field.
  • Independent and objective evaluation is necessary, but is quite orthogonal to whether – or not – developers of sunlight reflection technologies file for a patent. In fact, the patent process could help with disclosure and transparency.
  • Clearly demarcating “sunlight reflection technology” may be difficult, if not impossible.
• Increasing public sector support for R&D and international scientific collaboration would help counterbalance the risks of commercial actors, and give greater weight to public interest concerns as the field develops. In particular, public sector efforts could steer R&D by:
  • Developing a list of desirable technical characteristics for technologies that could be used in potential sunlight reflection interventions (referred to as Target Product Profiles). While we recognize that this may not be politically feasible in the near-term, development of a Target Product Profile could precede any decision to deploy.
  • Establishing mechanisms for independent assessment.
• The sunlight reflection research community could also guide private actors by establishing community norms and principles around intellectual property and, potentially, establishing a research commons. For example, a patent non-assertion pledge adopted by commercial actors could help avoid any lingering doubt that researchers will be able to access and study proprietary technology.

Introduction

Reflective¹ convened a hybrid in-person and virtual workshop in August of 2024, titled “Intellectual Property and Commercial Actors in Solar Radiation Management”. The goals were: 

• to develop a shared vision for a healthy sunlight reflection technology ecosystem as private sector efforts begin to emerge, and
• to propose concrete intellectual property best practices or policy recommendations that the sunlight reflection community might put forward to maximize public benefit.

Participants in the workshop drew from a wide range of professional backgrounds, from researchers focused on sunlight reflection, intellectual property practitioners and public interest advocates, climate technology generalists and investors, and science and technology policy experts. The discussion was held under Chatham House Rules, and with one exception, participants are not listed here by name or affiliation to support a candid conversation.

Conceptual background and pre-reading materials were provided to participants prior to the workshop, with a few guiding questions and provocations. Everyone was encouraged to consider private sector sunlight reflection efforts as a reality – an inevitable, and perhaps desirable, feature of the field – and from there turn towards questions about the impact that private actors and intellectual property protections of key technology might have longer term. The framing questions posed to participants were:

• How will IP-based sunlight reflection business models create challenges and opportunities?
• What can the sunlight reflection field learn from other sectors (i.e. vaccines, digital public goods) about IP strategies that can incentivize innovation, while maximizing public benefit?
• How can funders influence the direction of IP strategy towards maximum public benefit?
• Are there principles the sunlight reflection research community might adopt around proprietary tech?

The prompts suggest a narrow focus on IP, but the conversation naturally covered wider ground, such as goals for market shaping, the implications of potential timelines for R&D and deployment, scenarios that emphasize public versus private actors to different degrees, and more. Therefore, after summarizing Dr. Jesse Reynold’s introductory remarks on IP in sunlight reflection, this report draws our broader themes and recommendations, rather than summarizing the discussion chronologically. Participants were given an opportunity to provide feedback on this report, including the recommendations.

We also tabled a broader discussion about whether sunlight reflection should be deployed. This is not to suggest that this is a resolved debate; in fact, Reflective’s mission is to help inform that policy conversation with the necessary data and tools. However, to encourage a more practical workshop, we asked participants to assume a world where sunlight reflection is/could be deployed responsibly, and to focus on what role commercial actors should – or shouldn’t – play in that world.

About Sunlight Reflection
Even in a best-case scenario, in which drastic emissions reductions and rapid scaling of carbon removal technology limits warming to less than 2C by mid-century, we are facing a world with substantial near-term climate impacts including extreme weather events, biodiversity loss, and risk of catastrophic “tipping points.” Climate change has been forecasted to displace over 200M people by 2050, posing risks to domestic and global stability. Dramatic emissions reductions, adaptation strategies, and rapid scaling of decarbonization remain critical. But given the urgency, more ambitious strategies may prove necessary.

Sunlight reflection is an emerging field of research into interventions that increase the amount of solar energy reflected back into space, avoiding warming and its global impact. Climate models have shown that sunlight reflection, when combined with emissions reductions, has meaningful potential to reduce the amount of climate change experienced around the globe. Despite theoretical reasons for optimism, evidence and data are still lacking. We still don’t know enough to make a scientifically-informed decision about the potential impact of deployment—and we’re not progressing towards answers quickly enough.

