Ecosia Broadens Climate Strategy, Shifting from Just Planting Trees to Diverse Green Investments

Ecosia, the eco-conscious search engine long known for its promise to plant a tree for every search, is stepping into a new era that goes far beyond forests. While the company has already enabled the planting of more than 230 million trees since its global debut in 2009, it's now pivoting toward a broader, more diversified climate action strategy.

Tree planting has been the core of Ecosia’s mission. In fact, out of the €92 million invested in climate solutions to date, a majority went directly into global reforestation efforts and ongoing care to ensure those trees survive. But over time, Ecosia began to stretch its environmental portfolio, quietly backing solar power infrastructure, cleantech startups, and sustainable agriculture.

Now, that quiet shift is becoming central. The leadership team has formally redefined its strategy: tree planting is no longer the sole or primary impact metric. Instead, the organisation embraces a broader range of solutions to tackle the climate crisis holistically.

This includes its role as an anchor lead partner in the World Fund, Europe’s largest climate-focused venture capital fund, since 2021. The company also invests in commercial-scale solar installations, agroforestry ventures, and organic farming projects, signalling a deepened commitment to long-term planetary health.

Ecosia’s chief executive, Christian Kroll, said, “We started out as a tree-planting search engine, but we’ve expanded far beyond that and are now invested in a range of climate impact initiatives, from renewable energy and climate tech to protecting biodiversity.”

Alongside this strategic evolution comes a change in how users engage with their contributions. The beloved “one search = one tree” promise is being retired in favour of something more nuanced. Users will now receive a “digital seed” for each day they use Ecosia, rather than per search.

These digital seeds feed into an impact counter. In this dashboard, users can see the tangible results of their engagement, not just in trees planted, but also in megawatt-hours of renewable energy generated, tree care hours funded, and land restored. It’s a richer, more data-driven narrative about how individual actions translate into collective environmental progress.

Kroll said: “Tackling the climate crisis can feel like heavy work, and it can be hard to know what to do and where to start. By creating and building this experience, with personal elements like our new counter, we’re hoping to engage and grow our community, which means we can then grow our climate impact in turn.”

This shift also aligns with Ecosia’s bold move into building its search engine infrastructure, an initiative it began less than a year ago to reduce dependence on tech giants like Google. The company has partnered with Qwant, the privacy-focused French search engine, to co-develop a backend alternative offering both independence and sustainability at scale.