Book Summary: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates

This book helped me understand the scope and order of climate challenges and how we plan and navigate ways to reduce our carbon emissions to zero and prevent a climate disaster.

📖 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. We have 52 billion tonnes of carbon emissions per year which is only increasing and we have to take a look at opportunities to reduce our emissions to zero to avoid a climate disaster.
2. There are technology and innovations today which can help reduce our carbon emissions to zero across various human activities that generate carbon emissions.
3. Key steps and plans we can take immediately to start working torwards getting to zero carbon emissions through adaptation, government policy and civil action.

🖼 Impressions

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have And The Breakthroughs We Need gives an overview of what steps we need to take to reduce our carbon emissions to zero.  Getting to zero will require solutions and innovations across the five human activities which generate emissions including: making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around, and keeping cool and warm.  Most of these innovations attract "green premiums" which are an increased cost of adopting these solutions and we should look at ways to reduce these to encourage greater adoption of carbon free innovations. Adaption solutions will play a key role for people affected by climate change to help them survive as the environment and weather changes. Government policy, planning and funding research also play a key role in accelerating zero carbon innovations and solutions.  

👥 Who should read it?

Anyone who wants to build their basic understanding on the scope of what activities produce carbon emissions and the solutions/innovations required to bring them to zero and where we need to get started and what actions we have to take in order to make progress on this issue.

💡 How the book changed me

• I have a better understanding of the scope and magnitude of what human activities produce carbon emissions and what approach we need to take to get them to zero
• Through my own actions I signed up for my electricity company's green energy pricing program
• Made efforts to reduce my home's emissions with LED lightbulbs, maintenance of home equipment to run efficiently
• Made conscious decisions around my diet to eat less food that have high carbon emissions

✍️ My Top 3 Quotes

..we need to make it possible for low-income people to climb the ladder without making climate change worse.  We need to get to zero - producing even more energy than we do today, but wihtout adding any carbon to the atmosphere - as soon as possible.

We need to find solution for all five activities that emissions come from: making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around, and keeping cool and warm.

Most of these zero-carbon solutions are more expensive than their fossil-fuel counterparts.  In part, that's because the prices of fossil fuels don't reflect the environmental damage they inflict, so they seem cheaper than the alternative.  These additional costs are what I call Green Premiums.

📒 Summary + Notes

I'm still learning to take better notes so my summary and quality below may not be the best.

Introduction: 52 billion to zero

We emit 52 billion tonnes of carbon emissions per year.  The figure can go up or down in any given year but on the whole it is increasing.

860 million people today don't have reliable access to electricity and that half of them live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Bill has read more on the topic of energy availability via scientist and historian Vaclav Smil.

The poor feel the greatest impact from climate change.

The world needs to provide more energy so that the poorest can thrive, but we need to provide that energy without releasing any more greenhouse gases.

Experts on climate and energy: agriculture, oceans, sea levels, glaciers, power lines.

You can get reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Watch: Earth's Changing Climate by Professor Richard Wolfson available through Great Courses.

Book: Weather for Dummies

The United States has already tapped most of the available Hydro power - there is still potential with wind and solar even if the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine!

Electricity generation accounts for 26% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

If we don't take time to focus on reducing greenhouse gases, the temperature will keep on rising.

Watch: Innovating to zero TED Talk

The Guardian ran a campaign for the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to divest from fossil fuels companies.  In 2019 Bill divested all direct holdings in oil and gas companies. Bill feels however this wont' have an affect on reducing carbon emissions to zero.

2015 many funds were drying up as many venture capital firms had invested in green tech were pulling out due to low returns.

Bill made a big push at COP 21 to bring in new investors to push new innovations with global governments.

America's investment in energy research was (and still is) far lower than in other essential areas like health and defense.

Bill mentions he does feel pains that his carbon footprint is huge due to his private jet.  So in 2020 he invested in sustainable jet fuel to offset his family's aviation emissions by 2021.

Chapter 1. Why Zero?

Greenhouse gases trap heat, causing the average surface temperature of the earth to go up.  The more gases there are, the more the temperature rises.

Reducing carbon emissions by 50% won't stop the rise in temperature, it only slows things down.

