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Notes: Speed and Scale

These are my notes from John Doerr’s book, Speed and Scale. He’s a very famous venture capitalist who’s been involved in Climate and greentech for a while. The book came out in late 2021, and feels similar to the Gates book, but different. Again, these notes are rough, and mostly for myself.

Prologue

  • Some backstory. Got involved after An Inconvenient Truth. Started investing in apps and climate. Sad truth: apps were great investments. Climatetech, not so much
  • Clock is ticking. At current rate, will exceed 1.5C rise. Coast cities will drown.
  • By midcentury, a billion worldwide could be climate refugees.

Intro

  • Told a story about FDR in WWII. That problem is huge and complicated, but he simplified objectives to the most important objectives. And figure out details within those objectives.
    • JD wants to do the same thing for climate
  • Preindustrial, about 282 ppm CO2e. In 2018, IPCC warned we needed to keep it below 485 ppm (annoying that it's not in grams)
    • Right now, we are above 500 ppm. This is measured by the NOAA, btw.
  • To stave off catastrophe, must kep CO2e down below 430 ppm.
  • There's a chart. It looks like a crazy hockeystick - from 1 to around the industrial revolution, right around 270 ppm (with some fluctuation. And then in the last 100 years, a SHARP growth to 2018, which is above 400 ppm.
  • For emissions: burning 110 gal gasoline emits 1 ton CO2e.
  • Powering 12k homes with fossil fuels/year emits 100k tons of CO2e
  • Unabated, GHGs will create runaway warming. Since 1880, mean temperature has risen ~1C.
    • Projections for 2100. Bad. If we just keep steady at 50Gt, it'll be ~2.7-3.1C raise.
    • If we can go to net zero, it'll still just be 1.5C
  • 4C would devastate economy, esp in southern hemisphere.
  • Paris agreement made countries declare their own emissions. But not enough. If met in full, would result in 3C rise by 2100. Which is more than the catastrophe point.
  • Net zero is the goal line. He wants to set OKRs.

Breakdown of emissions (these #s are a bit different from BillG book):

  • Total: 59Gt
  • Energy: 24 Gt (41%)
  • Industrial: 12Gt (20%)
  • Food: 9Gt (15%)
  • Transportation: 8Gt (14%)
  • Nature; 6Gt (10%)

He focuses on solutions that will take us to the 1.5C goal line. His version of the FDR napkin:

Big OKRs:

  1. Electrify Transportation. (Gas -> electric vehicles)
  2. Decarbonize the grid (replace fossil fuels with renewables)
  3. Fix food (restore carbon-rich topsoil, better fertilization, encourage people to eat lower-emissions proteins)
  4. Protect Nature (protect forests, soil, oceans)
  5. Clean up industry (manufacturier, eg. cement and steel, need to reduce impact)
  6. Remove carbon (natural and engineered solutions for air capture)

Points out these Accelerants:

  • Implementing public policy
  • Movements into meaningful action
  • Inventing and scaling tech
  • Capture at scale.

Electrify transportation.

Potential: 8Gt->2Gt by 2050.

Key Results:

  • Price (parity with ICE in the US, India, China)
  • 1/2 new cars are EVs by 2030, 95% by 2040
  • Bus/trucks electric by 2025, 30% of medium/heavy trucks are 0-emission by 2030.
  • 50% of miles driven on road are electric by 2040, 95% by 2050) (5Gt)
  • Planes. 20% of lanes use low-carbon fuel by 2025. 40% of miles flown are carbon-neutral by 2040. (0.3Gt)
  • All new construction to zero-ready ships by 2030 (0.6 Gt)

Price KR: if we want people to switch to EV's, we need the price to be the same. Like gates says, need to decrease the green premium.

Green premium varies across sectors. Here's a graph across different things.

  • Low for long-haul trucking, electricity (15-20%). But high for aviation fuel (400%). Cement premium is 75%. Burger has a premium of 86%
  • Busses represent 10% of vehicles on road, generate 30% of sector's GHGs
  • Wright's law
    • For every doubling of production, there's a reliable decline in costs. This has occurred in like, planes, battery production, tv, etc. Looking at EV batteries, apparently we still see that. So we do get economies in this physical production.
  • Bright future for batteries+EVs.

