by Bill Gates
The list goes on. The Department of Agriculture does key work on land use and agricultural emissions; the Department of Defense buys advanced low-emissions fuels and materials; the National Science Foundation funds research; the Department of Transportation helps fund roads and bridges; and so on.
Finally, there’s the matter of how we finance the work it’ll take to get to zero. We can’t know with any precision how much getting to zero will cost over time—it will depend on the success and speed of innovation and the effectiveness of deployment—but we know that it will require massive investment.
The United States is lucky to have mature and creative capital markets that can grab great ideas and get them developed and deployed quickly; I’ve suggested ways that the federal government can help move those markets in the right direction and partner with the private sector in new ways. Other countries—China, India, and many European nations, for example—don’t have private markets that are as strong, but they can still make big public investments for climate change. And multilateral banks, like the World Bank and development banks in Asia, Africa, and Europe, are also looking to get more involved.
Two things are clear. First, the amount of money invested in getting to zero, and adapting to the damage that we know is coming, will need to ramp up dramatically and for the long haul. To me, this means that governments and multilateral banks will need to find much better ways to tap private capital. Their coffers aren’t big enough to do this on their own.
Second, the time frames for climate investment are long, and the risks are high. So the public sector should be using its financial strength to lengthen the investment horizon—reflecting the fact that returns may not come for many years—and reduce the risk of these investments. It’ll be tricky to mix public and private money on such a large scale, but it’s essential. We need our best minds in finance working on this problem.
State Governments
In America, many states are leading the way. Twenty-four states and Puerto Rico have joined the bipartisan U.S. Climate Alliance, committing to meet the Paris Agreement goals of reducing emissions by at least 26 percent by 2025. Although that’s not nearly enough to reduce nationwide emissions as much as we need to, it’s not tilting at windmills either. States can play a crucial role in demonstrating innovative technologies and policies, such as using their utilities and road construction projects to drive technologies like long-duration storage and low-emissions cement into the market.
States can also test policies like carbon pricing, clean electricity standards, and clean fuel standards before we implement them across the country. And they can join together in regional alliances, the way California and other western states are looking at joining up their grids and as some states in the Northeast have done with a cap-and-trade program to lower emissions. The U.S. Climate Alliance and the cities that have aligned with it represent more than 60 percent of the U.S. economy, which means they have a phenomenal ability to create markets and show how we can get new ideas to scale.
State legislatures would be responsible for adopting state-level carbon-pricing systems, clean energy standards, and clean fuel standards. They would also direct state agencies and public utility or service commissions to change their procurement policies so they prioritize advanced low-emissions technologies.
State agencies are responsible for meeting goals set by the legislature and by the governor. They oversee energy efficiency and buildings-related policy, manage state transport-related policy and investment, enforce pollution standards, and regulate agriculture and other uses of land.
In the unlikely event that someone runs up to you and demands, “What’s the most obscure agency with an underappreciated impact on climate change?” you could do worse than say, “My state’s public utility commission,” or “My state’s public service commission.” (The name varies from state to state.) Most people have never heard of PUCs or PSCs, but they’re actually responsible for many of the regulations related to electricity in the United States. For example, they approve investment plans proposed by electric utilities and determine the price that consumers pay for electricity. And they’ll become only more important as we meet more of our energy needs with electricity.
Local Governments
Mayors across the United States and around the world are committing to reduce emissions. Twelve major American cities have set a goal of being carbon neutral by 2050, and more than 300 have pledged to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Cities don’t have as much influence on emissions as state and federal governments, but they’re far from powerless. Although they can’t set their own vehicle emissions standards, for example, they can buy electric buses, fund more charging stations for electric vehicles, use zoning laws to increase density so people travel less between work and home, and potentially restrict access to their roads by fossil-fuel-powered vehicles. They can also establish green building policies, electrify their vehicle fleets, and set procurement guidelines and performance standards for municipally owned buildings.
And some cities—Seattle, Nashville, and Austin, for example—own the local utility company, giving them oversight over whether they get their electricity from clean sources. Cities like these can also allow the building of clean energy projects on city land.
City councils can take action similar to that of state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, funding climate policy priorities and requiring local government agencies to take action.
Local agencies, like their state and federal counterparts, oversee different policy priorities. Building departments enforce efficiency requirements; transit agencies can go electric and influence the materials used in roads and bridges; waste management agencies operate large vehicle fleets and have influence over emissions from landfills.
