Ask HN: How do I turn a geoengineering invention into an adequate profit?
For some time now I have been sitting on a geoengineering invention with the potential to prevent tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in climate-change-related damages globally every year. Among its distinguishing characteristics are that it is extremely cheap compared to averted damages and that it solves one big climate-change related problem that is not easily addressed with other geoengineering approaches. (To limit the scope of this discussion let's just axiomatically assume that the invention does work.) But its geoengineering nature makes it impossible to limit its effect locally to foil freeloading. Thus I see no good way to make a worthwhile profit from marketing it as a service to paying customers.

The only bad way I could come up with is a business model that requires "tricking" a huge number of governments into entering very-long-term insurance/maintenance contracts at conditions seemingly attractive for them and then later using the geoengineering to reduce operating costs and rake in the profits. But that would take a very long time, a lot of up-front capital and a lot of work. Since I don't have enough health left for such an approach I won't do it. However, the invention itself is also far too good to give away for free/cheap, and if I don't get any good suggestions here I'll probably just take it with me into the grave.

My questions (in ascending order of difficulty):

Question 1: How to determine valuation? Since I cannot convert my invention into something marketable I cannot come up with a value using established means. This makes it basically arbitrary and is also one of the reasons for avoiding the patent route since it would leave me open to expropriation+undervaluation attacks. So: How should I determine the value of my invention instead? Should it be based on damages averted? If so: Over what time frame?

Question 2: How to preserve exclusivity? Even though the ideas underlying my invention are somewhat clever and fairly non-obvious, the overall concept is still very simple (and thus likely to work in practice). But this aspect also makes it somewhat easy for someone else to rediscover/reimplement (i.e. there is no inherent "moat"). Currently everyone else's ignorance over what to dig for and where is working in my favour and I'd feel cheated if having to give that up would result in me losing exclusivity. How can I overcome this blocker and preserve exclusivity during the compensation negotiation phase or discussions in general? If I were to even just mention what domain my idea applies to it could already clue people in enough on where to place the shovel, so I need this answered before I can drop the vaguespeak and start talking.

Question 3: How to reach assurance? Since I'm not rich and my invention has the potential for benefits in the hundreds of billions of dollars every year it brings with it the risk of legal system "malfunctions". There is an abundance of examples of inventors who were screwed out of their just compensation through stratagems and "legal mishaps" of various degrees of scumminess and nowadays it seems to be the norm. I have no nerve left for even the faintest risk of such BS, and my life experience also has rendered me extremely skittish. How do I come to a point of assurance that I will actually get to enjoy my compensation instead of getting screwed over, exhausted in litigation etc.? Without assurance it is not worth it to explore any of this further.

TIA