Current Proposals for Policy and Voluntary Intervention

As background into the current landscape around IP in sunlight reflection, the workshop began with a brief presentation from Dr. Jesse Reynolds of the Degrees Initiative, an NGO which builds capacity in developing countries to evaluate sunlight reflection. In 2017, Dr. Reynolds, along with Josh Sarnoff and Jorge Contreras, co-wrote a helpful extended article and a brief overview on intellectual property policies in the sunlight reflection sector. In the paper, Dr. Reynolds et al deemed most of the proposals that had been offered prior to be infeasible, impractical, or solving the wrong problems. Nonetheless, his reflections on these proposals offered helpful context on the current state of the discussion in the field.

Dr. Reynolds provided an overview of features of the sunlight reflection technology landscape that influence current IP practices. Currently, most research takes place in traditional academic institutions which are governed by established IP practices and policies, and is funded almost entirely by philanthropic or public funding sources without a profit incentive. Given the scale, complexity, and inherently global nature of potential sunlight reflection deployments, Dr. Reynolds expects that technological developments will necessarily be transnational.

There is also no clear demarcation between sunlight reflection technology and non-sunlight reflection technology. This is of practical importance for legal practitioners in the field and for voluntary efforts to influence IP practices, or for policymakers considering any dedicated policy interventions, as it will be very difficult to predict ex ante whether an invention is critical to a deployment, whether an invention invented for sunlight reflection could have applications in other fields, or whether inventions from other fields will become useful for sunlight reflection deployment.

An important question, discussed in more depth throughout the workshop, is what the goal should be when shaping IP practices through policy. In his presentation, Dr. Reynolds proposed several candidates: promoting research collaboration and transparency, incentivizing and driving innovation, avoiding technological lock-in, and building public confidence.

Options for Policy and Voluntary Intervention

Dr. Reynolds then turned to the policy interventions into the sunlight reflection field that have been proposed by researchers (often informally) to further the goals above. In each case, Dr. Reynold’s critical view is that they generally aren’t workable or practical:

• Change to patentability, or foregoing patents. Some researchers have asserted that there simply should not be patents in sunlight reflection. Such a proposal could either take the form of a policy intervention (i.e. governments remove sunlight reflection from patentability) or a “bottom up” effort by sunlight reflection researchers to forgo patents (Keith and Dykema, 2018). The latter requires far fewer stakeholders to act, but relies on proactive (“opt-in”) action to have an impact. The former—a change to law or policy—would amount to an enormous and unprecedented global coordination effort to modify the IP regime for a specific technology, and further risks hindering innovation or pushing protection towards trade secrets regime. And in either case, whether an invention would be applied to sunlight reflection would need to be known ahead of time.
• March-in rights, or compulsory licensing. Sunlight reflection researchers could rely on governments to exercise existing authorities to compel licensing of an sunlight reflection patent. This is not likely, as march-in rights have never been exercised in the U.S., and may lesson the incentive to research sunlight reflection.
• Patent Pooling. A patent pool is when numerous patent holders contractually reach an agreement to jointly license their patents. It’s typically suited to cases where a “stack” of technologies is required to distribute or develop a given technological application, but where different layers are owned by a variety of different stakeholders. However in sunlight reflection, the field has not converged on any particular technology stack, and it is unclear whether a set of inventions will be complementary or not. Furthermore, a pool might lead to harmful early lock-in of a particular set of technologies.
• Defensive publishing or IP practices. Researchers or developers in sunlight reflection could choose an IP strategy that defensively keeps a technology available for public use. Researchers might publish and disclose results to establish prior art, or could file for a patent with the intention of preventing others from filing. Former practice has been used by some researchers in the field (Keith and Dykema, 2018), though the practical legal effects and broader impact on investment into R&D remain untested and unmeasured.

Research Commons Proposal

After critiquing the various options for policy intervention, Dr. Reynolds concluded with a discussion of his main proactive proposal for the sunlight reflection field: a voluntary research commons. In short, a sunlight reflection research commons is best conceived as a useful corpus of data and intellectual property, likely maintained by a coordinating organization, contributed to by a multistakeholder research community, and in which access to the corpus is conditional on consenting to a set of principles or terms–including contributing to the corpus. This design creates both an incentive for participation and a governance mechanism; access to useful data and IP attract participation in the commons, and consent to the terms reinforces the commons and public interest outcomes.

