Before the Flood

I work in cleantech, and here's my favorite climate change joke:

They say humans won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late.

If you ever wondered what software engineers and tech entrepreneurs can do about climate change, 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].

In order to actually pull the 87% energy transition off, clean energy sources face huge financial and engineering challenges. Luckily, cleantech hardware is mature and ready to scale up, so this presents a lot of business opportunities for tech startups that can improve efficiencies for those clean energy companies as they roll out solutions. 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...