Ask HN: What is the business opportunity of climate change for startups? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the business opportunity of climate change for startups?

37 pointsThomPete26 comments

Instead of looking at climate change only as a problem, what are the business opportunties.

If we assume there are going to be consequences to our environment because of climate change; what kind of startups would be built and what kind of problems would they need to tackle? In other words; what's the business opportunity of climate change.

This is a follow up from this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9799007 I did last year but with a slightly different subject (or maybe not?)

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The biggest problems brought on by climate change will be 1) water shortages 2) crop failure and 3) flooding of low-lying areas, probably in that order. The "solutions" for 1 and 2 (water desalination and vertical farming) are being worked on by plenty of organizations. A few are also working on fast and efficient construction of housing, but I think that's where the biggest business opportunity lies.

People are going to need housing even if we're able to avert disaster, and there's billions of people around the world who are already in need of stable shelter. If you could figure out how to quickly build a cheap and safe high-rise apartment building using relatively unskilled labor and that could be expanded as necessary or even deconstructed and moved, then you would have a world changing, multi-trillion dollar company.

Or water cities.

Good thinking too.

hasn't that been true forever though?

isn't the problem that these people can't afford even cheap housing, and no one is buying it for them?

these are already current social problems and don't appear to be enough of a business opportunity to be getting solved by capitalism

I think the point is that access to clean water wont just be a problem for the poorest.

I'm not really talking about the poorest of the poor who don't have any skills, although I'm sure there are plenty NGOs who are interested in finding cheap housing solutions for them. I'm talking about those who are emerging from poverty and have found a place in the economy. Climate change will pull them back down into poverty if the place they've settled in is flooded, or no longer has access to clean water, or can't grow enough food.

Climate change isn't going to just affect the poor, it will affect the rich too--people who live in places like Southern Florida and New York City. If thousands or millions of those people get displaced, they're going to want to find a decent place to live quickly, and will have funds (either savings, insurance, or from government aid) to afford it.

And you're also forgetting the #1 rule of economics, lowering the price for something means more people can afford it. There is a price point where everyone can afford housing, it's just that for many that point is very near zero. Still, the closer you get to zero, the more people fall under that umbrella of being able to afford it.

Much as I'd like to believe it were true (my dad's niche is modular construction technology) I don't think there's any forthcoming bonanza for faster methods of homebuilding resulting from climate change. Land ownership, access to capital and ties to a particular locale are the obstacles to resettlement, not speed of construction. Finding the a suitable option out of an abundance of existing solutions for rapid affordable housing for various values of "rapid", "affordable" and "housing" is the least of concerns there. Humanity solved the problem of building housing that can cope with flood risk in preagricultural times as well, much as developers on flood plains like to ignore those lessons.

Solving regional water supply challenges (whether due to recent desertification, salination or frequent flooding) sounds like a much bigger market. Not to mention conceiving innovative new ways of building flood defences to protect the middle income people and the shiny villas they don't want to leave.

I still think the biggest climate change market in the near term is technology aimed at reducing human contributions to it, most of which also promises cheaper energy or less harmful emissions.

As historically cooler climates warm up, opportunities shift. A huge amount of industries where geography plays a crucial role will be affected. Vineyards, for instance, will be entirely changed.

The trick is to find an industry currently tied to a specific climate, and predicting where the change in climate will take the market.

I haven't thought about it a ton myself yet, but that's the line of thinking I've been on...

This is some good input and exactly what I was hoping for. finding the trajectories which allow for building businesses based on the change in climate.

This from Peter Wadhams, one of the first people to discover the shrinkage of the ice caps.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/21/arctic-w...

"As far as I can see, it will have to take the form of some sort of device into which you pump air at one end and you get air without carbon dioxide coming out the other end. It can be done, I am sure, but at the moment we do not have such a device. However, without something like that I cannot see how we are going to deal with the carbon dioxide that is getting into the atmosphere. We are going to have to rely on a technology that has not yet been developed. That is a measure of the troubles that lie ahead for us. I think humanity can do it, but I would feel much better if I saw governments investing in such technology."

No one investing in this?

Why would they? Where's the profit?

Capitalism (even hip tech startup capitalism) can't solve all problems, particularly not the tragedy of the commons on a global scale.

The profit is in the same place as weapon or rockets? Governments.

