<story><title>Things I Learned from Five Years in Climate Tech</title><url>https://evanm.website/2020/02/five-years-in-energy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryanmercer</author><text>&amp;gt;and I think it has a bright future.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s highly debatable. While you might sell software&amp;#x2F;solar panels&amp;#x2F;magicwidgets to a small subset of people, for the most part no technology is going to have a meaningful impact on current greenhouse gas emissions.&lt;p&gt;As I said to Wren (I really tear into them in this post, I feel I was fair though)[1] after they post their introduction thread here:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; We&amp;#x27;re going to make changes by convincing people they really don&amp;#x27;t need to take their 4th international vacation in as many years, nor do they need their 3rd iPhone in 5 years, that their year and a half old MacBook is perfectly fine. They don&amp;#x27;t need the newest model just because it now has ultra holographic flurm instead of super holographic flurm because all they do is watch YouTube and write emails with the damn thing.&lt;p&gt;Sure you might sell a regional power provider on using some software that does something a little better to improve efficiency 1&amp;#x2F;2 % which will absolutely make a difference but while you&amp;#x27;re doing that, a few new coal plants went online in India&amp;#x2F;China&amp;#x2F;a developing country. Also the power company that you sold it to is losing obscene amounts of electricity, generated by fossil fuels, via transmission loss&lt;p&gt;So you develop something for ICE cars that cuts out cylinders when lower demand is required, turns off the engine at stops, uses a solar panel to recharge a battery specifically for defrosting the windows instead of relying on the ICE charged lead-acid battery, etc but while you are designing that for a specific line of cars over the course of 2 years China alone added tens of millions of new drivers to the road driving ICE vehicles that aren&amp;#x27;t burning fuel optimally.&lt;p&gt;While you are writing software, or developing a widget, to shave a few grams of CO2 emissions off of each customer a day websites&amp;#x2F;apps like YouTube&amp;#x2F;Facebook&amp;#x2F;Twitter&amp;#x2F;Instagram are generating tens to hundreds of grams of CO2 per gigabyte of data transferred.&lt;p&gt;While you&amp;#x27;re trying to reduce the footprint of people with 6-figure salaries that can afford to spend money on reducing their footprint, you have hundreds of millions to billions of up and lower middle-class consumers consuming more and more as their greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at staggering rates.&lt;p&gt;While you&amp;#x27;re developing software to plan the best optimized routes for a UPS driver or commercial flight, you have people watching vidieos on YT trying to figure out where they want to take their 4th exotic vacation to (by plane, at a couple of tons of CO2 roundtrip per passenger) where they&amp;#x27;ll eat out the entirety of the time probably generating a bunch of petrochemical derived single-use packaging.&lt;p&gt;You even have Y Combinator doing contradictory stuff in this field, as I said in an open letter to them [2]&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Another example of something that wholly puzzles me is, YC has recently asked for solutions to global warming, chiefly carbon sequestration solutions. We&amp;#x27;re going to produce close to 40 gigatons of carbon this year that will enter the system, that&amp;#x27;s insanity. If you filled the 10 most massive bodies of freshwater in the world with Azolla (see the Azolla event) you&amp;#x27;d only pull roughly 10% of that amount out of the atmosphere annually, and you would only sequester a fraction of that. Yet YC, for the interviews for companies that get an invite, they want the founders to fly to the Bay Area for a 10-minute interview. FOLKS! One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person.&lt;p&gt;People can make immediate and real impacts on their greenhouse gas emissions by cutting 1 day of meat consumption out a week. Then 2 days. Then get meat down to being a special occasion, or never, consumption.&lt;p&gt;People can make immediate and real impacts by opting to watch a documentary instead of flying to Antarctica to take pictures with penguins.&lt;p&gt;People can make immediate and real impacts by reading a book from a library instead of having Netflix streaming in the background why they play Candy Crush or Angry Birds on their phone with the air conditioning blasting 70F air at them while they&amp;#x27;re wrapped up in a blanket with a hoodie on when it&amp;#x27;s 75F out.&lt;p&gt;Even if someone cracks cold fusion TODAY, replacing the tens of thousands of power plants around the world... the concrete alone required would release a mind boggling amount of CO2 to produce and replacing them would take decades.&lt;p&gt;Developing software or a widget to optimize one&amp;#x27;s impact is just selling people hopium. Getting people to radically change their habits (stop travelling, stop ordering from Amazon five times a week for one item each time, stop ordering Uber eats and cook something, reduce meat consumption, shop with a minimal waste mindset, don&amp;#x27;t buy food if you&amp;#x27;re going to throw half of it out, make tv a treat not a daily necessity etc).&lt;p&gt;Sure, there is investor money to be pilfered in this field but ehhhh.