11. The Future History of Climate

Climate is the most dramatic illustration of how we shouldn't try to predict the future. Instead, we should invent and build a more hopeful alternative.

Sadly, if we were forecasting, the most likely future of our climate is a continuation of the long history of insufficient action in the face of ever-stronger scientific evidence of human-driven change and impending disaster.

It’s all the more critical, then, to articulate a less likely — but still achievable — Future History of Climate we can collectively work toward.

That's the focus of this week's serialization of "A Brief History of a Perfect Future: Inventing the world we can proudly leave to our kids by 2050 ," which I coauthored with Paul Carroll and Tim Andrews

If we don’t do so, the consequences will be disastrous for our kids and their kids — rising sea levels; extreme flooding and storms; heat waves; wildfires; droughts; devastated farming, fishing, and other food production; flooded cities and infrastructure; mass migration; resource wars; and more. We’re already seeing some effects. Try to think of the last time you managed to go online and didn’t see an image of a wildfire, massive flooding, or even perhaps the ocean on fire...

We hope you'll take a read and/or listen, and tell the algorithmic overlords that you give it a thumbs up.?

CHAPTER 11 — The Future History of Climate

Future History Scenario: ?The Model City That Shaped Climate Hope, December 15, 2050

BELMONT, Ariz. — Swedish Prime Minister Greta Thunberg addressed the crowd today at the 25-year anniversary of the opening of Belmont, the model city near Phoenix.

Speaking via VR conference to avoid air travel, Thunberg played off the title of the blistering speech on climate change she made as a teenager to the United Nations in 2019. In that speech, titled “How Dare You?”, Thunberg reprimanded politicians. She said,“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words” about reversing climate change while “entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” Today’s speech was titled, “Dare We Hope?” and singled out Belmont as an example of the enormous progress that has been made on climate issues in recent decades, because of cross-sector developments in energy, transportation, industry, real estate, agriculture, and consumption.

“There is much more we have to do,” she said, “but today I want to celebrate the reemergence of hope.”?

Belmont, with its 200,000 inhabitants, roughly the size of nearby Tempe, has gone well beyond carbon-neutral to be carbon-negative, based on the profusion of power generated by clean sources. Belmont exports its excess power down a trunk line to Phoenix, reducing Belmont residents’ energy bills while helping the nearby metropolis almost eliminate its own carbon footprint.

There is a large wind farm on the edge of the city, and solar is everywhere. Panels are on rooftops, carefully hidden from view. Even rooftops and windows are coated with photovoltaics.? The wind and solar are complemented by a series of small nuclear reactors that provide a steady baseline of power. The molten-salt, thorium reactors, about the size of an old-fashioned water tower, are located near Belmont’s manufacturing center, whose 3-D printing capabilities supply almost all of the city’s requirements and whose peak power needs can stress the local solar and wind resources.

Bill Gates, the founder of Belmont, had made his second fortune — or is it his third? — when his early backing of small thorium reactors generated a return of more than $100 billion as they were adopted worldwide. The reactors not only power cities but provide so much energy that they are being used to extract carbon dioxide from the air, combine it with hydrogen, and produce carbon-neutral, renewable fuels, which have become another trillion-dollar industry worldwide.

All the cars are electric, and no one is burning anything to generate electricity in Belmont, so those deep blue desert skies are as clear and crisp as they were centuries ago.

Visitors eventually realize that another feature of older cities is missing, too: power lines. Homes generate so much power and have such battery storage that they’re designed to be energy-independent. For backup — and to provide a way to contribute excess electricity for other homes or for export — a mesh network connects each house to its neighbors and eventually to a grid-scale battery at the center of each neighborhood’s micro-grid. (Although the grid-scale batteries were, for a long time, too expensive and lacked enough capacity to be economic, Gates subsidized them in the city’s early days to simulate what micro-grids could look like, and the batteries’ capabilities eventually grew into the design.) The batteries also connect in a loose web to provide backup power to homes but carry little electricity, given the near-self-sufficiency of each house and each neighborhood, so it was easy to bury all wires underground.

The insides of homes in Belmont also feel different, mostly because of the exceptional focus on energy efficiency. The homes in Belmont use materials that allow for a radically different approach to air conditioning — they change chemical composition or shape as they absorb heat and cool a room, then are returned to their original state by applying electricity. The materials are built into the architecture in strategic spots, where they can take heat out of the air during the day and be “reset” each night. No need for loud AC units or for all the ductwork that homes used to use to distribute cool air. Ducts aren’t needed for heating, either. A series of small, electric radiators take care of heating needs, so construction costs are much lower than they used to be.

Residents of Belmont — sometimes referred to locally as “Bill-mont,” after the founder — have more money in their pockets because the exorbitant electricity bills they used to pay to run air conditioning in the summers near Phoenix (where highs can easily hit 115 degrees) have disappeared. The nearly limitless access to energy has also let Belmont solve one of the thorniest problems in the Southwest, water, which is simply pulled out of the air for most household needs.?

Borrowing a concept proven in Japan’s Woven City, the streets of Belmont are split into three zones: one for cars, which are mostly autonomous; one as a promenade shared by pedestrians and slower forms of personal mobility, such as bikes and scooters; and one as a tree-filled parkway for pedestrians only. This multimodal transportation system design alleviates several of the negative side effects of car-centered city planning: sedentary lifestyles and expensive transport. Just a few decades earlier, 40 percent of trips by car in the U.S. were for less than two miles, in large part because the streets were so inhospitable to pedestrians and cyclists. There are no such impediments in Belmont, and the residents are much healthier because of the increased physical activity. When residents don’t want to walk or bike, they can hail an AV taxi service that’s sized for their needs and that they can use at a much lower cost than owning their own car.

