Photo credit: Screenshot of “The Frontiers of Impact Tech” report
the exponential roadmap
frontiers of climate tech
systemic views
fishbowl Discussion
Owen Gaffney:
Good news: The next decade will be fastest economic transition in history. The Momentum is there and humanity is good at rapid change when it has had a vision.
In china every week 5000 electric busses. Shenzen, in last 5 years has transitioned its’ entire bussfleet to electic busses. Next, they will be replacing the cars. The driver is that people do not want to live in polluted cities. In Norway 20% of all cars purchased in 2019 were electric cars.
This coincides with an exponential growth in adoption of alternative energy sources: much higher than has been predicted by the International Energy Agency:
Forecasts from the IEA are pulled from their World Energy Outlook (WEO) reports, which are published each year. Meanwhile, the “PV History” line above is the actual data for photovoltaic (PV) installations each year.
Second piece : that visual about exposnenental
Third: British politics. Even in this midle of this storm in june this year british govt created legislation to mget to 0 emitions by 2050. Even though cannot agree to leave EU. Cost of radical economic change is same as their previous investments, 1% of GDP of the UK. And that doesnt accunt for all bbenefits, health etc
(People do notSolar): Solar cell growth vs World energy outlook (weo)
- They have failed to predict the scale and speed
- double yield of electricity from wind and solar. BY 2030 half ofenergy production is coming from those sources.
Bad news:
- Google ngram on the word sustainable
- IN 30 years every second word in a sentence will be sustainable
- but when you do search for world exponential we are on a level, it stables out
Unsafe territory; Extreme events in 2018/19 - 2018 Unprecedented heatwave across northern himsphere
- Extreme freezes lasting very long time
- Mozambique unprecedented hurricanes - protection system built
- 45 degrees in australia
- 40 in france
-hurricane dorian
-hurricanes moving slower and getting stronger - drawing up more water agetting more power - hurricane harvey staying over houstone
- what you can explin
- WMO statement
- Humans have lived mostly thrugh the ice ages except for the last 10;000 years where it has been stable; the holoscene our garden of eden and now we ar at the end of that with small changs wreacking havoc
- Tempuural trends for past 65 MA potential geohistorical analogs for climate change
- what we do in next 50 years will have impact for next 10,000 years
- have done as much impact in 50 as in previous 65 million years
- visualisation of flobe changes (video) on mass trends from GRACE: lots of instability of our systems, amazon could turn from huge store of carbon into a savanna that emits lots odf carbon
- Meandering of the jetstream, because warming of artics you get troughs - where we have the breadbaskets of the world, and we have a limited understanding of how they are going change
- Changing risk landscale due o large-scale discontinuities (IPCC assesmebt reoirts abd 1.5 C special
-(vis) tipping elements
- vis- Global map of potential tipping cascads
- if we cross one could they cascade into another?
Every child’s birthright is a stable resilient planet. That is now at risk.
Published paper- what is trajectory to stablise climate- carbon law I Rockstrom, Geffnery, Rogeli, Meinhausen Science 24 March 2017
- Why matter? the integrated economic assesment models make clear that we cannot wait
- Can we half the emissions by 2030? Climate roadmap says it is possible, 30 solutions that are viable. Focus Areas: Energy syupply, industry, buildings, transport, food consumption, aggriculture and forestry
HOW do transformations happen in society?
Transformations are usually result of combination of
Have movement
tipping point: fossil fuel costs, if we can get wind and solar, new tecknologies down to prces of old technologies. And
- Last year No country was talking about net zero emissions
- This year: huge change
- Proposed
Tech companies influence decisions of 4 billion people, every day
Seven strategies to change compass of tech sector, ti the low energy demand (visualisation - find it!)
