Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boringg | Hacker News Reader

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I spend a lot of time thinking about this as well as someone who has worked in climate tech for > decade and am currently looking to deploy capital. It's quite tough.

1. Impossible to get anywhere close to good investing rounds. And deal flow requires serious capital on any meaningful technology (sorry carbon accounting software doesn't move the needle, needed but it isn't a game changer).

2. Investing in companies in the market as an equity holder. It feels like it doens't actually help the company - there's an argument that it helps the industry as there is more money/attention/talent attraction. Seems like a poor investment for myself given the P/E ratios on most of the companies.

3. Investing in actual projects - small returns but meaningful results. You don't get the outsized returns on companies growing quickly.

4. I do believe the success of humanity in the climate tech space is actually not through moon shots but a constant deployment of ready tech (read solar, ESS, wind, etc) and getting our politicians to probably signal the value proposition that climate tech brings. I do think moon shots have a place and we should bet on them.

I am open to ideas on how to help and new models if anyone has any!

edit for formatting

>sorry carbon accounting software doesn't move the needle

I think the place where software could be really useful is with demand response and grid management. There's tons of work in that space already.

Seems to me that long-duration storage and electrochemical production of fuels/chemicals/materials are the places where new technology is really needed, thinking ahead to when we get to 100% decarbonization of the grid and beyond that to when we try to decarbonize everything else. If the exponential growth and learning rates of solar keep up, in 15-20 years it will meet our entire projected primary energy demand and cost 5x less than the going rate for electricity right now. (Those are big 'if's, though!)

Alan Kay[0]: "The key to the Parc approach was to be able to do many experiments in the future without having to optimize." What technology are we going to need 15-20 years from now, when solar energy is 5x cheaper, that doesn't exist yet? My thinking is that electrochemistry is the big missing puzzle piece. If we totally dropped fossil fuels, we'd need to pump something like the entire present-day electric grid's worth of power into making chemicals/fuels.

Some companies with new technologies in this space that I like:

-Form Energy: low-cost iron-air batteries

-Prometheus: solar fuels from CO2

-Boston Metal: zero-carbon steelmaking

-Twelve (formerly Opus 12): other chemicals from CO2

-Carbon Engineering: air capture of CO2

[0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11955020

Edit: formatting

I'm in a similar position (haven't worked in climate tech, but have been diving in recently), and am interested in connecting with others who are trying to find the most useful way to deploy capital in service of a better climate outcome. If you're up for connecting, my email is in my profile.

Thanks for this very thoughtful reply! I thought 2) in particular was a very good point, and one I hadn’t really considered. I would definitely be interested in hearing more about specific opportunities in 3) if anyone has any. At this point, I’m not terribly interested in monetary returns when it comes to climate stuff, so I almost think of these activities as donations. That also means that my funds available are quite limited in the comparison to usual capital for this stuff (on the order of a few thousand).

Plant-based vegetarian diet, bicycle-friendly cities and towns, anticonsumerism, locally-grown food, 4 day work week.

Sorry but not even close. Think about the fact that 80% of the world population lives on so little compared to America/Europe. If 100% of the planet follows your lifestyle advice, we would still be in trouble. It’s sad but the only "positive" thing right now about climate change is that most of the world is too poor to leave a big imprint.

We actually don’t need to lower the cost of permanent CO2 sequestration by very dramatic anounts before it’s feasible to finance a CO2 neutral Western lifestyle via taxes. The big challenge is scaling it up, and also having a society that’s productive enough to finance this.

This stuff is all "personal responsibility", and the fossil fuel industry invests a lot in making us think that recycling, etc will save us. It's really about making sure the fossil fuel industry can continue to pollute without having to pay the social costs.

The bottling industry similarly ran campaigns in the 70s to convince people that litter pollution was a personal responsibility problem, so that it wouldn't have to pay to clean up its mess.

Similarly, rather than making safer cigarettes, the cigarette industry ran commercials and hired "experts" to testify that the cause of household fires was flammable furniture (not cigarettes). As a consequence, several generations grew up around toxic flame retardants.

Ultimately personal responsibility cannot carry the day. Not only is it politically impossible to convince everyone to give up their luxuries and frivolities, but even if we could, these things account for a small share of our pollution. We need to transition our economy to clean energy. Carbon tax (or "pricing" if you chafe at the word "tax") is necessary (but probably not sufficient).

Yes, this will probably "harm the economy" in the same way that limiting one's credit card debt "harms their personal finances".

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