“As you look around your city,” Thunberg said at the anniversary celebration, “you can see Winston Churchill was right when he said, ‘You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they have tried everything else.’[1] America got off to a slow start on climate change and led the world in science deniers, but the country recognized the power of the Laws of Zero and has now led progress around the world for many years.”

She ran through a list of achievements:??

·????? Globally, the goal of reaching net-zero carbon emissions is within striking distance as the Laws of Zero continue to drive down the cost of clean energy and carbon removal.

·????? Economies have become so much more efficient that energy intensity — the amount of energy required to produce a dollar of GDP — has declined by between 50-75 percent in all countries around the globe. The drop reached 80 percent in India and China, mammoth economies where the most progress was needed.

·????? Traditional fossil fuel companies long ago realized their businesses had become unattractive. Large investors such as pension funds, insurance companies, endowments, and sovereign wealth funds pulled out of the companies because of concerns over climate change, and the companies saw better opportunities in adjacent areas. Many companies managed the transition risks and transformed into businesses focused on carbon capture, chemicals, renewable fuels, and geothermal drilling.

·????? As investors and fossil fuel companies shifted their focus toward opportunities in clean, sustainable energy, governments, especially in the U.S., yielded to public sentiment to pursue climate-friendly energy policies.

·????? The rapid infusion of new energy jobs has completely overwhelmed the loss of jobs in the old energy sector.

·????? Measures of equity in health, wealth, and happiness have improved globally, as the green transition provided a springboard to address poverty in developing countries and structural racism and social injustice in the developed ones.

As Thunberg ended her hopeful keynote, Gates, now 95 years old, said he hoped that she would soon visit Belmont in person, and with a clear conscience.

“We’re making so much carbon-neutral fuel in Belmont that we don’t know what to do with it all,” he said. “I’ll send you a jet, and you can have all the fuel you need.”

How to Build that Future:

Climate is the most dramatic illustration of how we’re not trying to predict the future but invent it. We want to find a hopeful alternative. Sadly, if we were forecasting, the most likely future of our climate is a continuation of the long history of insufficient action in the face of ever-stronger scientific evidence of human-driven change and impending disaster. It’s all the more critical, then, to articulate a less likely — but still achievable — future history of climate we can collectively work toward.

We think it would be crazy if we didn’t significantly slow global warming and mitigate the worst effects of climate change by 2050.

The goal on climate change is stark. The federal government’s recent, self-described “authoritative assessment of the science of climate change,”[2] the Climate Science Special Report (CSSR), said that, globally, we need to go from the roughly 51 billion tons of carbon emissions a year we’re emitting today to net-zero emissions by 2050.[3] If we don’t do so, the consequences will be disastrous for our kids and their kids — rising sea levels; extreme flooding and storms; heat waves; wildfires; droughts; devastated farming, fishing, and other food production; flooded cities and infrastructure; mass migration; resource wars; and more. We’re already seeing some effects. Try to think of the last time you managed to go on Twitter and didn’t see an image of a wildfire, massive flooding, or even perhaps the ocean on fire.

To avoid climate disaster, we first need to start by getting to net-zero emissions in five types of human activities that contribute most of our carbon emissions: how we plug in, how we make things, how we grow things, how we get around, and how we keep warm and cool. (The relative contributions, as of 2019, are shown in Table 1.[4])?

To make things all the more difficult, we have to hit a quickly growing target.

According to the World Bank[5], about 74 percent of the world’s population live in “middle income” countries. A further 9.2 percent live in poorer countries. All 6.3 billion of those people are working to share in the living standards enjoyed by the 1.2 billion people living in countries with “high income.” And many more will join those aspirants: The UN estimates world population will grow by 1.9 billion between 2020 and 2050, with all of the growth happening in middle- and low-income countries.[6] That means more than 8 billion more people wanting more things.

That’s a lot of people. And, as things stand, it’ll result in carbon emissions dramatically rising, not falling. Growing food to feed all these people increases carbon emissions. Providing clean water and sanitation to them increases carbon emissions. Building homes for them increases carbon emissions. You get the idea. In effect, the world is building the equivalent of another New York City — every month. That means our planet will have added nearly 350 New York Cities between when we’re writing this in 2021 and 2050. That’s our goal date for slashing emissions to net-zero – and there’s a lot of momentum taking us in the wrong direction.

The Laws of Zero are already enabling solutions that can bend the carbon-emissions curve. As we’ve seen, solar- and wind-generated electricity sources are becoming cheaper to build and operate than existing coal plants are to operate. And transportation is rapidly switching to electricity, which will increasingly come from clean sources. On their own, those Laws of Zero on energy and transportation won’t get us to the answer, but the laws on computing, communication, and information give us a platform for innovation in an array of other areas. Those laws at least give us hope.

To succeed, the laws will need to enable a six-pronged strategy:

·????? Get all electricity from net-zero sources;

·????? Electrify everything possible — and develop clean fuels to do everything else;

·????? Introduce efficiencies that lower energy needs and emissions;

·????? Make scientific breakthroughs to address current gaps;

·????? Develop technologies that make it feasible to pull massive amounts of carbon from the air; and

·????? Do all the above… at a cost less than or equal to any carbon-emitting alternatives.