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Back to the federal level for one last point: how rich countries can help eliminate the free-rider problem.
There’s no way to sugarcoat the fact that getting to zero won’t come for free. We have to invest more money in research, and we need policies that drive the markets toward clean energy products that are, right now, more expensive than their greenhouse-gas-emitting counterparts.
But it’s hard to impose higher costs now in exchange for a better climate later. The Green Premiums give countries, and especially middle- and low-income countries, a major incentive to resist cutting their emissions. We’ve already seen example after example around the world—Canada, the Philippines, Brazil, Australia, France, and others—in which the public makes it clear with their votes and their voices that they don’t want to pay more for gasoline, heating oil, and other basics.
The problem is not that people in these countries want the climate to get hotter. The problem is that they’re worried about how much the solutions will cost them.
So how do we solve the free-rider problem?
It helps to set ambitious goals and commit to meeting them, the way countries around the world did with the 2015 Paris Agreement. It’s easy to mock international agreements, but they’re part of how progress happens: If you like having an ozone layer, you can thank an international agreement called the Montreal Protocol.
Once these goals are set, forums like the COP 21 are where countries get together to report on their progress and share what’s working. And they serve as a mechanism for pressing national governments to do their part. When the world’s governments agree that there’s value in reducing emissions, it becomes harder—though far from impossible, as we have seen—to be the outlier who says, “I don’t care. I’m going to keep emitting greenhouse gases.”
What about those who refuse to go along? It’s notoriously difficult to hold a country accountable for something like its carbon emissions. But it’s not out of the question. For example, governments that adopt a price on carbon can create what’s called a border adjustment—mak
ing sure that the carbon price on some product is paid whether that product was made domestically or imported from somewhere else. (They’d need to make allowances for products from low-income countries where the priority is to drive economic growth, not to reduce their already very low carbon emissions.)
And even countries without a carbon tax can make it clear that they won’t make trade agreements and enter multilateral partnerships with anyone who hasn’t made it a priority to reduce greenhouse gases and adopted the policies to accomplish it (again, with allowances for low-income countries). In essence, governments can say to each other, “If you want to do business with us, you’ll have to take climate change seriously.”
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Finally, and in my view most important, we have to lower the Green Premiums. It’s the only way to make it easier for middle- and low-income countries to reduce their emissions and eventually get to zero, and it will happen only if rich countries—especially the United States, Japan, and European nations—take the lead. After all, that’s where much of the world’s innovation happens.
And—this is a really important point—lowering the Green Premiums that the world pays is not charity. Countries like the United States shouldn’t see investing in clean energy R&D as just a favor to the rest of the world. They should also see it as an opportunity to make scientific breakthroughs that will give birth to new industries composed of major new companies, creating jobs and reducing emissions at the same time.
Think about all the good that comes from medical research funded by the National Institutes of Health. The NIH publishes its results so scientists around the world can benefit from the work, but its funding also builds up capacity in American universities that are, in turn, connected to both start-ups and big companies. The result: an American export—advanced medical expertise—that creates a lot of high-paying jobs at home and saves lives around the world.
It’s a similar story in technology, where early investments by the Department of Defense led to the creation of the internet and the microchips that powered the personal computer revolution.
And the same thing can happen in clean energy. There are markets worth billions of dollars waiting for someone to invent low-cost, zero-carbon cement or steel, or a net-zero liquid fuel. As I’ve tried to show, making these breakthroughs and getting them to scale will be hard, but the opportunities are so big that it’s worth getting out in front of the rest of the world. Someone will invent these technologies. It’s just a question of who and how soon.
There’s a lot that individuals can do, from the local level to the national level, to accelerate this agenda. We’ll cover that in the next and final chapter.
CHAPTER 12
WHAT EACH OF US CAN DO
It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of a problem as big as climate change. But you’re not powerless. And you don’t have to be a politician or a philanthropist to make a difference. You have influence as a citizen, a consumer, and an employee or employer.
As a Citizen
When you ask yourself what you can do to limit climate change, it’s natural to think of things like driving an electric car or eating less meat. This sort of personal action is important for the signals it sends to the marketplace—see the next section for more on that point—but the bulk of our emissions comes from the larger systems in which we live our daily lives.
When somebody wants toast for breakfast, we need to make sure there’s a system in place that can deliver the bread, the toaster, and the electricity to run the toaster without adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. We aren’t going to solve the climate problem by telling people not to eat toast.
