The King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI) at J-PAL generates evidence and catalyzes the scale-up of high-impact policy solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation in partnership with governments, NGOs, donors, and companies worldwide.
In response to this global climate and energy challenge, the King Climate Action Initiative at J-PAL (K-CAI) designs, pilots, evaluates, and scales cost-effective, high-impact policy solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation. K-CAI supports rigorous randomized evaluations and scale-ups of effective programs and policies to tackle the four greatest climate-related challenges facing our world: climate change mitigation, pollution reduction, climate change adaptation, and energy access.
K-CAI research awards fund full randomized evaluations, pilot research projects, and travel/proposal development projects to identify potentially high impact innovations and evaluate their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.
Graduate students who have a J-PAL affiliate or K-CAI invited researcher on their thesis committee are eligible to apply for travel/proposal development grants or up to $50,000 in pilot or full-scale funding.
- Travel/Proposal Development Grants (up to $10,000, suggested period of performance: six months): These grants cover exploratory work related to preliminary research ideas, such as conducting background research, developing partnerships, visiting field sites, and collecting preliminary data.
- Pilot Studies (up to $50,000 for graduate students, suggested period of performance: one year): These grants are meant for studies with a clear research question, but for which the design and implementation requires further testing and pilot data.
- Full-scale Randomized Evaluations (up to $50,000 for graduate students, suggested period of performance: 24 – 30 months): These grants are for research projects at a mature level of development. Not only must the research question be clear, but applicants must also demonstrate a commitment from implementing partners, a method of randomization, well-defined instruments, and sample size estimates.