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanmercer.com&amp;#x2F;ryansthoughts&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;7&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;wren-medieval-indulgence-and-your-carbon-footprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanmercer.com&amp;#x2F;ryansthoughts&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;7&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;wren-medi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanmercer.com&amp;#x2F;ryansthoughts&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;an-open-letter-to-yc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanmercer.com&amp;#x2F;ryansthoughts&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;an-open-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>layoric</author><text>This is a great piece and resonates with me a lot. I was an early employee at a climate tech startup ~3 years ago. I moved into climate tech intentionally from local gov contracting, it’s a great field for someone like a Data Engineer or Data Science kind of role, lots of opportunity to work on many different things.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the post that the utility scale space is a hard slog but I honestly believe the only way to scale renewables is to make it economically attractive for investment and any tech that can reduce operational cost of these assets to increase margins and attract more investment into utility scale renewable generation. A carbon price would be a huge boost to this space, things are still progressing without it but I think it would seriously accelerate our energy transition as well as spur innovation for non energy related carbon intensive industries. The current state of low interest rates world wide and funds having a harder time finding good returns means a lot of groups building solar utility scale assets are banks&amp;#x2F;funds with little knowledge&amp;#x2F;interest in energy generation, pulling together those with the how to knowledge to materialize their return on investment.&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend working in this space, its technically challenging and I think it has a bright future. It’s not as big and flashy as a lot of software startup worlds but small teams can still have a big impact. I also sure prefer working on these problems than working on platforms trying to sell more ads.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>triceratops</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m sorry but that sounds wildly idealistic. &amp;quot;If everyone acted in a certain way, the world would be perfect and we&amp;#x27;d have peace forever.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;People drive SUVs, eat burgers, and travel on jet planes because it&amp;#x27;s fun and cheap. Make those things less cheap, say by introducing carbon taxes, and people will do less of them. It&amp;#x27;s really really hard to get people to change their lifestyles absent any immediate, external pressure.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s awesome that you&amp;#x27;re doing all those things. I do many of them too (biking to work, shopping 2nd hand for many things, stubbornly repairing electronics etc) but not because I think it has any substantial impact. I do because it&amp;#x27;s the right thing to do and because it presents a positive example. It can show others that a rich, fulfilling life is possible without the frills of consumerism.</text></comment>
<story><title>Things I Learned from Five Years in Climate Tech</title><url>https://evanm.website/2020/02/five-years-in-energy/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ryanmercer</author><text>&amp;gt;and I think it has a bright future.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s highly debatable. While you might sell software&amp;#x2F;solar panels&amp;#x2F;magicwidgets to a small subset of people, for the most part no technology is going to have a meaningful impact on current greenhouse gas emissions.&lt;p&gt;As I said to Wren (I really tear into them in this post, I feel I was fair though)[1] after they post their introduction thread here:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; We&amp;#x27;re going to make changes by convincing people they really don&amp;#x27;t need to take their 4th international vacation in as many years, nor do they need their 3rd iPhone in 5 years, that their year and a half old MacBook is perfectly fine. They don&amp;#x27;t need the newest model just because it now has ultra holographic flurm instead of super holographic flurm because all they do is watch YouTube and write emails with the damn thing.&lt;p&gt;Sure you might sell a regional power provider on using some software that does something a little better to improve efficiency 1&amp;#x2F;2 % which will absolutely make a difference but while you&amp;#x27;re doing that, a few new coal plants went online in India&amp;#x2F;China&amp;#x2F;a developing country. Also the power company that you sold it to is losing obscene amounts of electricity, generated by fossil fuels, via transmission loss&lt;p&gt;So you develop something for ICE cars that cuts out cylinders when lower demand is required, turns off the engine at stops, uses a solar panel to recharge a battery specifically for defrosting the windows instead of relying on the ICE charged lead-acid battery, etc but while you are designing that for a specific line of cars over the course of 2 years China alone added tens of millions of new drivers to the road driving ICE vehicles that aren&amp;#x27;t burning fuel optimally.&lt;p&gt;While you are writing software, or developing a widget, to shave a few grams of CO2 emissions off of each customer a day websites&amp;#x2F;apps like YouTube&amp;#x2F;Facebook&amp;#x2F;Twitter&amp;#x2F;Instagram are generating tens to hundreds of grams of CO2 per gigabyte of data transferred.&lt;p&gt;While you&amp;#x27;re trying to reduce the footprint of people with 6-figure salaries that can afford to spend money on reducing their footprint, you have hundreds of millions to billions of up and lower middle-class consumers consuming more and more as their greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase at staggering rates.