So you can see how close we can get to net-zero emissions based on current trajectories — and see just how sizable the gaps are that still need to be filled — we’ll go through all six prongs in some detail. There’s a cartoon we like where two professorial characters are standing in front of a chalkboard full of complicated equations. One points to a spot in the middle of the blackboard where the other has written, “Then a miracle occurs.” The caption says, “‘I think you should be more explicit here in step two.’” With climate change, we acknowledge a bunch of near-miracles need to occur. We’re going to try to be as explicit as possible about where those need to happen so that all you future historians have a clearer picture on where you might want to get to work. Here’s an incentive: Any one of these near-miracles would both help save the planet and generate a fortune the likes of which few have ever seen.

Net-Zero Electricity

Here’s where the Laws of Zero really shine.[7]

As we discussed in the future history of electricity, we think it’d be crazy not to have clean electricity available to everyone, everywhere, in abundant and affordable quantities in the Future Perfect. Zero-carbon sources, mostly in the form of solar power, wind power, nuclear power, and hydropower, already account for 37 percent of all electricity generation. Getting those sources close to 100 percent by 2050 would eliminate a large chunk (27 percent) of the current problem for emissions, and would mean clean sources would fulfill the many new demands for electricity.

But getting to total clean energy is far easier said than done. As we’ve noted, the current grid is a major problem. Zero-carbon electricity has to be reliably and affordably delivered where it’s needed, when it’s needed, and in the amounts that’s needed, and the current grid isn’t up to the task. We’ll need to build long-distance transmission lines to take power from sunny and windy regions to other areas. We’ll need major advances in batteries and other technologies to store enough electricity for use during nights and cloudy, windless days and to deal with the seasonal differences in sunshine and wind.

As drastic as these advances may seem now, there’s a heated debate on whether they would even be enough. Two of the richest and most forward-thinking people in the world are on opposite sides of this debate: Elon Musk is among the optimists, and Bill Gates is among the skeptical. While Musk believes advances with solar, wind, and batteries will meet our needs, Gates (who supports the adoption of renewables as quickly as possible) argues breakthroughs may also be needed in nuclear fission and fusion to fill gaps in the service that renewables will be able to provide. (We think the stakes here are so high and the timing so urgent that we need to go full speed ahead on all fronts — just in case.)

Fortunately, tools enabled by Laws of Zero in computing, communications, and information will provide a platform for innovation at unprecedented speed. Tests of new materials, new approaches to building and managing the grid, and so on used to require painstaking work in the physical world. But those efforts can increasingly be done based on models and simulations, essentially becoming software problems that AI can tackle. The work can be done on computers over periods measured in seconds, minutes and hours, not in months, years and decades.

For example, multiple groups of researchers are now using sophisticated computer simulations to develop alternative strategies for transforming the U.S. grid. They’re starting with detailed models of all existing power grids, along with detailed weather and usage patterns, and are then simulating different placements of generation and transmission capabilities. The researchers looked at current plans, including some considered ambitious, that would cut emissions by six percent by 2030 and have created more detailed options that could reduce emissions by 42 percent by the end of the decade.[8] The researchers have made their tools and models publicly available so others can stress-test the designs and explore alternatives.

Electricity Everywhere

Once we have all that net-zero electricity (we hope), we have to use it to replace fossil fuels in as many applications as possible.

Transportation

Transportation contributes about 16 percent of total global carbon emissions, so converting it, alone, to clean power sources would be a major advance. As we’ve explained, we’re on the cusp of having electric vehicles that are cheap enough and have enough range that they’ll initiate the phaseout of internal combustion engines. The challenge will be scaling: We’ll have to adopt clean electric vehicles everywhere possible and do it fast enough to replace all existing dirty vehicles by 2050.

That will be hard. (Everything about climate seems to be.) At current rates, it takes about 15 years to turn over an entire fleet of vehicles.[9],[10] So, starting in 2035 — 15 years before our deadline of 2050 — all new cars would need to be net-zero. Forecasters aren’t optimistic, however. As we write this in 2021, analysts project electric vehicles will make up just one-quarter of new sales by 2035. By 2050, electric vehicles are projected to make up only 60 percent of sales, and projections are that most vehicles in use will still be powered by fossil fuels.[11]

Still, some major companies and governments suggest the forecasters may be too pessimistic. General Motors, for example, has announced it will launch 30 electric vehicles by 2025 and will phase out all its gas- and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035.[12] Volvo announced it will stop selling fossil fuel-powered cars by 2030.[13] Ford and Jaguar said they would move to all-electric in Europe by 2030.[14] On the regulatory side, California has set a net-zero target for new cars and trucks by 2035.[15] The UK plans to ban the sale of new gas and diesel vehicles by 2030, while Norway has set a 2025 target.[16]

The Laws of Zero also suggest we may get closer to the 2050 goal than those naysaying forecasters currently predict — even professionals have trouble seeing the effects of the exponentials at work in the Laws of Zero. But some other things will have to happen, too.