Carbon dioxide is the most common greenhouse gas.

There are others like nitrous oxide and methane.

Methane when it reaches the atmosphere can have 120 times more warming than carbon dioxide.

Hotter climates will impact regions in different ways - storms will become worse and even short ones can have devastating impacts.  Money is used to rebuild instead of supporting the economy to grow.  Always playing catch up.

There are quite a number of significant knock on effects from climate change across all areas from wildfires, hurricanes, storms just being some examples. Impacts to farming/agriculture, food supply issues, rising sea levels will cause havoc to many communities globally.  As regions get warmer heatstroke will also affect people in spells of hot weather.  Displacement of people is due to droughts where the EU is seeing increased asylum applications due to weather shocks.

Mortality rates will increased as people die from the effects of climate change over time.

To deal with it we can tackle it with Adaption - drought resistant crops, Mitigation - richer countries to develop climate innovations and solutions to reduce climate change.

Chapter 2:  This will be hard

Fossil fuels are like water - fossil fuel usage is pervasive in our life from oils, plastics, grains we eat are grown with fertilizer, harvested by tractors which run on fossil fuels.  When you eat a burger, the amount of energy into making meat through feed, cows burping and farting adds to greenhouse gas emissions.  Clothes might contain cotton, also fertilized and harvested are great examples of how we are surrounded by fossil fuels.

The world uses 4 billion gallons of oil per day - difficult to stop overnight.

Fossil fuels are abundant and easy to move.  The industry has developed many innovations around supply chain of oil and keeping costs low.  They do not however reflect the damage they cause in the form of contributions to climate change.

Rich countries emissions are remaining flat and even dropping.  Developing countries are on the increase.

Book: Vaclav Smil's Energy Transitions and Energy Myths and Realities

It takes a really long time to adopt new sources of energy.  In 60 years coal went from 5 percent of the world's energy supply to nearly 50 percent.  Natural gas only reached 20 percent in the same amount of time.

The United States uses more natural gas to generate electricity instead of coal because drilling techniques made it much cheaper.  Economics is prioritized over the environment with this approach.

The energy industry is one of the biggest businesses on the planet - $5 billion per year.  Bill explains that due to the huge infrastructure costs of say building a coal plant, the energy industry is slow to change.

Laws and regulations are also outdated.  Climate policies always change with election cycles.   Energy breakthroughs take decades to take place and tax incentives for companies to work on these projects/innovations may come and go.

Global cooperation is difficult to coordinate a singular effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Chapter 3: Five questions to ask in every climate conversation

Question 1 - How Much of the 52 billion tons are we talking about? We want to convert tons of emissions to a percentage of 52 billion.

Question 2 - Whats your plan for cement? We need to find solution for all five activities that emissions come from: making things, plugging in, growing things, getting around, and keeping cool and warm.

How much greenhouse gas is emitted by what we do.

• 29% : Making things (cement, steel, plastic)
• 26% : Plugging in (electricity)
• 22% : Growing things (plants, animals)
• 16% : Getting around (planes, trucks, cargo ships)
• 7% : Keeping warm and cool (heating, cooling, refrigeration)

Question 3 - How Much Power Are We Talking About? Kilowatt = House. Gigawatt = Midsize city. Hundreds of Gigawatts = big, rich country

Question 4 - How Much Space Do You Need? Consider how much space you'll need

Power sources take up space.  Power Density is a measure in terms of how much power you can get from different sources for a given amount of land (or water if turbines are in the ocean).

How much power can we generate per square meter?

• Fossil fuels: 500-10,000
• Nuclear: 500-1,000
• Solar^: 5-20
• Hydropower (dams): 5-50
• Wind: 1-2
• Wood and other biomass: Less than 1

^The power density of solar could theoretically reach 100 watts per square meter, though no one has accomplished this yet.

Question 5 - How Much Is This Going To Cost? Keep the Green Premiums in mind and ask if they're low enough for middle-income countries to pay.

Green premiums - we should be deploying solutions that have no green premium or a low green premium.  It's a sign that cost is not a barrier.

Chapter 4: How we plug in

Producing electricity is a major contributor to climate change. If we get to zero-carbon electricity, we can use it to help de carbonize lots of other activities.