&lt;p&gt;While you&amp;#x27;re developing software to plan the best optimized routes for a UPS driver or commercial flight, you have people watching vidieos on YT trying to figure out where they want to take their 4th exotic vacation to (by plane, at a couple of tons of CO2 roundtrip per passenger) where they&amp;#x27;ll eat out the entirety of the time probably generating a bunch of petrochemical derived single-use packaging.&lt;p&gt;You even have Y Combinator doing contradictory stuff in this field, as I said in an open letter to them [2]&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;Another example of something that wholly puzzles me is, YC has recently asked for solutions to global warming, chiefly carbon sequestration solutions. We&amp;#x27;re going to produce close to 40 gigatons of carbon this year that will enter the system, that&amp;#x27;s insanity. If you filled the 10 most massive bodies of freshwater in the world with Azolla (see the Azolla event) you&amp;#x27;d only pull roughly 10% of that amount out of the atmosphere annually, and you would only sequester a fraction of that. Yet YC, for the interviews for companies that get an invite, they want the founders to fly to the Bay Area for a 10-minute interview. FOLKS! One round-trip flight from New York to Europe or San Francisco creates a warming effect equivalent to 2 or 3 tons of carbon dioxide per person.&lt;p&gt;People can make immediate and real impacts on their greenhouse gas emissions by cutting 1 day of meat consumption out a week. Then 2 days. Then get meat down to being a special occasion, or never, consumption.&lt;p&gt;People can make immediate and real impacts by opting to watch a documentary instead of flying to Antarctica to take pictures with penguins.&lt;p&gt;People can make immediate and real impacts by reading a book from a library instead of having Netflix streaming in the background why they play Candy Crush or Angry Birds on their phone with the air conditioning blasting 70F air at them while they&amp;#x27;re wrapped up in a blanket with a hoodie on when it&amp;#x27;s 75F out.&lt;p&gt;Even if someone cracks cold fusion TODAY, replacing the tens of thousands of power plants around the world... the concrete alone required would release a mind boggling amount of CO2 to produce and replacing them would take decades.&lt;p&gt;Developing software or a widget to optimize one&amp;#x27;s impact is just selling people hopium. Getting people to radically change their habits (stop travelling, stop ordering from Amazon five times a week for one item each time, stop ordering Uber eats and cook something, reduce meat consumption, shop with a minimal waste mindset, don&amp;#x27;t buy food if you&amp;#x27;re going to throw half of it out, make tv a treat not a daily necessity etc).&lt;p&gt;Sure, there is investor money to be pilfered in this field but ehhhh.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanmercer.com&amp;#x2F;ryansthoughts&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;7&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;wren-medieval-indulgence-and-your-carbon-footprint&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanmercer.com&amp;#x2F;ryansthoughts&amp;#x2F;2019&amp;#x2F;7&amp;#x2F;18&amp;#x2F;wren-medi...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanmercer.com&amp;#x2F;ryansthoughts&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;an-open-letter-to-yc&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ryanmercer.com&amp;#x2F;ryansthoughts&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;10&amp;#x2F;30&amp;#x2F;an-open-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>layoric</author><text>This is a great piece and resonates with me a lot. I was an early employee at a climate tech startup ~3 years ago. I moved into climate tech intentionally from local gov contracting, it’s a great field for someone like a Data Engineer or Data Science kind of role, lots of opportunity to work on many different things.&lt;p&gt;I agree with the post that the utility scale space is a hard slog but I honestly believe the only way to scale renewables is to make it economically attractive for investment and any tech that can reduce operational cost of these assets to increase margins and attract more investment into utility scale renewable generation. A carbon price would be a huge boost to this space, things are still progressing without it but I think it would seriously accelerate our energy transition as well as spur innovation for non energy related carbon intensive industries. The current state of low interest rates world wide and funds having a harder time finding good returns means a lot of groups building solar utility scale assets are banks&amp;#x2F;funds with little knowledge&amp;#x2F;interest in energy generation, pulling together those with the how to knowledge to materialize their return on investment.&lt;p&gt;I highly recommend working in this space, its technically challenging and I think it has a bright future. It’s not as big and flashy as a lot of software startup worlds but small teams can still have a big impact. I also sure prefer working on these problems than working on platforms trying to sell more ads.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>EpicEng</author><text>So... corporate action is meaningless because other companies will continue to pollute. Technological advancements are meaningless because other countries will continue to use old tech.&lt;p&gt;But... individual actions are meaningful because... other people won&amp;#x27;t continue to live wastefully... I guess? I don&amp;#x27;t see the logic here at all.</text></comment>