There will need to be a virtuous circle of shared, autonomous electric vehicles. As we wrote in the future history of transportation, AVs enable consumers to forego the huge fixed cost of owning a car and, instead, bear the variable cost of an autonomous car service that provides transportation on demand. The potential market here is enormous. Early business modeling shows such services can deliver handsome profits while charging consumers a lower cost per mile than the per-mile cost of car ownership. Such services would grow rapidly, given the economics for both providers and customers, and all AV platforms will be electric because of the requirements of all the sensors in the vehicles. At the moment, many individuals are reluctant to buy electric cars because their up-front cost is higher than for those with internal combustion engines,[17] but these car services will be operated by large commercial fleet owners (including the likes of Waymo and General Motors), and they won’t suffer the same sort of sticker shock that might scare off individual consumers. Thus, electric vehicle technology could be adopted earlier and at price points higher than might attract consumers.[18]

Autonomous electric vehicles will also need to evolve into dramatically new forms. As we’ve discussed, fleet-level car sharing will allow for matching vehicles to particular trips rather than vehicles being one-size-fits-all. Because most car trips are short ones involving one or two people, most cars in a shared fleet could be smaller, simpler, and cheaper than those most of us own now. Such simplicity in cars would also reduce the traditional competitive advantages that stem from automakers’ ability to manage complex supply chains and integrate thousands of parts. Simpler cars would also reduce the necessary engineering expertise and capital costs, two barriers to entry that have protected automakers from new market entrants. All these factors would invite more competition and innovation, enlarging consumer choice and accelerating adoption.

Governments will need to speed the transition to electric vehicles. Nations can, for instance, provide investment incentives and production mandates for manufacturers, purchasing incentives for consumers, and investments for the electric grid and for charging infrastructure to support electric vehicles. Nations can also create disincentives for the use of fossil fuels. While interested parties always push back when governments try to pick winners and losers, there’s an international competitive dynamic here. Governments want to make sure that their countries’ automotive industries remain competitive as the market shifts to electric vehicles and AVs.

Markets will have to do their job — as they generally do. Investors are already betting on the rapid transition to electric vehicles and, as a result, are providing tremendous amounts of capital to the companies most likely to drive the transition. Investors will continue to reward pioneers with promising ideas, as they have Tesla, and that should drive us closer to electrifying transportation by 2050.

Pulling all the right levers for cars, SUVs, motorcycles, and light-duty commercial trucks and buses by 2050 covers about two-thirds to three-fourths of all transportation-related emissions. But long-distance trucks, cargo and cruise ships, and planes could prove difficult to shift to electricity because of the weight of the batteries. For these applications, we’ll need price breakthroughs in net-zero fuels like biofuels or hydrogen for trucks and planes (which currently cost two and a half to six times more) and perhaps in nuclear power for ships. The good news for shipping is that 40 percent of all cargo ships are devoted to carrying fossil fuels today, and that tonnage will almost certainly no longer need to be transported.

Heating and Cooling

Another area ripe for clean electrification is in heating and cooling our buildings, which currently account for about 7 percent of the global total of emissions.

Cooling is the easy part, as air conditioners already run on electric power. If we can’t generate enough clean power by 2050, though, we’re in trouble because the demand for air conditioners is growing so fast, and that pace will only quicken in a warming world.[19] There are about 1.6 billion air conditioning units in the world, and that number will more than triple to over 5 billion by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.[20] At that point, just air conditioners will consume as much electricity as all of China and India do today.[21]

Heating, in the form of furnaces and water heaters, are the fossil fuel burners in our homes and offices. Today, half of all furnaces sold in the U.S. run on natural gas. Worldwide, fossil fuels provide six times more energy for heating than electricity does. The good news is, for new construction, the cost of an electric heat pump (which both warms and cools) is less than the combined cost of a new gas furnace and electric air conditioner. But furnaces tend to last a decade or more, so it’ll take a long time to move away from those already installed. To get to a goal of all-electric by 2050, we’ll have to stop selling gas-powered furnaces and water heaters by 2035. For however many remain in operation after 2050, we’ll still need alternative net-zero fuels.

Industry

Industry and the general activity of making things account for about 31 percent of all carbon emissions today, so there’s a huge opportunity here. Unfortunately, there isn’t a straightforward transition to clean electricity.

Industrial emissions come from three sources: (1) the fossil fuels used to generate the electricity used by factories; (2) the fossil fuels used to generate the heat used in manufacturing processes, like melting iron ore to make steel; and (3) the emissions generated when the materials are made, such as the carbon dioxide released by the chemical process of making steel. We’ve already dealt with the generation of clean electricity. Greater challenges lie in the second and third sources of emissions.

Take cement and steel, which together account for 13 percent of annual global emissions. Their manufacture requires intense heat, about 2,000oF, to melt the limestone for cement and almost 3,000oF to melt the iron ore for steel. Using electricity to generate that sort of heat is far more complicated than just plugging into the electric grid. However, nuclear power or hydrogen might substitute for some of the fossil fuels that generate the enormous heat we use today.

Likewise, the chemical processes involved in making cement and steel emit carbon dioxide that has nothing to do with fossil fuels. Globally, we currently make about four billion tons of cement each year, and every ton results in a ton of carbon dioxide. We make about 1.8 billion tons of steel each year, and every ton results in 1.8 tons of carbon dioxide. Those emissions are on top of the ones produced while melting the limestone and iron ore; reducing or capturing these emissions will also require innovations beyond electrification.

Agriculture

Growing food accounts for about 19 percent of all global emissions, and clean electrification will only help a bit.