Hydro power has downsides, displaces local communities and wildlife.  Requires movement of soil which can release methane.  Depending on where it's built can be a worse emitter than coal for 50 to 100 years before it makes up for all the methane it's responsible for.

Today the United States only spend 2 percent of it's GDP on electricity due to fossil fuels being cheap.

Governments also give big tax incentives and support to keep fossil fuel production high and prices low.

Fossil fuels provide two thirds of the world's electricity. Solar and wind meanwhile, account for 9 percent.

Mid 2019, 236 gigawatts' worth of coal plants were being built around the world.

Between 2000 and 2018,  China tripled the amount of coal power it uses. That's more capacity than United States, Mexico and Canada combined.  Chinese firms were able to reduce the cost of coal plants by 75%.

Renewables have the challenge of intermittency.  Daily (light/dark) and seasonal (summer/winter) differences present challenges to handle and during periods of less generation, storing energy in batteries is required which has a host of other challenges to manage to store and maintain.

Capacity measures how much electricity we're theoretically capable of producing.

Burying power lines increase the cost by a factor of 5 to 10.  There's also nowhere for the heat to dissipate underground and if the temperature gets too high then the lines melt.  Above ground the heat dissipates into the air.

Power grid infrastructure needs to see improvement of electrical service by a factor of 2.  Sometimes more.

Clean Energy Solutions:

Nuclear fission or nuclear power is one of the solutions that will take us forward which is carbon-free.  United States gets its energy from 20% of nuclear plants.  France has 70%.  Wind and solar provide 9% world wide.  Nuclear plants are efficient to build as well from a material perspective compared to solar and wind. Solar and wind farms take up more land than nuclear plants but are also generating energy 90% of the time where as with solar/wind intermittency can be 25 to 40% of the time.

Safety in nuclear plants is a topic of discussion with Chernobyl and Fukushima however constant innovations are required to improve safety.  Terrapower founded in 2008 to design next generation nuclear reactors that are safe.

Nuclear fusion opposite of nuclear fission (splitting) vs pushing together, fusing atoms.  Experimental facility being built in France known as ITER.

Offshore wind. Putting turbines in the ocean or body of water near major coastal cities to reduce transmission distance.  Offshore winds blow more steadily and help with intermittency issues.

Geothermal. Deep underground where hot rocks can be used to generate electricity. Energy density is low.

Book: Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air 2009 by David MacKay.

Storing Electricity:

Batteries Hard to improve Lithium Ion batteries.

Pumped hydro.  Literally pumping water up a hill and letting it flow back down to turn a turbine.

Thermal Storage. When electricity is cheap you heat up some material, when you need electricity you use the heat to generate power via a heat engine.  Works at 50-60% efficiency.

Cheap hydrogen. Key ingredient for fuel cells.  Fuel cells get their energy from a chemical reaction between two gases - hydrogen and oxygen.  By-product is water.

Capturing carbon. Carbon capture devices only capture 90% of greenhouse gases and power companies don't gain anything from installing them. This technology is expensive. DAC (Direct Air Capture) is more flexible and can be done anywhere.

Chapter 5: How we make things

Every year between replacing and repairing existing roads, bridges and buildings and putting up new ones, America alone produces more than 96 million tons of cement. 600 pounds per person in the country.

We also rely heavily on steel, plastic and glass.  Making these materials emits one third of greenhouse gas emissions.

Concrete has a key ingredient which is calcium. Calcium is produced by burning limestone releasing carbon and oxygen.  One ton of cement made equals one ton of carbon dioxide.

All plastics contain carbon.  Plastics can take hundreds of years to degrade.

We manufacture an enormous amount of materials, resulting in copious amounts of greenhouse gases, nearly a third of the 52 billion tons per year.

One approach to reduce emissions with concrete is to capture the carbon dioxide during the process and inject it back into the cement.  So far it only reduces 10% of emissions.

Steps needed to reduce emissions for making things:

1. Electrify every process possible - Lots of innovation required
2. GEt that electricity from a power grid that's been decarbonized
3. Use carbon capture to absorb the remaining emissions
4. Use materials more efficiently

Chapter 6: How we grow things

Raising animals for food is a major contributor of greenhouse gas emissions.

