Hess Corporation announced today that it will donate $50 million to the Salk Institute’s Harnessing Plants Initiative Pover the next five years in order to combat climate change by developing plants’ natural ability to capture and store potentially billions of tons of carbon per year from the atmosphere. These funds will support HPI’s work, including faculty recruitment, laboratory and research operations, and the establishment of the new Hess Center for Plant Science.
Hess will donate $12.5 million to the Salk Institute’s Harnessing Plants Initiative in 2020 to help accelerate the development of plant-based carbon capture and storage technologies. Since then, the HPI team has made numerous advances in improving desired plant traits, such as deeper rooting and carbon sequestration, and is rapidly scaling discoveries from the laboratory to the greenhouse to the field. Hess donated $3 million in 2021 to establish the Hess Chair in Plant Science at Salk.
Hess Corporation is a leading global independent energy company engaged in crude oil and natural gas exploration and production. Hess is dedicated to assisting in meeting the world’s growing energy needs in a safe, environmentally responsible, and socially responsible manner.
The Salk Institute’s driving force is to discover the secrets of life itself. Our world-class, award-winning scientists advance knowledge in fields such as neuroscience, cancer research, aging, immunobiology, plant biology, computational biology, and many others.
The Institute, founded by Jonas Salk, the inventor of the first safe and effective polio vaccine, is an independent, nonprofit research organization and architectural landmark: small by design, intimate by nature, and fearless in the face of any challenge.