One benefit to a bottom-up commons effort along these lines is that it can grow and mature as the research field grows, without the need for widespread initial agreement. It requires little to no action from policymakers or public sector actors right now, but could adapt quickly as the sunlight reflection field changes and research investment grows. Commons’ efforts do not usually require much coordination among actors once the legal and technical infrastructure is in place, but can have dramatic influence over the long term.

Reactions to a Research Commons

Participants asked several clarifying questions, particularly about what is being granted in a commons. (i.e. Is it simply a non-enforcement pledge, or a formal license?) There was some discussion about those options, but would be an area for further exploration in the field.

One participant, with a background running a technology transfer office for a major university, wondered whether a research commons, at least understood as a strategy to encourage access to IP, was solving a real problem. In this participant’s experience, researchers had expressed similar concerns in other fields about IP stifling research (i.e. fears of litigation over research methods in biological research), which never materialized. However, the group felt that sunlight reflection, which is likely to face significant public scrutiny, may require earlier and more proactive efforts to expressly overcome negative perceptions of IP in sunlight reflection, even if it wasn’t causing ongoing practical challenges for researchers.

Another participant drew a comparison between the research commons concept to other digital commons efforts enabled by “copyleft” licenses when applied to copyrighted content. Copyleft licenses require that derivative works of copyrighted content be re-licensed under the same terms under which they were accessed. For example, the GPL in open source software or Creative Commons licenses with a ShareAlike term are copyleft licenses, and derivative works based on content under those licenses must carry the same license. This legal infrastructure, based around the terms of a license, enables collaborative enterprises like Wikipedia, and is potentially useful as a model for IP in a sunlight reflection research commons.

Recent Developments

After our workshop, Janos Pasztor, a former diplomatic official and climate change governance expert, published a report commissioned by Stardust, a private sunlight reflection company based in Israel and Palo Alto, CA. It makes a number of recommendations to Stardust on their approach to sunlight reflection governance and external engagement. The report also includes recommendations on intellectual property, such as that Stardust should consider making their IP available “free for worldwide potential use” or to consider working with governments so that they can “purchase the full rights” to IP. We include it here since it’s an important data point on what IP practices have been recommended for sunlight reflection companies.

Concerns About Private Actors and Goals for Market Shaping

While the group generally agreed that private actors can accelerate the development of new technologies, there are several specific concerns about private actors and IP in sunlight reflection, discussed in the workshop but also expressed by researchers in the field:

1. That intellectual property rights may act as a barrier to independent research, evaluation and assessment efforts, either in the academic research community or by a public regulatory or oversight body;
2. That intellectual property will empower one or a small number of private actors to dictate the terms and speed of sunlight reflection development or deployment;
3. That the mere existence of IP will exacerbate the challenge of building public trust and confidence in sunlight reflection (should the evidence and data merit such confidence).

The group recognized that IP policy is only one legal mechanism that causes or protects against these concerns. Beyond IP policy, market-shaping practices honed in global health and other more established fields may offer additional ways to protect the public interest in the nascent sunlight reflection field. Therefore we did not discuss those concerns narrowly, i.e. through the lens of intellectual property, and policymakers or sunlight reflection funders and investors may find other ways to ensure the sector is aligned with the public interest.

Before detailing those options, the group began discussing the goals for market-shaping in sunlight reflection, both for nearer-term research practices and for potential deployment. As a point of helpful comparison, the participants discussed vaccines, therapeutics, and other biologics in global health as a helpful case study in market shaping, and a potential guide for how to think about goals when shaping a future sunlight reflection industry. The group discussed a market shaping primer distributed by USAID and applied their framework to sunlight reflection:

• Appropriate design. Is the technology actually solving the problem that needs to be solved? (See more discussion below about Target Product Profiles).
• Assured quality. Does sunlight reflection technology meet an appropriate standard of safety and efficacy?
• Availability. Is sunlight reflection technology legally and practically available (or unavailable) to global stakeholders who should or should not have access?
• Awareness. Is deployment of sunlight reflection an informed decision? Do governments have the data and tools necessary?
• Affordability. Is sunlight reflection technology low cost? (The group noted that this may be less of a concern for sunlight reflection than for global health)

One of the biggest differences between sunlight reflection and public health technologies is that there likely isn’t–and shouldn’t–be a market for sunlight reflection technologies or services without intentional government or public sector action, through e.g. regulatory enablement, tax incentives, public procurement, pre-market signaling of future procurement intentions, or fully public deployment. Policymakers will need to decide that it’s in the public interest to pursue sunlight reflection for any investment to become directly profitable for private enterprise, outside of commercializing dual use technologies invented during R&D.

