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In a special message, Al Gore reflects on 20 years of An Inconvenient Truth and the path to shaping a cleaner, brighter future.

RENEWABLE RESOLVE: It’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since An Inconvenient Truth made its debut in movie theaters around the world.

When the film came out, everywhere I went, people who saw the movie asked me what they could do to help address the climate crisis. So, that summer, I hosted a small training on my farm for 50 community leaders. There were musicians, activists, businesspeople, and more who wanted to learn how they could communicate about the climate crisis in ways that inspired people to take action.

What started with 50 people in my barn has turned into a global network of 4.5 million people who are part of The Climate Reality Project in 196 countries and territories.

Now, everywhere I go, from the halls of the UN to classrooms to boardrooms, I run into our Climate Reality Leaders and hear about the impact they have had and the people they’ve inspired.

It’s their leadership that continues to inspire me today.

Because we know we must act – Mother Nature is making that urgency clearer every day.

• The past 10 years are the ten hottest ever recorded. And the continental US just recorded its hottest 12-month period.

• Globally, there were 27.2 million displacements due to extreme weather in 2025.

We also know now that we can act. Indeed, in the past 20 years, we’ve made tremendous progress:

• In 2006, 77 percent of new global power capacity was fossil fuels, and only 23 percent was carbon-free. In 2025, renewables were 86 percent of new global power.

• In 2006, global energy transition investment totaled $89 billion. Last year, annual investment reached $2.3 trillion (a 26x multiple).

So now, we need to focus on what we must do in order to shape what our world will look like in the next 20 years. A good place to start is with the Speed & Scale Action Plan, which offers a crystal-clear roadmap of where we are and where we need to go.

This week, there’s also a great way to get involved by participating in The Climate Reality Project’s Global Week of Action.

I have no doubt we will win this struggle. The question remains whether we will muster the moral courage and political will to solve this crisis in time to avoid its worst impacts.

But, if you ever doubt our ability to do so, just remember that political will is itself a renewable resource.

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🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation

• Crude Awakening: Costa Rica’s EV boom shows how oil-importing countries are turning electrification into an energy-security strategy, with EVs reaching 18 percent of new car sales and cheap Chinese models reshaping the market. The transition is still uneven—chargers, plugs, buses, and grid planning all need work—but volatile fuel prices are making the savings case harder to ignore (New York Times).

• Secondhand Spark: As rising U.S. gas prices and a wave of off-lease vehicles flip the total-cost equation, used EVs have crossed from a niche deal to an affordability play. Cox expects nearly 300,000 leased EVs to return to dealer lots this year, holding prices down even as demand rises (Wall Street Journal).

OKR Highlight

FERRARI, CHARGED: On May 25, after eight decades of making famously roaring luxury sports vehicles, Ferrari turned a climate-friendly page by unveiling its first car without an internal combustion engine. Co-designed by Jony Ive of Apple fame, the four-door, five-seat Luce (pronounced LOO-chay, or “light” in Italian) draws on four electric motors, one at each wheel, to generate 1,035 horsepower. The EV zips from zero to 62 miles per hour in 2.5 seconds, with a top speed of 192 mph. Range between charges–not Ferrari’s top priority–is around 300 miles, substantially less than the latest releases from BMW and Volvo. When the Luce goes on sale in the U.S. next year, it’s expected to sell for about $640,000.

The Luce represents a calculated gamble; Lamborghini recently canceled its EV after reporting “close to zero” buyer interest, and Ferrari’s shares fell by 8 percent on the day of the release. But CEO Benedetto Vigna called it “a leapfrog moment” and remains committed to an electrified future. Plans for the company’s 2030 lineup feature 20 percent all-electric models and 40 percent plug-in hybrids.

💡 2.0 – Decarbonize the Grid

• Power Shift: Wind and solar outpaced natural gas globally for the first month on record in April, generating 531 TWh to 477 TWh for gas. While the milestone is seasonal, it strengthens the case that cheap, domestic renewables are leveraging the current energy crisis to undercut imported gas in power markets (BusinessGreen News).

• Heat Pump Hustle: Europe’s latest fossil fuel price shock is driving household electrification, with EV registrations up more than 40 percent in March, heat pump sales up 17 percent in major markets, and solar inquiries surging. But while clean energy arrows are pointing upward, the period following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine offers a cautionary tale. Demand can fade when gas and oil prices ease unless governments shift from broad fuel bill relief to durable support for low-carbon upgrades (New York Times).

🐄 3.0 – Fix Food

• Melt Down: Even as oat milk has gone mainstream and the vegan food industry is booming, vegan cheese remains the plant-based sector’s problem child, with declining sales and less than 1 percent of the U.S. cheese market. The lesson: Technical breakthroughs matter, but taste, cost, and manufacturing discipline will determine whether climate-friendly food alternatives can scale (The Economist).