In agriculture, we’re mostly concerned with methane and nitrous oxide, not with power sources. While the amounts of these greenhouse gases are small compared with carbon dioxide emissions, they’re particularly dangerous. Methane causes, per molecule, 28 times more warming than carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide causes 265 times more. Together, methane and nitrous oxide account for about 80 percent of the emissions due to agriculture.

Cows are the primary source of methane. Cows, goats, and other grazers are ruminants, meaning they can digest grass and other plants and grains most animals (including humans) cannot. But their digestive systems use a process called enteric fermentation that produces methane. Lots and lots of methane. The cows then release the methane into the atmosphere through what scientists call eructation and flatulence, or what our kids refer to as burping and farting. Each cow burps and farts between 160 and 320 liters of methane every day and, globally, there are about 1.5 billion cows.[22] Cows, alone, account for about 4 percent of global emissions. Cows contribute about half the nitrous oxide released into the atmosphere as their feces decompose, while pig feces contribute the other half.

Other major sources of agricultural emissions include deforestation and other land use, which together add up to three percent of global emissions. Fertilizers are responsible for about two and a half percent. And as much as one-third of all food produced globally is wasted.[23]

Electrification offers no simple solutions for any of these agricultural emissions, though other innovations hold promise. Pilot projects putting additives in cows’ feed, derived from seaweed, have reduced their methane output by 50-90 percent.[24] Scientists are studying ways to reduce methane production through genomics and selective breeding. The many companies now developing artificial meat could also greatly reduce the size of cattle herds.[25]

Efficiency, Efficiency, Efficiency

In the 1960s, cautioning that federal spending had a way of getting out of control, Senator Everett Dirksen reportedly observed, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Well, as our above cataloging of the vast and varied contributors of carbon emissions should attest: A billion tons of carbon here, a billion tons there, and pretty soon you’re talking real climate change.

But the billions can be rolled back, too. Cyclists packing their panniers for their first road trips are cautioned, “If you take care of the ounces, the pounds will take care of themselves.” If we make efficiency a key component of the Future Perfect, we can, bit by bit, drastically reduce the amount of carbon we either have to reduce or capture. The easiest ton of carbon to eliminate is the one you never produced.

Efficiencies must be gained in two key areas: energy and materials.

Energy Efficiency

A 2020 study found that energy efficiency policies and programs enacted over previous decades in the U.S. saved so much energy in 2017 that, without them, U.S. energy use would have been about 23 percent higher. These policies and programs included fuel economy standards, appliance and equipment standards, the Energy Star efficiency program, utility sector efficiency programs, and energy codes for buildings. For example, standards have reduced energy usage of appliances by 80 percent since 1980 (saving the average American household about $500 a year). [26]

A host of additional energy-efficiency options will be available by 2050.[27] For instance, efficient design of new homes and commercial buildings, including electrification and the use of renewable electricity, could cut their emissions by 80 percent.

Materials Efficiency

Although we’ll need to make a lot more things by 2050, as the population increases and poorer countries race to improve their economies, we can use less material to make those things. We can also shift to using materials that involve fewer emissions.

For example, the International Resource Panel, an arm of the UN, has developed a number of efficiency strategies that could, by 2050, collectively reduce emissions by 80 percent for materials used in homes and 57 percent for materials used in cars.[28] These strategies can be deployed starting now, with existing technologies. Among them are: designing lighter buildings, to reduce the use of carbon-intensive materials such as steel, cement, and glass; using wood, a carbon-neutral source, instead of reinforced concrete and masonry; and improving the recycling of materials used in buildings and cars.

Scientific Breakthroughs (Where the Near-Miracles Occur)

Some of these needed breakthroughs will seem far-fetched, even impossible. But, as we’ve tried to convince you over the course of this book, the progress that will come by 2050 by following the Laws of Zero will, in many cases, feel like magic from the vantage point of 2021. In 30 years, some of these technologies will be routine — remember that the term “genomics” didn’t even exist 30 years before the invention of CRISPR.

The breakthroughs we need to have happen to invent the future history of climate in 2050 fall into two categories: those in energy and those in areas that could significantly reduce carbon emissions.

Energy Breakthroughs

·????? Pumped hydro (water is pumped uphill to a reservoir when energy is available, then released downhill to a lower reservoir, through a hydroelectric generator, when power is needed)

·????? Thermal storage (a substance is heated when energy is available, then the heat is used to produce electricity whenever it’s needed)

·????? Alternative fuels, including biofuels and hydrogen produced without emitting carbon

·????? Grid-scale electricity storage that can last a full season

·????? Geothermal energy

·????? Safe, modular nuclear fission

·????? Nuclear fusion

Carbon Emission Breakthroughs

·????? Zero-carbon cement

·????? Zero-carbon steel

·????? Zero-carbon plastics

·????? Plant- and cell-based meat and dairy

·????? Zero-carbon fertilizer

·????? Coolants that don’t contain F-gases

·????? Carbon capture

Why do we believe these breakthroughs are possible? There are three reasons for our optimism.

The first is science.

The scientific discovery and invention platform enabled by computing, communications, information, and genomics allows “unbelievable leverage on the universe,” as Alan Kay has observed to us. In every field, including mechanical, electrical, and biological systems, the process of hypothesis, testing, and learning provides access to boundless insight and is accelerated by computer modeling, analysis, and simulation tools. Individual learnings can be shared, stress-tested, and evolved through global collaboration and competition that is enabled by rich and near-instantaneous communications.

