Ah ok, yeah I used some confusing language by accident here. The research tokens are all spent when you recover ozone, and it relates to how much ozone is recovered, they don't have anything to do with the amount of upgrades.
I couldn't think of another thing to call them; this is explained if you hover over the upgrades, but from seeing people play the game it seems most people don't read the subtext so I'll make it more clear after the jam.