This device, isn't it basically a plant? :-)

Seriously though, microalgae carbon capture sounds like it was a good way forward.

http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/60/9/722.full

Or maybe a greenhouse. That way you get sellable product out of it, not just captured carbon.

An example: Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for climate change advocacy. And on the side, made up to a billion dollars from climate change business -- much of which was based on e Energy Department grants!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environmen...

Bad Air is a Big Problem-- that's an opportunity.

> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140812-calif...

Low energy, high efficiency cooling technologies for home, office, transportation, etc.

Security technology (monitoring to riot control) to help governments deal with the social upheaval.

Off the top of my head:

Passive solar design, smaller homes, solar power, wind power, more efficient methods that use less water or energy to accomplish something, public transit, storm/disaster prep and clean up type things, storm resistant housing such as geodomes and smart city stuff.

I am sure there is more.

Arctic shipping will eventually be commonplace during the northern hemisphere summer, bringing both sea- and land-based activity to the region for half of every year. Since north of the arctic circle the sun won't set during this time, the there is opportunity to use (some) solar resources throughout the day.

I expect solar-assisted propulsion systems for ships, solar-assisted power generation, solar-assisted desalination, greenhouses, heating, etc. to power an arctic boom. But since the region will still be far from hospitable, other industries like prefab homebuilding, insulation, and (paradoxically) resource and/or fossil fuel extraction stand to benefit too.

I was curious about efficacy of solar at the poles - trading off low azimuth for one long period of constant daylight.

I found this report [1] on panels installed at the South Pole, which seemed to indicate that this does work, although the panels never exceed about 50% of their rated maximum power point. A 175W panel there generates about 1500kWh per year. By comparison, I think the same panel in the US would generate about 2200-2500 kWh per year. (1.3m^2 * 5kWh/m2/day * 365)

[1] - http://www.southpolestation.com/0809/solarenergyatpole012209...

I live in South Australia which is very dry and gets very hot. Through summer months, it can be a challenge to keep gardens alive and houses cool.

There are likely opportunities around smarter approaches to marketing/selling a variety of things to the public: insulation, reflective film on windows (could quote and install without anyone being home), smarter irrigation, on-demand xeriscaping, garden audits, delivery of healthy/refreshing mocktail jugs to offices, etc.

I'm in a climate change startup, and here's how I look at it: 87% of the energy sources we use are fossil-based[1] and will need to be replaced with non-fossil alternatives in the next 30 years. That's trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure and technology growth opportunity for clean energy and energy efficiency[2]. The next Google will be an energy company[3].

To answer your question more specifically, in order to actually pull the 87% energy transition off, clean energy sources face huge financial and engineering challenges. This presents a lot of business opportunities for tech startups that can improve efficiencies for those clean energy companies. Energy efficiency, electric self-driving vehicles, solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, public transit, etc. all need to grow by 100x in 30 years, and a huge chunk of that growth will be software driven.

The advanced energy industry is already a $1.4 trillion industry (larger than airlines and fashion industries)[4]. So there is, right now, a ton of market size for climate change tech, and it will grow by several orders of magnitude over the next few decades. Now is one of those rare moments where you can save the planet and have a business model.

For example, my startup is a SaaS company that is used by tons of distributed clean energy resources to smooth out the process of collecting energy data for feasibility analyses. We shave about 5-10% off the installed cost of energy audits and distributed solar, and make money doing it.

So if you're interested in doing tech startup in climate change. Do it! We need all the help we can get. If you're interested in the Bay Area professional clean energy scene, check out the calendar https://bayareaenergyevents.com/ (I run it) and start showing up to stuff!

[1]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=11951

[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

[3]: http://www.pvsolarreport.com/the-next-internet/

[4]: http://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2016/03/advanced-energy...

Amazing! Thank you so much for taking the time to write this.

Great to see some of the thinking that goes into the industry. and your company is exactly the kind of companies I was thinking when it comes to software.

Very interesting stuff and best of luck (You could use some help with the design though ;) so much potential to visualize and do interface work there)

I am in NY so Bay Area is only when I have meetings.

in the short term, optimizing traffic lights could greatly reduce fossil fuel consumption.

The current model uses PLCs but something like a neural net or some other type of machine learning could supplement this system to make it more efficient.

Selling CO2 limits... oh wait

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