- Scale of the transformation is unprecedneted (global), not the speed
- People in the room will be critical to driving that transition
The next decade must be the fastest economic transition in history: this has to be the compass of all our careers and focus for next years
Benjamin: We need to achieve prosperity and achieve decarbonisation
Technology, policy, sustainable behaviour change at once and reinforce each other
- Benjamin is engineer, focuses on tech,
- POC21, was frustrated because they are all nice, only one Faircup went anywhere
- was frustrated, started thinking what can tech and scientic sectors do beyond
- goodtechlab.io mapped less than 200 innovation areas and impact tech trends where technology can achieve impaxct goals
-Energy
- transportation
Fossil feuls are in most of the proucts we use through platics: companies trying to replace petrochemical with mio based materials/ Mycelium mushrooms to replace packaginf
Food sector: How to reduce waste
-
between harvest an site of distribution and consumption
-
what happens at consumption end: Minnow company - help restos reduce food waste, e.g by half
-
How we can shit diet away from meat consumption: New protein sources, Ynsect: giant robotic farm to produce feed for fish, perfect day, synthetic mealts from muscle grown in lab - animal-free milk, use tech to find plantbased
-
Using data to provide better finance and insurance, or better climate prediction; or using AI/imaging for high precision farming
______________ Emissions reduction_________
--------------------- Negative Emissions soliutions-----------------
CCU carbon capture and use: Flameworks,
-
Thereare proposals to store it and economically viable pathways to make use of it, because it is a vauable material. E.G some companies use it to produce building materials, finnishone called solar foods make proteins out of carbon - animal feeds, Lanzatech use microbes that grow on gasses to produce synthetic fuels, e/g produced jetfuels
-
Natual based approaches : carbon farming and regenerative ag, turning farms into carbon sink; research lab at sony use data and …calculate what is best plant species
-
Cometfarm: blochain/dogitl currenly
-
Regeneration/restornation of nture: machine learning to measure/monitor restauration and carbon offsets
-
Bioengineering: what is optimal patterns for planting treas
-
There are bad economic incentives for protecting amazon. There is proposal for monetising diversity by mapping entire genome with earth genome project and then put in a giant catalogue that scientists etc can use to produce new products, part of money from use of IP would flow back to support indegenous communities so they dont destory forest
-
Investing; Etic, Matter - how you can measure more precisely the impact of companies.
-
Most of those projects are not non profit - the annual market of SDG solutions is 12 Trillion USD
Manuela - -Many if/challenges for those to work. Dangers attached to technolsolutionism.
-
BECCS: bioenergu carbon capture and storage. Growing crops without use of energy, and use carbon storage . Problem: You would need 3x size of india land to offset current energy usage, put preassure on land for farming, water consumption
-
Another is geoengineering. E.G Mirrios . What if they stop working - all heat immediately combe to earth
-
Global governance: who would regulate them?
-
Article " What is Geoengineering" - author James Temple
-
Impact Management Project: put together ad created consenses around the different tools and methods around impact management… To create a standarising approach to make them more contextual?
-
E.G Project Drawdown
How to start to push towards impact tech management
- Does or may cause harm: Act to avoid harm - Benefit Stakeholders - Contributeto solutions
_Mariana Mazzucato: Mission Oriented Researchand Innovaion in the European Union
---- Goodtechlab.io
---- Exponentialroadmap.org
Need to slow down
Guy advising In shipping industry you can slow down carbon emissions by 20% if you slow down the speed by 12 Knots (check number). Example of chinese busses going faster, short sighted victory because china still largely running on carbon industry. You draw lithium from huge desert areas, impact of your lithium on the environment. With simple changes you can reduce carbon emissions.
Owen: on busses in chinaa - the transition from coal to renewables is happening much faster than you think - we can see that china is shifting its economy.
American guy : concerned citizen, find it very interesting how to create changes in the political systems.I come from texas where it is difficult to explain. How do we get this movement going? As an individual I feel lost to change the incentive from profit to wellness to everyone? Wes
Woman coming from oil and gas, decided to leave the industry but was asking what can you do? Ver hard to orient yourself, good lucky to run into the right person, a person who offered me a job in a company that was doing good things.
Investment into different kinds of people being different kinds of impacters?
Fredrich does stuff with food: am part of NGO trying to make foodtech accessible - foodstack. A question: How many in here would like to get hands on involved in something that creates a possible impact? (everyone) Alot of people want to do something, but not sure what. Then we turn to institutions and other org that are used to doing things for us. But this doesnt work - we need to. Automated vertical farming - solution is not perfect but we are getting close. Mushroom production.
We have had transition from healthy to unhealthy diets, we know the transition can happen very quickly. “Everyone wants to live healthier”.
Whynot provide better alternatives through tastes, flavour etc.
Incubation of participatory innovation and cocreative livelihoods.
Investment in the school system, what is similar thinking arount climate transition. Nordic secret - folkhogskola, personal and skill dvelopment - being able to have softer landing/transition. So people can become part of this transition, find their place - skillwise, livelihoodwise but also identify and social surroundings -building networks that see, sustain and reinform norms, culture and behaviours needed to move . Personal incubation and acceleration for climate transition.
Empowering people who can make solutions for themselves, unleashing creativity and ingenuity that is not about “high tech innovation”.
Key:
Feelings of sense of lack of control
Disinformation campaigns
- Firsty its about inequality:
- in more equal societies consumption is tempered down * We have more trust, and better collective decision making
- What we see with populism and rise of nationalism showws that rapid change is totally possible
- Seeing it in economics: market forces for sustainable solutions is there.
Questions: what is different this time with the movement? because market forces are with us? were they before for other changes?