Can we cancel the climate apocalypse? Pt 1: Scaling clean tech and clean energy
It's a hot day in Berlin today. I wish I could water the grass in front of our apartment complex, under the linden tree. The grass is yellow, sad and dry. Probably dead. But I don't have a hose. And besides, water is very precious right now. We have a drought this year.
Droughts have become common in summer over the last years. They didn't use to be. Berlin is crossed by rivers and lakes; the area is basically a swamp. Or used to be. Now it is just sand, I guess. I wonder whether new construction projects still need to pump out massive amounts of groundwater before they can lay a foundation. Or whether that is a thing of the past as well.
Somehow, the linden tree is still beautifully green. I guess its roots reach deep into the earth, still accessing the receding groundwater. I don't see anyone watering it. Because the city government is poor, and water expensive, the government is asking for donors to adopt the city trees.
It's been too hot for the last few months. The drought scares me. The unstable temperatures scare me. And I get permanent headaches from the temperature swings. I wonder how the linden tree is coping. Does it feel an equivalent of headaches as well?
Unfortunately, Berlin is not the only place that is too hot this year. All of Europe is experiencing unusually hot temperatures this summer, with droughts and wildfires spreading across the continent. Earlier this year, India and Pakistan saw a heat wave that killed at least 90 people. Temperatures have been too hot all over the world this year, also affecting China, the US, Japan and other countries. Climatologists link these changes to climate change.
Until recently, I felt that we were heading towards unavoidable climate doom. I used to believe that the efforts needed to cut our carbon emissions were too hard to achieve, and thus futile. Until recently.
About a month ago, I stumbled upon a retweet from an old acquaintance. It announced a book called “Weltuntergang fällt aus“ (The Apocalypse is Cancelled), written by a German science blogger. It argues for climate optimism. We might be able to cut carbon emissions within the next couple of decades sufficiently to avoid the climate catastrophe.
Intrigued, I fell down an entire rabbit hole of books that all propose solutions to climate change. They cover the entire spectrum. From eco capitalism to eco-socialism. From pro-economic growth politics to anti-economic growth. And to decoupling from economic growth entirely.
I lived my early years in poverty-struck, repressive socialist East Germany. So I am allergic to anything with the word "socialism" in its name. I prefer the idea of motivating climate-friendly behavior through economic incentives. And I have a background in tech that makes me excited about the potential of clean technologies and energy.
In this post, I will summarize three books that lay out a case that we can prevent the climate apocalypse. They argue we need to decarbonize our energy production. And we need to develop substitutes in carbon-intense economic sectors such as cement and meat production. These books are
Weltuntergang fällt aus ((The Apocalypse is Cancelled) by Jan Hegeberg
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
Supercharge Me by Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sanders
It’s not about optimizing our individual carbon footprints
Or at least, that is not our best option to address climate change. Did you know that the idea of personal carbon footprints was popularized by British Petroleum as a PR campaign? The advertising agency Ogilvy developed the first personal carbon footprint calculator for BP. They aimed to shift the perceived responsibility for climate change from corporations to individuals.
But the emissions-monitoring non-profit CDP reviewed the biggest greenhouse gas polluters in 2017. They traced over half of the global industrial emissions since 1988 to just 25 entities. All are major fossil energy producers. The Top 10 global greenhouse gas emitters from 1965 to 2017 were:
Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia
Chevron, USA
Gazprom, Russia
ExxonMobil, USA
National Iranian Oil Co.
BP, UK
Royal Dutch Shell, The Netherlands
Coal India, India
Pemex, Mexico
Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA)
I find it remarkable that none of the multinational industrial corporations made the list. Whether that is chemical giants like BASF, food conglomerates like Nestlé, automotive multinationals like Volkswagen or logistics corporations such as Amazon. To me, that suggests that energy production emits more greenhouse gases than energy consumption right now. Which sounds like good news to me. It might be easier to address the greenhouse gas output of ten or twenty-five large energy-producing companies. Easier, at least, than addressing the emissions of every energy-consuming company separately.
Carbon footprint calculations are oversimplified and imprecise at best. And misleading us into despair at worst. Jan Hegenberg describes in Weltuntergang fällt aus that he eats vegan and travels by public transport or bike. He lives in a small, well-insulated apartment and wears second-hand clothing. Which sounds about as environmentally-friendly as you can get in Germany. And still, his calculated carbon footprint is three times too much to stop our planet from overheating!
We can’t prevent climate change purely through lifestyle choices. Which doesn’t mean that, as individuals, we can’t do anything to prevent it. We just need to focus our efforts in other areas.
It’s about replacing emission-heavy energy with emission-free energy
In 2016, 73% of global greenhouse gas emissions came from energy use. Of those, 24% are energy use in industry, 18% energy use in buildings and 16% energy use in transport.
If we switched these uses over to clean energy, we would cut the largest chunk of global emissions. According to the three books I am summarizing here, this is possible within the next few decades, by the latest by 2050. And it would be possible without drastic changes to our current lifestyles. Or to our current economic models.
