A comprehensive action plan for climate with Speed & Scale, Ep #22
Sep 27, 2022
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Discover a detailed action plan in Speed & Scale book to cut emissions in half by 2030. Learn about the importance of OKRs in creating clear climate goals. Explore the impact of Early Clean Energy Investments and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on climate priorities.
Speed & Scale provides a sector-specific action plan to cut emissions and achieve net zero by 2050 using OKRs framework.
Accelerants like politics, movements, innovation, and investments are crucial for rapid progress in climate action.
Legislative initiatives and individual contributions are key to advancing climate goals and combating climate change collectively.
Deep dives
Overview of Invested in Climate Podcast
The Invested in Climate podcast addresses the urgent challenge of climate change and decarbonizing the global economy. The episode emphasizes that everyone has a role to play in this endeavor, highlighting the unprecedented opportunity to tackle climate change through work, investments, learning, lifestyle changes, and activism. Hosted by Jason Rissman, the episode introduces 'Speed and Scale,' a comprehensive action plan for solving the climate crisis. It incorporates a system called objectives and key results (OKRs) to outline a clear sector-by-sector plan to cut emissions and achieve net zero by 2050.
Sector-Specific Emission Reductions
The episode details six of the ten OKRs focusing on specific ways to reduce emissions in sectors like transportation, electricity generation, and food production. It highlights the importance of electrifying transportation, decarbonizing the grid, transitioning to sustainable agriculture, protecting nature, cleaning up industry, and implementing carbon removal strategies to achieve emission reduction targets. Each sector-specific objective is accompanied by key results, emphasizing the need for immediate and targeted actions.
Accelerating Climate Action
The episode discusses four accelerants essential for driving rapid progress towards climate goals. Winning in politics and policy, turning movements into action, fostering innovation, and increasing investments are identified as crucial factors to expedite the decarbonization process. These accelerants aim to mobilize countries, companies, innovators, and investors to bring about significant transformations in addressing climate change.
Assessing Progress and Optimism
By analyzing a tracker tool's data that measures progress towards climate goals, the episode indicates varying levels of advancement across key results. While some key results show strong progress, others are off-course or code red, signifying minimal or no advancement. Despite challenges, reasons for optimism lie in recent policy developments, increased venture capital investments, and a growing momentum towards cleaner technologies, offering hope for achieving climate targets.
Policy Implications and Individual Actions
The episode underscores the significant impact of legislative initiatives like the Infrastructure and Jobs Act (IRA) in advancing climate actions. It highlights the importance of aligning government funding with key climate priorities such as electrified transportation, renewable energy adoption, and sustainable agriculture. Moreover, it encourages individuals to contribute by switching to electric vehicles, adopting clean energy solutions, and supporting climate-friendly policies at local and national levels, emphasizing the collective effort required to combat climate change.
My favorite read in the last couple years by far is a book called Speed & Scale. We know there’s been a massive mobilization of capital, talent and attention to address climate change, but how do we know if it’ll be enough?
Speed & Scale offers a clear, sector by sector, action plan and online tracker of what we need to do to cut emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050. It’s incredibly well researched, packed with data and inspiration, and it uses the tried and tested system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to create clear goals that add up to a comprehensive plan.
Some quick context for you:
OKRs became a popular management system after venture capital investor John Doerr introduced them to Google in 1999. John wrote about OKRs in his book Measure What Matters. He’s long been a leading climate investor and donor, and recently gave $1.1 billion dollars to found Stanford’s new School of Sustainability.
Bringing the OKR framework to create a global action plan for climate was an ambitious and much needed effort that can help inform climate action.
For today’s episode, I spoke with Ryan Panchadsaram and Anjali Grover. Ryan is a special advisor to John Doerr, and is the co-author of Speed & Scale. Anjali is Partner and Managing Director of Speed & Scale, overseeing the ongoing initiative to accelerate and track progress against the OKRs. We cover a lot of ground – from high level to nitty gritty, from code red OKRs where progress isn’t being made to real reasons for optimism, and of course, also, what this all means for everyday people who care about climate change. Enjoy.
In today’s episode, we cover:
[5:01] What is Speed & Scale and how it came about
[7:36] The key objectives covered in Speed & Scale
