📗 Speed and scale

Overview

John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins and has been making climate related investments since 2006, way ahead of the curve. He outlines a very detailed plan for getting to net zero using OKRs (Objectives & Key Results), a technique popularised by Google and widely used in the tech space.

In many respects it’s similar to billg’s book but it’s a lot more prescriptive and probably benefits from Bill’s book being published first. There are interviews with a lot of climate luminaries - the book was written in the run up to COP26 and so there are lots of positive looking statements which unfortunately weren’t backed up by commitments from all countries in Glasgow.

The book contains Lots of great investing war stories and interviews with entrepreneurs & policy makers. My favourite of these was the time that he passed on investing in Tesla and backed Fisker (who? Exactly).

In summary, this is the best of the “climate plan” books that I’ve seen. Ultimately it relies upon substantial public policy changes which have been slow in coming.

A few things I learned

• The current global energy mix includes …
  • 16% hydro
  • 6% wind
  • 4% solar
• … the hydro figure is a lot higher than I’d expected
• If the worlds 1 billion cows were a country they’d rank third in greenhouse gas emissions (after US & China) - primarily down to their methane emissions.
• A two thirds vegan diet, including one serving of meat a day, reduces livestock emissions by 60%.
• Beyond Meat are aiming for price parity with beef burgers by 2024.