Another important difference is that sunlight reflection likely has a larger challenge than health providers in building public trust and confidence in its early stages. In other words, the technology by nature has a larger public affairs or public relations challenge than, for example, vaccines. Therefore, even if there is no immediate or practical need for IP policy development to guide behavior of academic researchers or startups, it could still be worthwhile to invest time and attention to anticipate public concerns.

Overall, the group emphasized the goals of building public confidence, leaving open the possibility of both public and private actors in R&D, encouraging technological innovation, and ensuring empirical studies and transparency, but didn’t conclude which goal should take priority if trade-offs became necessary. Avoiding vendor lock-in, aggressive IP enforcement, opaque technology, and lack of public confidence were discussed as restatements of those goals.

Target Product Profiles

One potentially helpful project for the sunlight reflection research community, or a new public sector organization intent on furthering sunlight reflection research, to take on would be to develop “Target Product Profiles” that define desired technical specifications for possible sunlight reflection interventions. These profiles could be developed in partnership or consultation with governments at the national or international level. They could also act as a catalyst for private research and investment if issued in conjunction with signals from public sector bodies about their intentions to procure or incentivize such technologies or services that meet a given specification.

We recognize that this level of technical specification would likely come after a policy decision to further develop or deploy sunlight reflection techniques. We encourage governments and policymakers to decouple the development of sunlight reflection from deployment. In other words, providing technical specifications along the lines of a Target Product Profile does not require a policy decision to deploy sunlight reflection, and could simply stem from a policy decision to develop sunlight reflection as a future option.

Addressing the Lack of Public Sector Influence

Many of the concerns expressed about private actors in sunlight reflection stem from a relative vacuum in guidance from the public sector on their interest and willingness to consider sunlight reflection interventions, fund R&D activities, or even to gather more empirical data. Investment into private R&D is almost always premised on a belief that future revenue is possible and given the difficulty of fully predicting policymakers’ attitudes towards sunlight reflection in 10 years time, some private investment is likely to continue. But the magnitude, velocity, and shape of private investment and behavior can be influenced, encouraged or mitigated, by signals from public actors.

The group discussed some plausible and desirable scenarios for the relationship between the public and private sectors in sunlight reflection longer term. Two scenarios were proposed as a non-exhaustive list. One is of a vibrant pre-commercial startup ecosystem, where investors fund various competing R&D efforts in expectation of future return, relying on clear and predictable demand signals from the public sector. Governments would be able to stimulate investment by giving clearer and more specific market signals about willingness to deploy or procure sunlight reflection, provided that safety and efficacy could be established. Under this model, the public could realize the benefits of vibrant private sector investment and competition, with more approaches at solving the same problem, and therefore potentially more innovative or workable solutions.

Another plausible scenario proposed was that a large international or national body emerges to actively manage and guide sunlight reflection technology development. This was discussed as a “monopsony” scenario, with a single public entity creating and managing R&D, empirical studies, and deployment–in a sense fully managing the market for IP. There may be models for this scenario that can maintain some level of competition and private investment as in the first scenario, but would amount to a much heavier handed approach from the public sector. The group did not conclude which was more likely or desirable.

Technical Considerations

The group discussed some technological considerations and details for sunlight reflection that may influence IP and commercial strategies. For approaches based on stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), for example, how much technical benefit and social value might one reasonably expect to derive from a novel, proprietary molecule versus a more common “generic” sulfur-based molecule? Would private investment into multiple different molecules translate into social benefit?