But putting this new energy system in place requires concerted political action. That’s why engaging in the political process is the most important single step that people from every walk of life can take to help avoid a climate disaster.
In my own meetings with politicians, I’ve found that it helps to remember that climate change isn’t the only thing on their plate. Government leaders are also thinking about education, jobs, health care, foreign policy, and more recently, COVID-19. And they should: All those things demand attention.
But policy makers can take on only so many problems at once. And they decide what to do, what to prioritize, based on what they’re hearing from their constituents.
In other words, elected officials will adopt specific plans for climate change if their voters demand it. Thanks to activists around the world, we don’t need to generate demand: Millions of people are already calling for action. What we do need to do, though, is to translate these calls for action into pressure that encourages politicians to make the tough choices and trade-offs necessary to deliver on their promises to reduce emissions.
Whatever other resources you may have, you can always use your voice and your vote to effect change.
Make calls, write letters, attend town halls. What you can help your leaders understand is that it’s just as important for them to think about the long-term problem of climate change as it is for them to think about jobs or education or health care.
It may sound old-fashioned, but letters and phone calls to your elected officials can have a real impact. Senators and representatives get frequent reports on what their offices are hearing from constituents. But don’t simply say, “Do something about climate change.” Know where they stand, ask them questions, and make clear that this is an issue that will help determine how you vote. Demand more funding for clean energy R&D, a clean energy standard, a price on carbon, or any of the other policies from chapter 11.
Look locally as well as nationally. A lot of the relevant decisions are made at the state and local levels by governors, mayors, state legislatures, and city councils—places where individual citizens can have an even bigger impact than at the federal level. In the United States, for example, electricity is primarily regulated by statewide public utility commissions, made up of either elected or appointed commissioners. Know who your representatives are and keep in touch with them.
Run for office. Running for the U.S. Congress is a tall order. But you don’t have to start there. You can run for state or local office, where you’ll probably have more impact anyway. We need all the policy smarts, courage, and creativity in public office that we can get.
As a Consumer
The market is ruled by supply and demand, and as a consumer you can have a huge impact on the demand side of the equation. If all of us make individual changes in what we buy and use, it can add up to a lot—as long as we focus on changes that are meaningful. For example, if you can afford to install a smart thermostat to reduce your energy consumption when you’re not at home, by all means do it. You’ll cut your utility bill and your greenhouse gas emissions.
But reducing your own carbon emissions isn’t the most powerful thing you can do. You can also send a signal to the market that people want zero-carbon alternatives and are willing to pay for them. When you pay more for an electric car, a heat pump, or a plant-based burger, you’re saying, “There’s a market for this stuff. We’ll buy it.” If enough people send the same signal, companies will respond—quite quickly, in my experience. They’ll put more money and time into making low-emissions products, which will drive down the prices of those products, which will help them get adopted in big numbers. It will make investors more confident about funding new companies that are making the breakthroughs that will help us get to zero.
Without that demand signal, the innovations that governments and businesses invest in will stay on the shelf. Or they won’t get developed in the first place, because there’s no economic incentive to make them.
Here are some specific steps you can take:
Sign up for a green pricing program with your electric utility. Some utility companies allow homes and businesses to pay extra for power from clean sources. In 13 states
, utilities are required to offer this option. (You can see whether your state does by checking the Green Pricing Programs map at C2ES—the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions—www.c2es.org/document/green-pricing-programs.) Customers in these programs pay a premium on their electric bill to cover the extra cost of renewable energy, an average of one to two cents per kilowatt-hour, or $9 to $18 a month for the typical American home. When you participate in these programs, you’re telling your utility company that you’re willing to pay more to address climate change. That’s an important market signal.
But what these programs don’t do is cancel out emissions or lead to meaningful increases in the amount of renewable power on the grid. Only government policies and increased investments can do that.
Reduce your home’s emissions. Depending on how much money and time you can spare, you can replace your incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs, install a smart thermostat, insulate your windows, buy efficient appliances, or replace your heating and cooling system with a heat pump (as long as you live in a climate where they can operate). If you rent your home, you can make the changes within your control—such as replacing lightbulbs—and encourage your landlord to do the rest. If you’re building a new home or renovating an old one, you can opt for recycled steel and make the home more efficient by using structural insulated panels, insulating concrete forms, attic or roof radiant barriers, reflective insulation, and foundation insulation.
