The Breakthrough Institute is an environmental research center located in Berkeley, California. Founded in 2007 by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, the institute is aligned with ecomodernist philosophy. The Institute advocates for an embrace of modernization and technological development (including nuclear power and carbon capture) in order to address environmental challenges. Proposing urbanization, agricultural intensification, nuclear power, aquaculture, and desalination as processes with a potential to reduce human demands on the environment, allowing more room for non-human species.

Since its inception, competing environmental scientists and academics have criticized Breakthrough's environmental positions. Popular press reception of Breakthrough's environmental ideas and policy has been mixed.^{[excessive citations]}

The Breakthrough institute is registered as 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is supported by various public institutions and individuals.

Breakthrough's executive director is Ted Nordhaus. Others associated with Breakthrough include former National Review executive editor Reihan Salam, journalist Gwyneth Cravens, political scientist Roger A. Pielke Jr., sociologist Steve Fuller, and environmentalist Stewart Brand.

Nordhaus and Shellenberger have written on the subjects ranging from positive treatment of nuclear energy and shale gas to critiques of the planetary boundaries hypothesis. The Breakthrough Institute has argued that climate policy should be focused on higher levels of public funding on technology innovation to "make clean energy cheap", and has been critical of climate policies such as cap and trade and carbon pricing.

Breakthrough Institute maintains programs in energy, conservation, and food. Their website states that the energy research is “focused on making clean energy cheap through technology innovation to deal with both global warming and energy poverty.” The conservation work “seeks to offer pragmatic new frameworks and tools for navigating" the challenges of the Anthropocene, offering up nuclear energy, synthetic fertilizers, and genetically modified foods as solutions.

Jonathan Symons, Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University, Australia, has written an extensive survey of the Breakthrough Institute and its philosophy. He argues that ecomodernism is best understood as a social democratic response to environmental challenges, and that the Breakthrough Institute's argument for state investment in development and deployment of zero carbon technologies aligns with the IPCC's position that new technologies are crucial to avoiding dangerous climate change.

Scholars such as Professor of American and Environmental Studies Julie Sze and environmental humanist Michael Ziser criticize Breakthrough's philosophy as one that believes "community-based environmental justice poses a threat to the smooth operation of a highly capitalized, global-scale Environmentalism." Further, Environmental and Art Historian TJ Demos has argued that Breakthrough's ideas present "nothing more than a bad utopian fantasy" that function to support the oil and gas industry and work as "an apology for nuclear energy."