There may be some potential benefits from deeper R&D into SAI molecules. A more performant molecule for SAI might, for example, reflect more solar energy (measured in watts per meter squared), sediment from the atmosphere at a different rate, have different effects on ozone, or come with different optical properties for wavelength-based design constraints. There may also be non-sulfur-based molecules, or other naturally derived molecules, that perform better on some dimensions important to different stakeholders. Policymakers and regulators will ultimately need to create a regulatory pathway or standards that can help the sunlight reflection community evaluate the benefits or negative consequences of different designs relative to one another.

Another technological consideration is that the “stack” for a mature sunlight reflection deployment might include hardware and software that isn’t directly involved in the physical deployment of an intervention. For example, software and hardware might be required for monitoring and observation, or for algorithmic planning and routing.

Timelines and Urgency

Another theme, and lens on many of the issues discussed was the relative urgency with which sunlight reflection may progress towards becoming an option in climate change policymaking, and the implications thereof for how quickly research can evaluate safety and efficacy. The shorthand participants used to explore this issue was whether sunlight reflection is a 2030 or a 2050 technology.

Many proponents of sunlight reflection research believe that 2030 is a more likely timeframe for policymakers to seriously consider sunlight reflection deployment than 2050. Under this assumed timeline, governments and policymakers will be required to quickly advance sunlight reflection research and ensure there’s the basis for informed decision-making about potential options. In this scenario, intellectual property and the role of commercial actors become a policy consideration with practical implications for the timeline and makeup of the supply chain. Market shaping efforts become motivated by instrumental considerations (i.e. what policy will have the desired practical effect), rather than addressing ethical or political concerns. For example, what is the best or fastest way to encourage R&D, or build meaningful and justified public confidence in sunlight reflection? Will sunlight reflection technology outcomes be better if we “lean in” to IP based business models in order to attract private investment and R&D, or is that contrary to the goals of building public confidence?

One funder of sunlight reflection research expressed a view that the overall tech readiness level (TRL) of the that will be required for sunlight reflection deployment at scale are somewhere around TRL2, meaning that no proof of concept has developed and, that for the next 5 to 10 years, all research funding will be entirely scientific. This implies that near-term sunlight reflection research will follow the norms and practices of any other scientific research program, which for this funder implied that results would be published in peer reviewed, open access journals and with little patent activity. The group discussed how this intersects with institutional approach to IP and patents in academic and research settings, since in many cases universities and labs allow or support researchers and students to seek patents on inventions.

Recommendations and Next Steps

The group discussed some general takeaways and possible next steps, both for stakeholders in the community and for Reflective itself. While drafting this report, Reflective also attempted to distill many of the themes and discussion points into clearer, more prescriptive recommendations implied by the areas of widespread agreement, and sought feedback from participants.

Recommendations

• Public sector actors should begin to wield more influence. There is currently no consensus that sunlight reflection should, as a policy matter, be deployed to mitigate the effects of climate change. But without deeper research and development, it is unlikely to be a meaningful, responsible option. Public sector actors could help mitigate the risks posed by private companies or unilateral actors developing sunlight reflection technology by getting more involved in R&D, and by developing a perspective on a role for the private sector in a hypothetical deployment scenario. This early effort would help guide practical questions, like how to approach IP. More specifically we recommend:
  • Developing a list of desirable technical characteristics for technologies that could be used in a potential sunlight reflection deployment technology that can guide and encourage research efforts, whether they be public or private.
  • Establishing mechanisms and institutions for independent assessment of sunlight reflection, i.e. a research consortium and/or a new body for oversight and decision making.
  • Funding public R&D efforts, to build the corpus of publicly held intellectual property and grow the number of publicly accountable research efforts.
• Sunlight reflection researchers should also establish IP norms and practices for the field. The sunlight reflection research community could also guide private actors by establishing community norms or principles around issues like intellectual property, and potentially through other legal or technical infrastructure efforts, such as establishing a research commons. Specifically the sunlight reflection research community, or supporting organizations, could develop the legal and technical infrastructure for either a commercial non-enforcement pledge that would allow companies to more definitively establish their intentions not to pursue enforcement action against public interest research, or for an opt-in research commons that might also contain other useful artifacts, like research data. These actions would help guide private companies towards behaviors that are in the public interest.

1. Reflective is a philanthropically-funded initiative to develop the knowledge base about sunlight reflection necessary to make informed decisions about potential deployment, and to support research and development urgently and responsibly. ↩︎