To me, this is great news! Convincing billions of people to make significant personal sacrifices sounds impossible to me. It has not worked for the last decades since we first heard warnings about climate change. And overturning our entire global economy sounds like it will take too long. Longer than the climate will be patient with us.
Or, as Eric Lonergan & Corinne Sanders put it in Supercharge Me:
"Dealing with climate change is not like weaning kids off chocolate. It is not about all of us making unpleasant changes to our behaviour now, to benefit other people in the distant future. It is primarily about investments such as building new power plants using solar and wind. Now this is concentrated with a relatively small group of actors, whose investment decisions are highly sensitive to financial incentives.
How can we get there?
Decarbonizing energy production
We can currently rely on three sources to scale up the production of emission-free energy: wind, solar and nuclear (fission) energy. Of those, nuclear energy is the most controversial. Depending on the country, it might be a helpful component of decarbonizing. Or it might be unnecessary.
Jan Hegenberg calculates that we could meet Germany’s entire energy needs in 20 years by scaling up wind and solar energy. This is thanks to the dramatic improvements in wind turbine and solar panel efficiencies over the last decades. And we could achieve this without filling up much more of the countryside with wind and solar farms. On the other hand, Bill Gates argues that for the US, nuclear power might the most promising clean energy source.
Electrifying our industry as much as possible
We can then use this clean energy to electrify manufacturing, transport and building heating & cooling as much as possible. This will remove the largest chunk of greenhouse gas emissions of those sectors.
The book by Bill Gates on How to Avoid a Climate Disaster goes into a lot of detail of what this will take for each sector. In summary, we already have a lot of the necessary technology to achieve this. But we also need more research into better technologies. Some of these are large-scale batteries, electrofuels and electrifying steel & cement production.
Each problem needs a different approach. In Supercharge Me, Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sawers outline how to approach them:
Incentivizing wide adoption of existing technology
For those problems where we have the technology, we “only” need to adopt those technologies widely. Here, the obstacle is economic. We need convincing incentives for businesses to take up this scaling work. Lonergan & Sawers call the necessary incentives “EPICs”: Extreme positive incentives. They argue that negative incentives such as carbon taxes, and moderate incentives are not motivating enough. Additionally, we need to invest into infrastructure such as energy grid improvements and electric vehicle charging stations.
Investing in more research into clean technologies
And then there are problems where we need new technologies. Here, the bottleneck is investment into the scientific research we need to make progress on these challenges quickly.
These are very concrete asks towards our politicians. They sound expensive. But there is good news here. We can expect these kinds of investments and incentives to pay for themselves. The generated economic growth in the clean tech and energy sectors will take care of that. Supercharge Me goes into more detail on how these policies could work.
What else do we need?
There are 27% of emissions that we cannot cut by substituting clean for dirty energy. Those come from agriculture, fuel for airplanes, cement production and plastics. In those areas, we still need more research and development of suitable substitutes. Examples are plant-based meats and electrofuels for airplanes.
We can speed this up by investing a lot in research. But until we get the substitutes, reducing our individual consumption makes sense here.
To dig deeper, read the three books
These books go into a lot more detail than what I outlined here. I recommend reading all three, or at least, the ones that appeal most to you! If you understand German, I recommend starting with the book by Jan Hegenberg. It is by far the most friendly and entertaining intro to climate change solutions that I have seen. Otherwise, start with the Bill Gates book. I would recommend reading the book by Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sawers as a follow-up to the other two.
You will love the book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates if you
Want to cut through a lot of the confusion in the public climate change debate (read chapter 3!)
Want to understand where we already have emission-free technologies and where we still need research
Want a comprehensive survey of the clean tech space broken down by sector
You will love the book Supercharge Me by Eric Lonergan and Corinne Sawers if you
Want to learn about economic policies to encourage businesses and individuals to decarbonize
Are looking for a climate change economics book written in a breezy & fun dialogue style
Are hoping (like me!) for some more concrete actions to take than "eat more veggie burgers" and "express your concern to your local politicians"
You will love the book Weltuntergang fällt aus by Jan Hegenberg if you…
Understand German
Want a very friendly and optimistic intro to the energy side of addressing climate change
Want to read a proposed solution for Germany
Conclusion
If we believe these three books, we need to address climate change mainly on the level of national and local policy. Then we can address the level of international policy. And we need to make some adjustments to our individual consumption. We need to
Pressure our politicians to incentivize clean energy production and clean technology adoption
Pressure our politicians to invest into infrastructure needed, such as grid improvements
Pressure our politicians to fund research into the missing technologies
Reduce our meat & dairy consumption, air travel and plastic use until we have clean substitutes
I want these recommendations to be true, but I can’t check the proposals yet. I do plan to develop a deeper understanding of this issue in the upcoming years. To get there, I have enrolled in a part-time master’s degree program in environmental science.
This way, I hope to learn how to cut through the noise around this topic and figure out how I can contribute to the solutions. I’ll keep you updated on this blog about what I’ll find out!
These are the textbooks (“Studienbriefe”) for my first module of the Master’s program in Environmental Science. I’m excited to get started!
Thanks to all the people who gave feedback on this post: Debbie, Tasshin, Vincent, Mathilde, Kat, Leli, Claudine, Duana! 💚