The climate agenda is on everyone’s lips, the startups responding to it almost all over the world are easier to attract funding and, what is often more important, are more attractive to the most talented engineers and programmers than the Internet companies – the idols of the last decade.
Emphasis on energy
At first glance, there is nothing surprising about this state of affairs. The UN recognizes climate change as the most important human problem: Food production, the habitats of hundreds of millions of people and human lives themselves are threatened. This view is supported by most scientists, not just politicians.
A closer look reveals that the source of all the woes appears to be the greenhouse gases produced by mankind in the process of burning fossil fuels. This fuel is burned mostly by transport and energy companies, so the most visible and most costly efforts are focused on the energy transition – from burning hydrocarbon fuels to renewable energy sources and nuclear power. Mass electrification is also underway: when electricity is generated in a “clean” way, electric cars, even taking into account gas emissions during production, will prove to be far less of an air pollutant than cars with internal combustion engines (ICE).
It is easy to see the scale of these projects in many countries around the world as you drive past the huge areas occupied by wind turbine masts or covered by solar panels. All of the world’s major automakers have taken up the task of electrifying their fleets, and the governments of many countries and territories have decided to ban sales of new vehicles with internal combustion engines since about the 2030s.
Protection from disasters
In this situation, something else is surprising. Climate projects fall into two broad groups according to their objectives: mitigation (reducing or ameliorating the risks, i.e. actually stopping warming) and adaptation (adapting to the processes occurring as a result of warming). The above-mentioned strategies for transforming energy and transport are prime examples of risk reduction. The lion’s share of climate financing relates to the mitigation strategy, while adaptation projects account for only a few percent, and almost all such projects concern vulnerable people in developing countries. A typical example is Africa’s food security projects. The continent is now a net importer of food, and climate change threatens to reduce the area available to grow cocoa beans and bananas. A critical component of adaptation in this situation is new technologies and ways of managing water resources and getting potable water, from advanced agricultural techniques to building efficient treatment and desalination plants.