Controversial geoengineering research, including a plan to study blocking sunlight, received $75 million in funding from the UK government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), which some scientists warn could be just as dangerous as the climate change it seeks to combat.
Proposals to geoengineer humanity’s way out of the impending climate crisis span 21 projects, from sunlight-reflecting clouds to thickening arctic ice. The funding comes under ARIA’s Exploring Climate Cooling programs, a five-year initiative aimed at holding off the tipping point of the impending crisis.
Advanced Research and Invention Agency
ARIA was announced in 2021 as the UK’s answer to the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and has been active since 2023. The agency’s £800 budget funds risky yet potentially groundbreaking technologies in areas like climate, AI, and neurotechnology, leaving more conventional and slow-paced research to the UK Research Initiative, the country’s other public science funding organization.
The shadowy agency became a target of controversy early on over its lack of transparency, after being declared exempt from freedom of information requests. The News Media Association, a UK media organization with members that include The Guardian and The Daily Mail, issued a statement in 2021 calling for the UK government to reverse ARIA’s immunity from freedom of information requests.
Geoengineering Controversy
Now, ARIA is wading further into controversial territory with its recent funding of geoengineering projects. Despite warnings of climate catastrophe, many experts have expressed concerns over whether relying on geoengineering as a solution could produce outcomes worse than the problem at hand.
Last year, Harvard University canceled a project in Sweden to dim the sun by introducing particles into the atmosphere after local residents became concerned about the longer-lasting repercussions. On May 7, 2025, Florida also took legislative action to ban geoengineering.
Mark Symes, a University of Glasgow electrochemist who leads ARIA’s Exploring Climate Cooling programs, explained that any proposed concepts are only stop-gap measures to curb the planet’s slow progress toward reaching a global climate tipping point, buying time to address root causes like carbon emissions.
“We want to keep this research in the public domain,” said Piers Forster of the University of Leeds, who chairs a committee that monitors climate projects for ARIA.
“We want it to be transparent for everyone,” Forster said.
Hellbound and Down 