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Welcome to Zeroing In by Speed & Scale, where we cut through the noise to deliver a data-driven update on progress toward net zero.

A TURNING POINT TO KICK OFF 2024: Britain is the first G20 country to halve its carbon emissions from its peak. To make this even more impressive, the UK reached this milestone with a far larger population and economy than when its emissions hit its highest point 50 years ago.

Big Picture

CONTEXT: The path to achieving such a dramatic reduction is no secret: It requires unwavering commitment to phasing out coal and turning to clean energy instead. While Britain’s achievement is cause for celebration, the UK generates less than 1 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Many G20 countries–notably Argentina, China, India, Indonesia, and Mexico–are still setting new emissions records each year.

OKRs in the News

🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation

• Tax Credits: The new list of EV models eligible for the $7,500 tax credit excludes vehicles that use certain Chinese-made parts.

• BYD #1: BYD just pulled ahead of Tesla to become the world’s biggest producer of battery passenger cars, and it shows no signs of slowing.

• 🛵 & 🛺: Two- and three-wheeled vehicles are leading the shift to electricity, especially in Asia and Africa. The popularity of electric bicycles, scooters, and motorcycles has reduced global oil demand by over 1 million barrels a day. It has also helped to reduce air pollution.

• Charging Delays: To expand adoption of electric vehicles, quelling charging anxiety is essential. But an investigation by POLITICO found that a multibillion-dollar federal program has yet to install any chargers. Worse yet, fewer than half the states have even begun to take bids to build the chargers.

  2X the Buses: The number of electric school buses, a leading category in the decarbonization of transportation, doubled in the U.S. in 2023.

💡 2.0 – Decarbonize the Grid

• Peaking in 2024: An analysis by Ember, an energy think tank, found that emissions from the power sector, the world’s single biggest polluter, are likely to peak this year.

• Navigating the Jones Act: Buffeted by high interest rates, an immature supply chain, and a lack of U.S.-built ships that can haul blades for wind turbines out to sea, the offshore wind industry is blowing off course. The federal Jones Act stipulates that only domestically built, owned, and crewed ships can operate in U.S. waters. The good news: The first-ever vessel that can meet these requirements is now under construction.

• Methane Promises: Nearly 50 oil and gas companies worldwide pledged to shore up leaky methane systems by 2030 at COP28. If the companies keep their promises, this could rapidly reduce emissions of the potent gas and forestall some climate change effects.

  Canceled Contracts: BP and Equinor got the wind knocked out of them, canceling a major offshore wind contract near New York and leaving plans to provide hundreds of thousands of people with clean power in limbo.

🐄 3.0 – Fix Food

• Don’t Say Vegan: Can tweaking food descriptions boost consumption of climate-friendly options? A forthcoming study found that replacing the term “vegan” with labels that emphasize food item benefits, such as “healthy” and “sustainable,” led more people to choose carbon-friendly options.

• Global Food Agreement: Countries made incremental progress to lessen emissions from global food production. More than two thirds of the world’s countries endorsed an agreement—albeit a non-binding one—to improve the sustainability of the global food system.

• Emissions Disclosures For Dairy: Six of the world’s largest dairy companies agreed to begin disclosing their methane emissions as part of a new global alliance launched at the United Nations climate summit.

🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature

• Sustainable Investment News: The New York Stock Exchange is proposing a new investment category: “natural asset companies.” It would include companies that conserve, restore, or sustainably manage ecosystems.

• Deforestation Declining: It appears that deforestation declined across the tropics as a whole in 2023 due to policy changes protecting the Amazon, which has more than half the world’s remaining primary tropical forests.

  Snow’s Declining Too: Significant decreases in snow—less than half of the typical snowpack—not only disappoint skiers in the west, but also point to deeper economic concerns that come with a changing climate.

🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon

• Carbon Capture Pricing: Wright’s Law hypothesizes that as production scales, costs will reliably fall. The principle has powered the growth of wind, solar, and batteries. Can the same hold true for carbon capture? Scaling this technology will enable it to reach the magic number of $100 per ton of carbon removed.

• Mini Direct Air Capture: A new company is developing a “mini direct air capture” plant, powered by solar, that can be deployed more widely than traditional geothermal power and will be sold directly to consumers—for $762,000.

OKR Highlight: 6.0 Remove Carbon

Even if we achieve our first five objectives, we would still be left with 10 gigatons of heat-trapping gasses each year. This is where carbon removal comes in.

This is not to be confused with carbon capture, which is defined as specifically the trapping of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from industrial processes or power generation (i.e. oil and gas) before they are released into the atmosphere. While “carbon capture” is a specific method focused on capturing emissions at their source, “carbon removal” includes a broader set of approaches that aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Critics are skeptical of both carbon removal and capture, alleging these practices prop up the fossil fuel industry. We argue that carbon removal—actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, rather than just capturing emissions before release—is an essential part of the toolkit to achieve net-negative emissions.

The world’s largest direct air capture plant, operated by Climeworks in Iceland, recently turned two years old. Lessons from its early operation will improve the efficiency and lower the price point of future versions, leading the company to a more optimal design that can be scaled.

🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics and Policy

• Hydrogen Tax Credits: The Biden administration released its highly anticipated hydrogen tax plan, giving out billions of dollars in tax credits to hydrogen producers in an effort to build out the industry. The U.S. credit is the most generous in the world for hydrogen production.

🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements into Action

• Phase Down or Phase Out: At COP28, representatives of nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. The agreement pushed the conference into overtime as delegates debated the language for the final text. In the end, the parties removed a more ambitious call for a “phase out” of fossil fuels. They settled upon “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner … so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.”

• Disclosure Rules Stall: The SEC’s failure to complete an ambitious climate-related agenda in the face of serious political opposition may cause further stalling on climate disclosure rules as we go into an election year.

⚡ 9.0 – Innovate

• AI Climate Solutions: Can big data unleash nuclear power? Microsoft is experimenting with generative artificial intelligence to see if AI can help streamline and expedite the cumbersome paperwork for nuclear regulatory approval. The plants would then sustainably power the company’s electricity-intensive computers.  

• 2024 Innovation List: We are ringing in the new year with new, promising innovations. From carbon removal—one in central California using crushed mineral powder to pull CO2 from the air—to solar-powered cruise ships, the year looks promising for climate tech.

💰 10.0 – Invest

• World Bank Climate Funding: Under Ajay Banga’s leadership, 45 percent of the World Bank’s lending is now going toward climate-related projects, including new renewable energy, up from 36 percent in 2022. Banga replaced David Malpass, who stepped down last February after coming under fire for disputing the science of climate change.

• High Interest vs. Clean Energy: As central banks seek to tame inflation by raising interest rates, clean energy projects have languished.

• Big Green Project Returns: For the second year in a row, global banks made more money underwriting bonds and providing loans for green projects than they earned from financing oil, gas, and coal activities—$3 billion for green projects, versus $2.7 for fossil fuels.

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