speed and scale, by john doerr

As someone who is hoping to learn more about climate change (and become more immersed in climate tech), this book provided a nice lay of the land. 

The fundamental driver of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gasses trap heat in the atmosphere and too much of them is a problem. They are measured as carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) and include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and more. In the pre-industrial era, we had 283ppm CO2e. We are now at 500ppm. To prevent a climate catastrophe, we need to bring this under 430ppm.

Doerr breaks this book out into 10 chapters, each with its own Objectives and Key Results. The topline objective of the book is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, and get halfway there by 2030. The current drivers of greenhouse gas emissions are energy (41%), industry (20%), agriculture (15%), transport (14%) and nature (10%).

To save me some time, the OKRs are below. Apologies in advance for the poor image quality. You can read about them in more depth at the Speed and Scale website. I’ve also left some of my own notes below. ​

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• BYD (“Build Your Dreams”) is a Chinese manufacturer that was responsible for electrifying Shenzhen’s bus fleet. They have now operations in California and will likely continue to expand in the US. Proterra is a US-based EV bus manufacturer, with ambitions of electrifying buses across all US states
• The most critical element in an EV is the battery. Batteries need to get cheaper, and their range needs to increase
• We can’t decarbonize transportation without decarbonizing the grid
• Sunrun pioneered “residential solar as a service” by allowing individuals to install solar panels on their roofs with no upfront cost
• Orsted is a Danish offshore wind provider that now owns ⅓ of the market. They had a massive transition from traditional fossil fuels to renewable production. A great story in leadership
• The smart renewable grid of the future will likely be distributed and two-way. The goal is to amass enough storage for on-demand electricity, in order to compensate for the variability of solar and wind
• Worldwide, ⅓ of all food produced is wasted
• Regenerative agriculture is a coordinated set of farming and grazing protections that enhances the soil’s ability to retain carbon
• Atmospheric methane accounts for 12% of CO2e emissions → ⅔ of livestock emissions come from beef and dairy cattle
• Food waste in low-income nations is mostly unintended and is the result of things like improper storage and substandard quality. It typically occurs early in the supply chain

• In the US, consumers throw out 35% of their food, amounting to $240B of waste. This is driven by misleading expiration dates and superficial reasons (good quality food that looks bad)
• We must stabilize the carbon cycle by protecting our 3 carbon sinks → lands, forests, and oceans
• Plastics pollute twice, once when made and once when discarded. Only 9% of plastics are recycled, the rest are incinerated or end up in landfill (ultimately in the oceans)
• Heat for industrial processes accounts for ⅓ of global energy use → this heat is generated on-site from natural gas, coal, or oil
• One ambition over the next decade is for clean hydrogen to become the standard for generating high-intensity heat
• Carbon removal (capturing CO2 from the air and storing it is comprised of engineered (direct air capture) and natural solutions (reforestation, afforestation, agroforestry)
• The practical issue with carbon removal is a lack of any real incentive to pay for it → carbon credits will help with this
• Leaders respond to pressure, pressure is created by movements, and movements are built by thousands of individuals
• According to a Harvard study, every political movement has gained the active and sustained participation of at least 3.5% of the population wound up succeeding (between 1900 and 2006)
• The economic opportunity of the clean energy transition is equal to $26T, and will create 65M new jobs
• The world is about to be ravenous for batteries. Lithium is safe to mine and supply should keep pace with demand. Cobalt accounts for 20% of the material in a lithium-ion cathode, and 60% of the supply comes from the DRC, which has dangerous mines and uses child labor
• Nuclear energy is the only carbon-free source of energy that can reliably deliver power at all times, on a large scale. The primary issue is safety
• In the US, > ⅔ of all energy produced from fossil fuels is wasted, either from generation or usage
• Geoengineering is becoming more hotly debated → it involves modifying nature through things like deflecting the sun’s rays