• Trace Race: Challenging the assumption that they’re driven strictly by price, Chinese importers have pledged to buy 50,000 metric tons of deforestation-free certified beef this year, about 5 percent of the country’s total beef purchases from Brazil. While traceability gaps, industry resistance, and import quotas could slow the shift, China’s willingness to pay a 10 percent green premium would be a potent new lever for Amazon protection (Reuters).

🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature

• Flame Acceleration: The world is having its worst recorded wildfire onslaught over the first four months of a year, with more than half a million square miles burned through April—nearly twice the seasonal average. With El Niño likely to gain strength this summer, the early fire surge augurs climate-amplified heat and drought that could challenge food systems, power demand, and disaster response (Bloomberg).

• Hell, Dimmed: Although Turkmenistan’s Darvaza gas crater has lost more than 75 percent of its heat intensity over three years, weaker flames may not translate to less climate damage. If less methane is burning into carbon dioxide and more is escaping uncombusted, near-term warming impact will rise (The Seattle Times).

🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry

• Sewer Circuit: Denver plans to replace part of its downtown steam heating system with a thermal energy network to distribute heat to 11 city-owned buildings with water loops, heat pumps, geothermal boreholes, and wastewater. While the buildout is expensive, city analysts say it could save up to 75 percent versus other decarbonization methods (NPR).

• Factory Statecraft: Rhodium Group reports that China has moved from targeted subsidies to an “industrial policy of everything,” spanning upstream inputs, machinery, services, AI, quantum, and next-gen energy systems. Global clean energy competition is expanding from EVs and solar panels to control over the supply chains beneath them (Rhodium Group).

🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon

• Carbon Comeback: Microsoft agreed to buy 650,000 metric tons of carbon removals over seven years from Danish biogas producer BioCirc. The deal is Microsoft’s first big carbon removal commitment since reports that it had paused new purchases, throwing a wrench into the removal market (ESG Dive).

• Price Check: Prices for durable carbon removal are rising, with biochar up about 10 percent, direct air capture up 11 percent, and biomass storage roughly doubling year-over-year. With earlier prices apparently too low for many developers to build and finance projects, buyers are now paying more for credits they trust will be delivered (Wall Street Journal).

🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy

• Bipartisan Bottleneck: While permitting reform remains a bipartisan priority in Washington, negotiations are stuck between Democrats worried about renewable energy blockades and Republicans wary of expanding federal authority over transmission lines. The divide illustrates the obstacles to a “build faster” coalition as the Trump administration accelerates fossil projects while slowing wind, solar, and batteries (Politico).

• Power Politics: Roughly one-fifth of global oil and LNG was cut off when the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, forcing countries from the Philippines to Slovenia into emergency measures. The shock is recasting energy independence as political independence, with renewables giving countries more room to maneuver (Foreign Affairs).

🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action

• Price Shock: Electricity prices rose 6.1 percent year-over-year in April, far above the 3.8 percent increase in overall consumer prices. As data centers strain grids and wholesale power costs rise ahead of the midterm elections, energy affordability is pushing regulators to rethink utility incentives around performance, reliability, and rates (Bloomberg).

• Rate Rage: As household power bills keep rising, a new Democratic Party caucus is focused on lowering utility costs. It’s targeting the basic model for regulated utilities, which critics say rewards costly infrastructure spending while undercutting cheaper grid upgrades that could ease pressure on consumers (Politico).

⚡ 9.0 – Innovate!

• Underground Solution: The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that geologic hydrogen–a zero-emissions solution with “transformational” potential–could eventually be produced for less than $1 per kilogram, cheaper than fossil-based hydrogen and far below the cost of green hydrogen today. Startups like Vema are testing whether clean hydrogen can be generated underground, but the field is still young and experiments expensive (New York Times).

• The Case for Space: Google researchers estimate that orbital AI data centers would need to pare launch costs to $200 per kilogram to compete with ground-based data centers. Although space-based computing could bypass land and power constraints, brutal barriers remain in heat management, data transmission, satellite manufacturing, and launch economics (Wall Street Journal).

💰 10.0 – Invest!

• Going Global: HSBC has launched a $4 billion Sustainability and Transition Credit Facility to help Chinese clean-tech companies scale internationally. With China commanding nearly half of global clean tech exports and about two-thirds of solar and battery exports, finance is an essential lever in the country’s push to export the energy transition (ESG Today).

• Capital Currents: In a poll by the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, 87 percent of investment managers expect renewable energy financing to rise in the wake of oil and gas supply chain disruptions from the war in Iran. With renewables now looking less risky than fossil fuels, more investors see clean power as a bet on energy security (BusinessGreen).

For more, follow Speed & Scale on LinkedIn and X.

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