Science is now the standard method for developing everything, and it’ll be the platform for making all the breakthroughs.?These days, physical objects won’t even be built until after extensive testing and validation via computing. And when they are built, the work can be done through computer-guided fabrication and 3-D printing. Like the technologies for reading and editing genomes, the Future Perfect computing platform can be used to invent things that were recently unimaginable and put them on an exponential improvement path.

The second reason is the urgency of self-preservation.

As the COVID-19 vaccines show — being produced and mass-distributed in less than a year as opposed to the normal 10 to 25 years — mankind can move fast when it must. To this point, the dangers of climate change have been ephemeral enough for many that it’s been possible to defer action, but hurricanes, wildfires, derechos, and other disasters, combined with steadily rising temperatures, have changed the tone. Science and industry are rallying, and the pace will accelerate as the problems become more obvious.

The third reason is economics: the defense of value and the allure of new wealth.

BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, says, “Climate risk is … a historic investment opportunity.” BlackRock says, “With the world moving to net-zero [carbon emissions], BlackRock can best serve our clients by helping them be at the forefront of that transition.”[29]

BlackRock estimates doing nothing about climate change would result in a 25 percent cumulative loss in economic output over the next two decades. An orderly “green transition” could avoid these losses. BlackRock also believes companies that react best to climate change will gain an advantage. For example, a chemical company that positions its product line for the massive adoption of electric vehicles could be a big winner, while an insurance company that doesn’t adapt to the growing risk from physical climate damages will perform poorly.[30]

The investment firm has $8.7 trillion of assets under management that will back up its market assumptions, so BlackRock is sure to get the attention of CEOs and boards of directors. It’s already asking companies to disclose their climate mitigation plans and provide data to track their progress. And markets always reward winners.

The top 10 steel companies in the world are collectively valued at (as of this writing) about $140 billion, and whoever develops the best way to make net-zero steel has a clear shot at much of that value. Net-zero steel might even expand the market, letting steel be used in ways it isn’t now.

The same kind of opportunity holds true for companies leading in any of the other breakthroughs we’ve listed as being needed. We’re in an age of transition where new ideas can uproot long-established businesses. Trillions are up for grabs.

Carbon Capture

You might have noticed we keep writing about getting to “net-zero” emissions rather than “zero” emissions. That’s because even the most optimistic among us doesn’t believe there will be some combination of scientific breakthroughs and societal fortitude that enables us to eliminate all carbon emissions by 2050. Some emissions will still happen, such as from the fossil fuels that still get burned and the carbon dioxide from the traditional cement recipes that still are used. Rather than letting those emissions stay in the atmosphere, we’ll have to “capture” them. The emissions that we produce minus the carbon that we capture will net out to zero. Thus, “net-zero” rather than “zero.”

Unfortunately, there might be a lot of carbon to “net” out. According to analysis by the UN, there is no plausible path to mitigating the worse effects of climate change without the successful capture of 100 billion to 1 trillion tons of carbon dioxide over the course of this century.[31] To put that in perspective, remember the world produces about 51 billion tons every year at the moment. Once we get to net-zero in terms of our new emissions, there’s hope carbon-capture technologies can be used to get to net-negative emissions, i.e., to extract the excess carbon pollution of past years and lessen global warming. (Spoiler alert: That possibility is a long, long way off.)

There are two general ways to capture carbon dioxide. One is at the industrial source, like power plants and cement kilns, before carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. The other method is to pull the carbon dioxide out of the air. In both methods, the captured carbon dioxide is compressed, transported, and buried in geologic formations, such as?oil?and gas reservoirs, coal seams, and deep saline reservoirs. There are also efforts to use the captured carbon to make things such as plastics, liquid fuels, fertilizer, and even cement.

We won’t go into the technical details of how each way works except to say that both are technically understood, and small-scale efforts are in place. Because of cost, complexity, and policy challenges, however, both approaches fall into the “near-miracle” category in terms of the work to be done to reach global scale by 2050.

It’s possible, for example, for industrial facilities to scrub carbon dioxide from their flue gas and reduce their life-cycle emissions by 55 to 90 percent. Yet, according to the International Energy Agency, only 30 million tons of carbon dioxide is being captured each year — just 0.3 percent of a reasonable goal for 2050.

Direct air capture is even more nascent. Carbon Engineering, a high-profile, Canadian-based company doing this, operates a proof-of-concept facility that captures 365 tons a year. It anticipates its first commercial plant will capture one million tons per year at a cost of between $94 and $233 per ton[32] – meaning the cost would be at least $1 trillion a year to reach a reasonable 2050 target for carbon capture.

Elon Musk has funded an XPRIZE competition for carbon removal to inspire and help scale efficient solutions to pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans. After 18 months, 15 teams will be selected to receive $1 million to build their demonstration systems. To win the four-year competition, teams must demonstrate a rigorous, validated scale model of their carbon removal solution and the ability of their solution to economically scale to gigaton levels. $50 million would go to the winner, with $20 million and $10 million going to the second- and third-place teams.

Likewise, NRG and Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance have sponsored a $20 million XPRIZE for developing ways to more effectively turn captured carbon into valuable products, thus helping enhance market mechanisms to support significantly more carbon capture. The concept, known as the circular carbon economy, is essentially turning carbon into a reusable material for making things, rather than just leaving it as the waste product of the industrial revolution. That’s because, in theory, any product made with carbon from fossil fuels could be made with carbon captured from the air. Imagine turning the carbon dioxide captured from the chemical process of making steel into fuel for heavy trucks and planes. In addition to fuels, the long list of carbon-based products being adapted for captured carbon include cement, concrete and other construction materials, industrial gas and fluids, polymers, chemicals, carbon fiber, animal feed, and fertilizer.