Decarbonize the grid.

  • Hermann Scheer, spent a while pushing Germany to move off coal.
  • Started a marketplace for solar and wind power. People could install solar panels and sell power to the grid.
  • Between 2010 and 2020, panels went from $2/watt to $.20.
  • Germany reached 16% renewables in 2010. In 2019, 42% renewables.
  • Key problem: renewables aren't on-demand. Need batteries and stuff to do time planning.

Key Results:

  • Zero out 50% of electricity worldwide by 2025, 90% by 2035. (16.5Gt)
  • Solar and Wind. Make cheaper to build than emitting sources.
  • Storage. Electric storage below $50/kWh for short duration, by 2025
  • Coal and gas. No new coal/gas plants after 2021.
  • Methane emissions. Eliminate leaks, venting, flaring (3Gt)
  • Heating and Cooking. Cut gas, oil for heating. (1.5 Gt)

Top priority is to zero out the electric grid. Options include nuclear grid. Make nuclear cheaper. Are close to achieving solar/wind.

Food

  • Dark, carbon-rich soil has more nutrients+retains moisture better
  • Earth's soil contains 2500 Gt carbon. To reach net zero, need soil to absorb more of it.
  • Traditional farming: plows tear the soil's connective tissue. Disrupt the natural ecosystem, bring CO2 to air.
  • Nitrogen fertilizers, etc, bring out more.
  • By 2050, population probably 10B people. Will need to make 60% more calories than 2010 while decreasing footprint.

Food KR's:

  • Farm soils. Improve soil health, increase carbon content in topsoils (-2Gt).
  • Fertilizers. Stop overuse. -0.5 Gt
  • Promote lower-emissions proteins. Cut beef/dairy consumption. 25% by 2030. 50% by 2050.
  • RICE. Reduce emissions 50%. 0.5 Gt
  • Food waste. Reduce it from 33% wasted to 10%. -1 Gt
  • Stop fertilizer overuse. Lot of N2O here.
  • Methane.
    • Feedlot beef has highest emissions footprint of popular food, by far.
    • Serious discussion of climate MUST talk about methane. Generate 12% of GHGs, or 7 Gt of CO2e. If cows were a country, would be 3rd in emissions, after China and USA.
      • Emission/kg of food:
      • Beef: 59
      • Lamb: 24
      • Cheese: 21
      • ...
      • Poultry: 6.1
      • Eggs: 4.5
      • Tofu: 3
      • Milk: 2.8
  • Plant-based proteins. Reducing cattle belching by doing natural additives. Education (changing people's eating patterns)
  • Dairy also a big issue. We have alternatives to milk. But no alternatives to cheese.
  • Rice paddy flooding grows methane-producing microbes.
  • Also, waste. 1/3 of food is wasted every year. Collectively, wasted food is about 2Gt of emissions.

Chapter 4. Protect Nature.

  • Main problem. In climate change, we're seeing feedback loops, and we can't account for them.
  • Example: high GHG warms globe. High temp sucks water from trees. Dry heat ignites, wildfire. Tree's carbon -> atmosphere. This is bad.
  • If want to stop feedback loop, MUST stabilizer carbon cycle.

Key Results:

  • Net zero deforestation by 2030.
  • Eliminate deep-sea trawling, protect at least 30% of oceans by 2030
  • Expand protected land.
  • Kelp forests. Grow near surface, doesn't displace farmland.
  • If they can scale kelp forest to 1% of world's oceans (or about half the size of australia), can absorb 1 Gt of CO2/year.

Chapter 8. Turn movements into action.

  • According to a study, every political movement that gained the active and sustained participation of at least 3.5% of the population ended up succeeding. In the USA, that's fewer than 12M people.

KRs:

  • Turn climate to a top-2 voting issue in 20 top emitting countries by 2025
  • Majority of gov officials support net 0
  • All fortune global 500s to reach net 0 by 2040 ...

Do voters care? takes a back seat to immigration, taxes, healthcare.