Lessons learned after 5 years of climate tech entrepreneurship(oliviercorradi.com) |
Lessons learned after 5 years of climate tech entrepreneurship(oliviercorradi.com) |
The only way to make a massive, global change like this up and down the supply chain is to give everyone involved - from producers to logistics to consumers - a direct economic incentive to do so. A carbon tax fits that bill, and allows the market to do what it does best.
Yes. Because the alternatives are stark and unwelcoming. And developed nations should enact development sharing to assist at the desire of the developing nations (way more than tokens and pittances).
If we want to go far, we have to go together.
It's a false dichotomy.
The US and others can share climate friendly technologies with developing countries on attractive (cheap) terms and at the same time compensate those that developed them out of tax coffers on market terms. Almost all climate related investment can be financed in the capital markets if World Bank, IMF provide guarantees to investors.
In exchange there'd be an expectation that these technologies are deployed on an accelerated timescale and in greater quantities by nations taking up this offer.
And it's not like rest of the world doesn't benefit at all. The early adopters always pay more, the late adopters get to leapfrog.
Agriculture in particular would fit in that category but any manufacturer emitting carbon is basically burning something that they could burn less of and save money.
So I don't think carbon emission reduction is necessarily a good way to market a company. Efficiency and cost savings that just happen to reduce emissions? That's where the focus should be.
There are no alternatives to carbon-intensive inputs in the offing for many industries. For all of them, efficiency measures require capital investment. Borrowing to install efficiency measures reduces next-quarter returns to stockholders. Companies with low profits have a hard time borrowing.
Yes, it may be a pain point, but it's also a coordination problem (or three).
The cases where efficiency provides a clear benefit? Few and small, on the global scale.
Isn't that where the focus has already been for decades? Which has pretty definitely proven itself insufficient for curbing emissions at anywhere near the scales that we need?
I've been an climate tech entrepreneur for the past 7+ years, and the most reliable way I've found to accomplish the combo viable-business + climate-impact:
1. Get a job at a revenue generating climate-change-fighting company (solar, EVs, policy/regulatory consulting, etc.).
2. Keep your eyes open for pain points that your company (or especially you in your position) would pay money to solve.
3. Quit and start a company solving that pain point (or if you're not the founder-type, go work for a company trying to solve that pain point).
I suppose this kind of strategy would work in many other industries, but it's especially effective in climate tech, because:
(a) As OP mentions, the pain points are very hidden to the general public, so you really need to be actually working inside the industry to find and understand them (since energy often has very complex business models and regulatory constructs).
(b) By focusing on finding pain points for already climate-change-fighting companies and solving them, your impact goals are already built-in, since you're enabling more impact by default. So you don't have to worry as much about finding the magical combo of viable-business + impact.
(c) The climate-change-fighting sector is so young that many of the pain points are still major issues and don't have many viable solutions yet. In other more mature industries, many pain points already have established companies solving them, so there's less of green field for new companies.
Anyway, for people looking to fight climate change, by far the biggest thing you can do is join the industry and make a career out of it. There's so much ceiling here!
You need to do your own discovery.
I don't work in climate tech but adjacent to it: property insurance. We spend a lot of time thinking about ways to mitigate losses from a variety of natural catastrophes. Some of the increased frequency/severity is increasingly thought to be from climate change. I won't go into that here.
There are a lot of contradictions. Insurers are paid to take risks but increasingly move away from those risks. But the actual events - wildfires, floods, etc. - affect people and businesses every year. Coastal property is at risk from sea-level rise, and sunny-day flooding is common in Miami and other places.
So, I wonder if what you might focus on instead is tech that helps fill some of those gaps. Offer products that help folks buy protection for things that an insurer might not cover unless you give them a lot of cash. Do it more cheaply with tech, if possible. Private flood already exists, but I still think there's a lot of opportunity and runway for other folks in that market. Floods and the other perils are increasingly climate-related problems that people can touch and feel. They cause damage. They upend lives and businesses.
Other folks are tackling wildfire insurance, tornado insurance, and etc. A couple of examples: https://solainsurance.com https://ourkettle.com
Or maybe the opposite is needed - a list of companies one should be ashamed to work at due to their negative impact on the climate?
Anyone ever used the app Joro [1]? It calculates your carbon footprint based on your credit card transactions (via Plaid integration) and provides convenient ways to offset. I've been on it for a few months and it's had a huge impact by way of behavioral nudges. Also, the carbon calculations are surprisingly solid.
I can see how the shame of consumption can slow innovation. Especially when it gets to the point that you’re analyzing the best way to ship a laptop to your office to even get started...
Enjoyed the advice on burnout. Many tech companies now recruit on mission statements as much as on pay and when you fail to live up to that mission your employees will rethink staying put.
A lot of this progress is unfortunately going to fall to governments and grants like this, which is probably where any carbon mitigation company needs to concentrate rather than venture capital. Once the claims about cost reduction can be proved, agriculture will follow soon enough.
Other industries will have similar grant schemes.
For that matter, we probably need transfer payments here in the US. Put another $5/gallon of taxes on gasoline and you smack the working class hard. Do that and give every individual (literally everyone) who files a tax return 1000 gallons worth of the tax. Commit to reducing the gallon subsidy by 25 gallons per year per person and increasing the tax by 5% per year for the next 20 years. Evaluate every 5 years and see how you’re doing towards your goals. At the end, you’re taxing gas about $10/gallon in today’s money and subsidizing everyone $5K (in today’s money) to cover some of the increased costs of goods and transport, but giving a painful signal at the pump to incent minimizing gas consumption.
I’ve thought about those numbers for five minutes. Undoubtedly, better numbers can be chosen, but I think we’re going to have to give money in one motion and take it away in carbon taxes in another in order to be able to implement carbon taxes steep enough to change behavior.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Washington_Initiative_7...
Long term existence can be a motivating force, but you have to get the citizens to support solving the issue.
Sure, I’d prefer to wait a few years if that waiting would bring along willing participation. If we think it would only bring a larger number on the calendar and a slightly worse atmospheric carbon surplus, I’m not as inclined towards patiently explaining this again.