Emissions Reductions: Five Times Faster

Important, Practical Ideas for Speeding the Path to Net Zero

I recently listened to an interview with the author of a 2023 book: Five Times Faster—Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change, by Simon Sharpe. The interview is one of the densest collections of important ideas I’ve heard in quite some time.

I’ve been pretty quiet here, as I focus on my project to make sense of AI and make sure it goes well for the world, but I still follow developments in climate change mitigation. Here’s a quick summary of the ideas I took away. Think of this as a recommendation to either listen to the interview (the first third is free; the rest is behind a $7 paywall) or buy the book.

The rest of this post is my quick attempt to distill some of the key ideas from this terrific interview.

Focus On Change, Not Emissions Reductions

Our ultimate goal is to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. But to reduce emissions by 100%, you shouldn’t begin by thinking “how can I reduce emissions by 10%”. That would be like a preteen athlete, wanting to set themselves on a path to success in the NBA, thinking “to begin with, how can I win my first NBA game?”. Rather than focusing on the end result, you should focus on the changes that are needed to enable that result.

A related point: incentivize the solution; don't penalize the problem. It's useless to try to convince fossil fuel producers (whether companies or countries) to reduce their production, because that's a fight to the death directly against their business model. Instead, look downstream – convince car buyers, electric electricity buyers, or other consumers to switch to clean alternatives, in part by promoting the development of those alternatives. Then you’re not trying to wrestle any stakeholder into acting directly against their core interests.

One implication is that “climate footprint” is the wrong way to think about emissions reductions. Instead of thinking about what you can do to reduce your climate footprint, think about your best leverage for reducing emissions. Spending $10,000 to put solar panels on your rooftop reduces your personal footprint; donating $5,000 to the Giving Green Fund doesn’t. But the latter will have much more impact.

The same applies to businesses, or countries. A battery manufacturer could insulate their factory, to reduce the need for heating and A/C. Or they could build a second factory and increase their battery production. One plan lowers climate footprint, the other doubles it. But increasing battery production is by far more beneficial to the overall course of emissions reduction.

Think Globally, Act Narrowly

Narrowly targeted policies often work better than attempts to tackle the entire emissions challenge in a single bill. For instance, an economy-wide cap-and-trade program will make enemies of every carbon-emitting industry, but will have relatively few supporters. A narrow bill that focuses on fostering a new technology rather than penalizing an old/dirty technology will have support from an array of interests that benefit from the new technology, but isn’t a direct attack on the old one and so won’t garner as much resistance. This helps explains why early subsidies and promotion of EVs, solar and wind power, and other technologies have achieved a lot.

Also, when we foster a new technology, we kick off a virtuous cycle – the cost of that technology comes down, suppliers emerge who have a vested interest in promoting that technology, and so forth. Attempts to strangle dirty solutions don’t trigger this effect. I wrote about a similar idea a couple of years back, in Should We Demand Less Supply, Or Supply Less Demand?

Similarly, Sharpe argues that when it comes to diplomacy, attempts to bring every country together to agree on broad policies, you wind up with a low-impact muddle. “Often the media reporting is all on these headline negotiations, like whether countries can agree exactly which form of words they're going to use to describe burning slightly fewer fossils.”

Instead, he argues that international efforts should be more narrowly targeted. For any given sector, such as steelmaking, there are generally at most ten countries who account for the bulk of production (or, in some cases, consumption). Getting a handful of countries to agree to serious action on a single sector is much more feasible. Specifically, Sharpe argues for limiting “scope, participation, and timeline” – each initiative should focus on a single sector (scope), among a small group of countries with leverage over that sector (participation), and near-term targets and actions (timeline).

The Battle Is Between Interests, Not Countries

Some people describe emissions reduction as a prisoner’s dilemma between countries. The idea is that each country would prefer to neglect reductions, while benefiting from reductions made by the rest of the world. Sharpe suggests that the important struggle is often between opposing interests within each country. For instance, many countries are struggling to take advantage of the low prices now offered by solar and wind power. Typically, within each country, there will be some interests in favor of moving to solar and wind power, and some interests opposed. Rather than pressuring a country to commit to emissions reduction targets, it can be more productive to support the clean energy interests within each country.

Enforced Change Stimulates Innovation

Sharpe argues that when regulations force an industry to change, this often stimulates a wave of innovation. The conventional wisdom is that regulations increase costs, but Steven Chu (Obama’s energy secretary) looked into this and found that historically, energy efficiency regulations for appliances have “actually accelerated price decline of those appliances”. His explanation is that tighter standards create evolutionary pressure, forcing companies to invest in product development instead of advertising.

In the past, I’ve found myself wondering why we keep finding clean solutions that seem straightforwardly superior to what came before. Solar power, EVs, and other zero-emissions technologies often seem to be not only greener, but cleaner, cheaper, and/or better performing than the dirty technologies they replace. That’s unintuitive; when we add a constraint (no carbon emissions), you’d expect the space of possible solutions to shrink, resulting in worse tradeoffs. But that’s often not how things seem to be turning out in practice. Perhaps Sharpe’s idea that constraints stimulate innovation can explain this.

You Should Get This From The Source

This is just my attempt to summarize a lengthy, idea-packed 88-minute conversation. If you found these ideas interesting, I highly recommend that you listen to the interview or buy the book. Again, it’s the best high-level take I’ve heard in quite some time on how to strategically approach emissions reductions.

Meanwhile, most of my writing these days takes place in my AI blog. If you’re interested in the big picture of where AI is going and what it will mean for the world, check it out.