What Are The Most Effective Ways To Enable Consumer Environmental Action?
Deep-ish Perspectives Issue #2
We ask three Impact Technology experts what they think…
John Ellison, Source at ReFi DAO
In our podcast episode with Ryan from Speed & Scale he shares a quote from John Doerr "When the profitable thing is the good thing, then it will be the probable thing." Unpacking this a bit further, the most effective technology is that which actually makes planet-positive behaviors economically viable.
There are a whole myriad of technologies out there, with solar and wind being the shining star of the climate symphony. Without affordable clean energy, we wouldn't have a chance of reaching net zero by 2050.
Beyond clean energy, there are a bunch of declining cost curves for technologies across the board, but I think above all of this is money itself.
Most people have forgotten because money hasn't evolved in over 300 years, but money is technology. This is one of my favorite sayings of Sep Kamvar, the co-founder of Celo and Mosaic.
In that framing, if we can redesign money as a technology to make planet positive behaviors the most lucrative thing to do then we will see wide scale environmental action across the board—not just consumers, but corporations and governments as well.
Chelsea Burns, Founder of Escaladora Ventures
The growth of climate fintech solutions over the last several years has given retail investors the opportunity to invest in the green economy.
Increasing fractional ownership of environmental assets with attractive returns is two fold.
It financially rewards people for investing in a more sustainable economy
And it allows them to feel that their dollars can actually move the needle
Environmental activism is no longer a campaign with intangible benefits. Rather, it is a means to financial security.
Raise Green, Finite, Carbon Collective, Fundeen, and Climatize are examples of Climate FinTechs building in this space.
Narayan Iyer, Founder of Laminar Scientific
The best way for technologists to incentivize the clean energy transition is to innovate and provide technology that is convenient for a consumer to use, with reduced energy intermittency and a lower levelized cost of energy.
In order to meet the rising energy demand of developing countries especially, technologists around the world need to innovate with the small operator in mind: systems that can easily be installed, removed and maintained, systems that produce a more steady energy output in order to simplify storage, and systems that reduce CapEx and O&M costs.
The convenience, steadiness and cost factors have been the major hurdles for the clean energy transition in the community surveys we have conducted. We believe that innovating for the small operator will largely translate to adoption by large operators as well as increased consumer demand in developed and developing countries alike.