Innovation, Deep Decarbonization and Ethics

ABSTRACT

Deep decarbonization – slashing global greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero – now dominates global climate policy. Two recent books assess feasible routes to achieve deep decarbonization. Bill Gates’ How to Avoid a Climate Disaster explains in depth why deep decarbonization requires significant innovations in tech, and Danny Cullenward and David Victor’s Making Climate Policy Work emphasizes the importance of policy innovation (beyond carbon pricing) for driving clean tech breakthroughs. In this critical review essay, I summarize and assess both books. In the final section, I raise several normative questions, which the pair of books might lead us to.

KEYWORDS:

• Innovation
• decarbonization
• climate policy
• experimentalist governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See, for instance International Energy Agency (2021).

2. The International Energy Agency estimates that iron and steel production accounts for 8% of global energy sector CO₂ emissions (International Energy Agency, 2020b). Since energy sector CO2 emissions equate to around 75% of total greenhouse gas emissions, this means iron and steel production accounts for around 5% of total greenhouse gas emissions.

3. Using 3.06 Gigatons emissions of N₂O in CO2e in 2018 and global emissions of 48.9 GT CO2e, from the CAIT database (available at https://www.climatewatchdata.org).

4. Gates, 2021, p. 117, using a radiative forcing measure for methane of 28.

5. Also known as P2X (power-to-X) technologies. One thing Gates does not make clear: electrofuels have the advantage of making renewable energy more cost-effective. When there is more sun or wind then needed renewable capacity can be directed to making precious electrofuels.

6. Gates notes the irony of his calling for more government intervention in the market, since Microsoft waged one of the largest battles against government oversight in the early 2000s antitrust lawsuit by the US Government. He claims now that the lesson for companies from the anti-trust case is that “we should have been engaging with policy-makers all along” (Gates, 2021, p. 183).

7. From a cost estimate for electrofuels of $9.05 per gallon, and bunker fuel $1.29 (Gates, 2021, p. XXXX) and CO2 emissions per gallon of bunker fuel of 10.18 kg (Environmental Protection Agency, 2020)

8. This argument for “technology transfer” used to feature centrally in the UNFCCC negotiations. Scholarly attention is being paid to the legal aspects of these issues much more than the ethical (Zhou, 2019) and (Rimmer, 2018).

9. The Biden Administration has stated it is “exploring and developing market and regulatory approaches to address greenhouse gas emissions in the global trading system … . this includes consideration of carbon border adjustments” (United States Trade Representative, 2021, p. 3).