A few nights ago, I was sitting with some friends of mine. One was a professor of medicine educated at the Technion and the other was also a medical expert, in this case from Harvard, and they asked me a question which really amazed me.
Can anything be done by about climate change technologically? I was surprised by this question because to me the answer is so clear. During the last 20 years we have been able to develop some extraordinary technologies which contribute enormously to decarbonization. The list is well known .
- solar energy, wind power, electric vehicles, lithium-ion battery storage, LED lighting and there is more. Add to this list established technologies we have been improving - electric heat pumps, geothermal energy, methane collection and monitoring, and improved control of the electrical grid. This has enabled countries to reduce their carbon footprint in some cases quite dramatically. Top of this list is possibly solar photovoltaics. I was the CEO of a company called Orionsolar 20 years ago. At the time solar PV cost $8 a watt. Our target was to produce solar energy at a dollar a watt and with that we thought we would strike gold. We did indeed approach that target but there were other solar cell developers who beat us there. Right now, solar PV panels are being produced at less than $0.20 a watt which is a fantastic achievement. The world should take encouragement and if we invest cleverly and wisely , we have the potential to introduce new methods which will help decarbonize the world substantially. The trick is to try and support the technologies which remove or reduce carbon at the most effective cost. At the top of my list are
- building energy efficiency
- artificial milk and meat
-more sophisticated greenhouse gas monitoring
- improved electric vehicle charging systems and
- lower cost energy storage.
In his book’ How to avoid climate disaster’, Bill Gates introduces a simple and quite effective metric. He tries to calculate the ‘green premium’ for various technologies. In other words what is the cost of doing something with conventional technology and what is the cost of it of doing it with the greener alternative. Some ideas are expensive , others can be introduced at little extra cost. An interesting example is hydrogen propulsion. Right now, it has a high premium. Will it approach parity?
We can combat climate change by combination of wise government policy both at a national and international level, and technological progress. Some believe that we can only win if we governments spend trillions of dollars on new technological breakthroughs. The trick is to not waste too much on subsidizing no hope ideas.
David Waimann is VP Energy at OurCrowd Investments and executive director at five water and renewable energy tech companies. drw@ourcrowd.com
This article is part of a series of more than 20 posts discussing climate policy and technology.
13.
#BillGates
#Technion
#greenPremium
