Climate change continues to build at an alarming pace. The United Nations Environment Programme declared limiting warming to 1.5°C dead – unless the world can claw emissions back 42 per cent before 2030. Yet, every day exciting new climate technologies are launching globally and it is estimated that existing technologies can cut 90% of human-induced emissions. From making jet fuel using carbon dioxide to tracking emissions in real-time, we now have the tools available to make change. But not yet at the scale or speed that is demanded.
What’s clear is that we need to democratise climate tech – to enable rapid climate action on a global scale. But in a world of automation, climate action is paved with friction. It’s become a specialism when we desperately need it to become a shared practice.
Right now, climate action is expensive. Sustainability reports are growing in importance, with investors and other stakeholders calling on companies to disclose more details about their sustainability and ESG strategies. But businesses continue to drag their feet, the main reason being the cost of investment. In the US private sector companies spend an average of USD 237,000 on emission reports annually. But in today’s unforgiving macroeconomic environment, the majority of businesses just don’t have sufficient provisions in their budget to cover this level of expenditure.
Climate action is also clouded by incomprehensible acronyms and technical terms. GHG, CSRD and CDR are acronyms that only climate and ESG professionals will understand but we have a long way to go before education reaches all areas of business. Successfully navigating this space requires a whole new suite of tools, consultants and partners. To many companies, climate action feels like an insurmountable challenge - an uphill battle, where the hill just continues to grow.
Taking ChatGPT by means of example, adoption went from zero to one million users in just five days. By comparison, it took Netflix over three years to reach one million users. This makes ChatGPT one of the most rapidly adopted technologies in history.
In business, it’s used by all processes and functions. HR teams use it to help draft onboarding materials, data analysts use it to help explain complex findings, and financial controllers use it to draft quarterly reports. It has put AI in the hands of the many.
What if we could achieve the same rapid traction with climate tech? We’d climate-align thousands of decisions worldwide, every second of every day. Thus, creating climate action networks that rapidly accelerate us towards a climate positive future for generations to come.
To understand ChatGPT’s rapid adoption, we first have to understand how the adoption of new technology works. The Rogers Curve is a familiar and useful framework for mapping the diffusion of new technology into society. This framework demonstrates that the first people to adopt new technologies are known as “innovators”, the next being “early adopters”, “late majority” etc. For a technology, like climate tech, to be adopted by society, it must pass through all these groups.
The rate of this adoption depends on five principles: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability, and observability. When you apply these principles to ChatGPT, it’s easy to see why it spread like a technological wildfire. It speaks our language, makes usage easy, increases productivity, encourages experimentation and gives immediate results.
Climate technology is currently inaccessible. Right now, the biggest barrier to adoption is cost. Over $2 trillion in capital is required to scale all the solutions we need to reach net zero. To show the relative advantage of reducing emissions (compared to the previous option of not reducing emissions) costs must fall.
We’ve already seen this adoption tipping point. Last year, three-quarters of new wind and solar PV plants offered cheaper power than existing fossil fuel facilities. Propelling the widespread adoption of clean energy.
But falling costs alone are not enough. According to Rogers, there are many other levers we can pull to decrease the barriers to entry for climate technology. Like ChatGPT, we need to make sure climate technology speaks our language, is user-friendly, observable, highlights business progression, and can be tested easily.
For example, at Lune we envision a world where every product or service is climate positive by default. We do this by enriching platforms with granular emission calculations and high quality carbon offsetting. By embedding climate technology into the ERP, logistics, and spend management systems businesses already use, it becomes more accessible.
By measuring emissions in real time, freight forwarders, CFOs, and procurement teams can observe the carbon consequences of their business activities. These insights make a chain green decision-making accessible. For example, through existing tools they can choose the greenest route, switch to a greener supplier, or offset unavoidable emissions.
Despite its criticisms, carbon offsetting is fundamental to the climate equation. To limit warming to 1.5°C, the IPCC estimates that we need approximately 10 billion tCO₂ removal per year by 2050. Only by making high quality offsetting accessible can we close the carbon gap.
Energy management software, such as Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure, follows the same model. These tools provide real-time data on energy use, costs, and emissions reductions, so changes and improvements can be observed and quantified directly. These metrics align business performance with climate action.
Since these tools are already paid for by existing budgets, climate tech becomes affordable. Since users are already familiar with these tools, upskilling is minimal and decarbonisation becomes smoother. Since these platforms exist outside of the sustainability team, climate action becomes the business default.
COP29 has put all eyes on climate. The priority is keeping 1.5°C alive by delivering deep, rapid and sustained emission reductions. The time for action is now.
The technologies, tools, and solutions we need to scale climate action exist. But only with successful adoption can we put climate technologies into the hands of the many at the speed and scale demanded by climate change.
As the co-founder and CEO of Lune, Erik Stadigh empowers Lune’s customers to capture snowballing demand for sustainability by embedding climate action into their value proposition.