Few believe using captured carbon for making things will put a major dent in carbon emissions any time soon, but it might help make carbon capture more economically viable. Every advance along that cost curve helps. Someday, we may even look back on these XPRIZEs in the same way we do about DARPA’s grand challenge for autonomous vehicles — both may have helped to engage a generation of scientists and entrepreneurs and launched the exponential improvements necessary for this prong of our climate change mitigation strategy.

Far Lower Cost

Carbon emissions anywhere on Earth affect our collective atmosphere. So, to achieve a hopeful future history of the climate, we have to get to net-zero carbon emissions not just in the U.S. or in other countries rich enough to afford it, but everywhere. Imagine you were very poor; which would you choose: to be richer or greener? We’d love for everyone to be greener, but we all have to provide for ourselves and our families. That means we need to find alternatives that get us to net-zero that are at least economically neutral, or the world will tilt toward cheaper fossil fuels — and a climate disaster.

The cost difference between a zero-carbon solution and its carbon-dirty alternatives is known as a “green premium.”[33] For example, if a gallon of standard jet fuel costs $2 and a gallon of zero-carbon biofuel for jets costs $5, the green premium would be $3, or 150 percent. Some folks might be willing to pay that extra 150 percent for clean fuel, but the bulk of the global airline and air freight industries — which already operate on razor-thin margins — will have to stick with the $2 option. If someone could invent zero-carbon jet fuel for $2 or less, however, then there’s no conflict in choosing it.

Green premiums currently hinder the adoption of most zero-carbon solutions. In addition to jet fuel, substantial green premiums exist for zero-carbon fuels for cars, trucks, ships, and heating. Plant-based meat substitutes cost a lot more than meat does. Direct carbon capture of industrial carbon emissions, like the making of cement, significantly increases manufacturing costs. And so on.

So we not only need science and technology breakthroughs, we have to make them much cheaper to drive global scaling and ubiquitous adoption.

***

Government policy will have to fit in the equation, too. As we’ve said repeatedly, we’re not writing a policy book, but we as a society will need to cooperate to achieve a Future Perfect. Governments will need to facilitate that cooperation among different interest groups on climate policy — and policy can be even harder than science. Someone will have to live near that new, advanced nuclear reactor, and we’ll need to sacrifice some habitat as we deploy more wind and solar. Communities are already battling over habitat – real estate developers want the land, as do advocates of renewables. In general, the dialogue in Washington, D.C., suggests we’re a long way from developing and implementing a thoughtful climate policy in the U.S.

If we can’t get the policy measures right, economics may not save us. The idea that people will pay a “green premium” presupposes that people are eager to adopt a greener solution once it reaches cost parity. In fact, academic work and business history show that the diffusion of innovation happens fastest when the new solution provides a clear set of advantages, not just parity. Yes, climate change poses an existential threat, and concern is rising steadily, potentially pushing more of us to accept a “green premium,” but it’s hard to see why green jet fuel, for example, would appeal to airlines merely by reaching cost parity with conventional jet fuel. After all, there’s a great deal of operational risk in switching to a new fuel, and someone will get fired if the new fuel disrupts flight operations.

This means progress depends not only on producing some audacious technology breakthroughs but on having governments provide the right framework for helping society to cooperate as it nurtures and then absorbes them.

Despite the challenges we’re facing, here’s an example of how exponentials offer some hope:

Future History Scenario: ?Saving Billions, Making Trillions With Climate Solutions, May 18, 2050

SEATTLE – The Gates Foundation announced today that its endowment has surpassed $1 trillion in assets, even though the foundation has been spending and donating some $3 billion a year since its inception in 2006.

While the foundation was initially known for its efforts mostly on health-related issues, such as combatting malaria and eradicating polio, and while founder Bill Gates earned a great deal of attention in the 2020s for his years of prescient warnings about the sort of pandemic disaster that COVID-19 caused, the recent surge in the foundation’s assets has largely come because of his work on climate change.

In particular, the surge has occurred because Bill Gates and his ex-wife, Melinda, donated so much of the fortune they based on a series of investments beginning in the 2010s that attacked carbon emissions. Those donations then made the foundation a magnet for funding by others who were focused on the cause.

“The foundation has played a significant role in helping us get so close to net-zero carbon emissions, seemingly in time to prevent the most severe problems of climate change we all worried about so much 30 years ago,” said Andrew Tyler, the lead researcher for the UN Council on Climate. “Governments obviously spent more money, but the foundation seeded several key ideas and helped unleash the market forces that accelerated so many solutions.”

Gates said the foundation expanded beyond its initial work on global health and poverty because he and Melinda saw that those suffering the most would also be hit disproportionately by the effects of climate change. They took the long view on climate, rather than seeking the sorts of quick returns venture funds and other investors typically pursue. The foundation invested only in companies that had the potential to eliminate one percent of global carbon emissions. The two also convinced a group of other billionaires and countries to invest alongside them.

The biggest successful investments included an early one in modular nuclear reactors, whose new design and growing safety record allayed the decades of fears about nuclear power, exacerbated by a few high-profile failures. An innovative design for grid-scale storage also proved massively successful. Those two investments alone now have nuclear power providing clean, baseline energy around the world and mean that solar and wind power can be deployed essentially without limit, with huge batteries capturing all the electricity they can produce.

Beyond energy, the Gates Foundation also championed startups that sparked breakthroughs in other areas needed to address climate change, such as better, less expensive cement and steel without CO2 emissions. ?

The returns for the former couple dwarfed what they earned from his first venture: Microsoft. While much of the potential from their more recent investments is still to be realized, the markets have assigned the companies valuations that mirror the sort of success that Elon Musk had in the early 2020s with Tesla.

The foundation has had a bunch of duds, too, of course. Few remember, for instance, some of the early investments in carbon capture. However, the duo parlayed these early learnings into smarter investments in the critical technology area, and direct air, carbon-capture facilities are scaling up fast because of their persistence.

“That’s how investment portfolios work,” Tyler said. “If they don’t include a bunch of duds, then the aspirations aren’t high enough to let the successes be so huge.”

?

Footnotes:

[1] Like many quotes attributed to Churchill, these words don’t appear in any of his voluminous writings, and there’s no evidence he actually said them. But, as Sen. Mark Warner, who is especially fond of Churchill and the quote, said, after being corrected about the attribution, “If Churchill didn’t say it, he should have.”

[2] USGCRP, 2017:?Climate Science Special Report: Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume I [Wuebbles, D.J., D.W. Fahey, K.A. Hibbard, D.J. Dokken, B.C. Stewart, and T.K. Maycock (eds.)]. U.S. Global Change Research Program, Washington, DC, USA, 470 pp, doi:?10.7930/J0J964J6 .

[3] The exact tonnage of global emissions is hard to measure; estimates range as high as 60 billion tons per year. When we refer to carbon emissions in this chapter, we use the estimates by Bill Gates in his recent book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. The exact number is less important than the acceptance that the amount of carbon emissions is huge and that we have to eliminate all of it.

[4] This is a categorization used by Bill Gates in his xxx

[5] https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/mic/overview#1

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growth#cite_note-:484858585858583-10

[7] Tragically, technology to date has been a key enabler of global warming and impending climate disaster. The rise in atmospheric carbon and the resulting impact on the climate stem directly from the harnessing of fossil fuels that enabled the industrial revolution, warmed and cooled our homes, brought us the marvels enabled by fast and cheap transportation, fertilized our soil to grow things, and underpinned most aspects of the tremendous advances in standards of living over the past two-and-a-half centuries.

[8] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-02/bill-gates-led-group-shows-u-s-grid-emissions-can-fall-45?sref=Cg936Uu2

[9] https://energyfuse.org/americas-aging-vehicles-delay-rate-fleet-turnover/

[10] https://www.statista.com/statistics/185216/age-of-us-light-trucks/

[11] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/03/10/climate/electric-vehicle-fleet-turnover.html

[12] https://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-sets-2035-target-to-phase-out-gas-and-diesel-powered-vehicles-globally-11611850343?mod=article_inline

[13] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/business/volvo-electric-cars.html

[14] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/17/business/ford-says-it-will-phase-out-gasoline-powered-vehicles-in-europe.html

[15] https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/03/cars/california-2035-zev-mandate/index.html

[16] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/18/the-uk-plans-to-ban-sales-of-diesel-and-petrol-cars-from-2030.html

[17] Operating costs for electric vehicles are lower than for those with internal combustion engines, and the lifetime cost of an EV can be far lower, but the crossover point at which an EV becomes less expensive has tended to be at least a year after purchase, and possibly much longer. The actual calculations obviously depend on a host of variables, including any government incentives for buying an EV, the model purchased, the miles driven, and the costs for gasoline and electricity.

[18] https://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2016/02/08/the-virtuous-cycle-between-driverless-cars-electric-vehicles-and-car-sharing-services/?sh=30bb3e187143

[19] Lots of people in the Pacific Northwest and western Canada never thought they needed air conditioning but found themselves dealing with sustained temperatures well above 100oF because of the heat dome that formed repeatedly in the summer of 2021.

[20] The U.S. and Japan currently lead the world, with more than 90 percent of households already having some form of air conditioning, according to International Energy Association estimates. China is at 60 percent. By contrast, Mexico and Brazil are near 20 percent, and South Africa and Indonesia are below 10 percent penetration.

[21] In addition to carbon emissions because of electricity consumption, air conditioners also emit what are known as F-gases (because they contain fluorine), which cause 23,000 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide.

[22] https://www.wired.co.uk/article/the-strange-war-against-cow-farts

[23] https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/fight-climate-change-by-preventing-food-waste

[24] https://www.greenbiz.com/article/5-feed-companies-could-relieve-cow-burp-methane-problem

[25] While talk of artificial meat has led to claims that governments will outlaw hamburgers, there is also a growing eco-conscious food movement that could shrink the need for cows. So-called reducetarians are switching to oat milk and protein sources such as tofu to decrease their consumption of red meat..

[26] https://energyefficiencyimpact.org

[27] https://www.aceee.org/sites/default/files/publications/researchreports/u1907.pdf

[28] https://www.resourcepanel.org/reports/resource-efficiency-and-climate-change

[29] https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/blackrock-client-letter

[30] https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/literature/whitepaper/bii-portfolio-perspectives-february-2021.pdf

[31] https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/spm/

[32] https://carbonengineering.com/frequently-asked-questions/

[33] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Introducing-the-Green-Premiums