Nobel Peace Prize Winner Norman Borlaug, developed varieties of wheat that had characteristics that allowed them to have improved yields per acre of land. As he made the grains bigger he found the wheat couldn't stand up under their weight, so he made the stalks shorter - hence his variety of wheat is called semi-dwarf wheat.

Chicken has two calories worth of grain to give us one calorie of poultry. Pig has three for one, cows has six to one.

Raising cows also produce methane through burping/farting and pooping. Richer countries have cattle that produce less methane through breeds and higher quality feeds compared to poorer countries. The objective is to help these poorer countries with access to better breeds, feed and manure handling techniques to reduce greenhouse gases.

Plant based meats, use less resources and produce less emissions to make.

Fertilizers play an important role in ensuring crops are grown efficiently including synthetic fertilizers. Making fertilizer still produces greenhouse gases and there are no practical zero-carbon alternatives at the moment.

The world has lost more than half a million square miles of forest cover since 1990.

Planting more trees will not absorb all our carbon emissions, however we should stop cutting them down as we release greenhouse gases when we do.

Chapter 7: How we get around

Gasoline contains a lot of energy and is cheaper than water/milk and orange juice.

Emissions per vehicle:

• 47% : Cars, SUVs and motorcycles
• 30% : Garbage trucks, buses and 18 wheelers
• 10% : Cargo and cruise ships
• 10% : Airplanes
• 3% : Other

Lithium ion batteries today have 35 times less energy than gasoline.

The larger the vehicle you want to move, the father you want to go without recharging, the harder it is to use electricity as our power source.

Jets best bets for fuel will be advanced bio fuels and electro fuels but they are expensive to produce.  Same challenges go with cargo ships.

Solution use electricity to run all vehicles as we can.  Ensure electricity is generated from carbon-free sources.

Long distance vehicles require innovation to bring down pricing of alternative fuels.

Chapter 8: How we keep cool and stay warm

In a typical American home, air conditioning is the biggest consumer of electricity you own, more than your lights, refrigerator, and computer combined.  AC demands the most electricity, water heaters and furnaces demand the most energy.

Demand for air conditioners is only increasing and on top of electricity consumption they also contain F gases which contribute to greenhouse gases that are slowly released over the life of the AC unit.

Heat pumps in new builds can replace an AC and furnace.  They take advantage of the fact gases and liquids change temperature as they expand and contract.  The pumps work by moving coolant through a closed loop of pipes, using a compressor and special valves to change the pressure along the way so that the coolant absorbs heat from one place and gets rid of it someplace else.

Similar messaging as prior, electrify as much as we can via de carbonized grid and use energy more efficiently.

Chapter 9: Adapting to a warmer world

The world's poor are not contributing majorly to climate change but will be majorly affected by it. To survive the effects, they need to focus on adaptation that could affect their food supply and harvests.

Organization CGIAR to ensure families in the poorest regions have nutritious food to eat.  CGIAR has developed new maize varieties  that can withstand drought conditions.

Help farmers manage the risks from more chaotic weather and focus on the most vulnerable people.

Factor climate change into policy decisions.

Cities need to change the way they grow where we should shore up our natural defenses - preserve and restore natural defense against climate change like mangrove forests, wetlands and coral reefs.

We're going to need more drinking water than we can supply.

To fund adaption projects, we need to unlock new money.

Geoengineering is an approach to make temporary changes in the earth's oceans or atmosphere to lower the earth's temperature.  Essentially it's releasing particles int he earth's atmosphere to temporarily cool temperatures.

Chapter 10: Why government policies matter

Government policies play an important role into encouraging sustainable practices to reduce greenhouse emissions.  They can play a key role in positively influencing research into environmental causes like air pollution through grands and funding.

In 1970 President Nixon established the EPA and the US Clean Air Act are examples of what can be done. After the great recession in 2008, governments created jobs and added investment into renewable energy, energy efficiency, electricity infrastructure and railroads.

New policies should focus on zeroing out greenhouse gas emissions.

Investment in research for green solutions has the potential to create businesses that export products overseas.

Develop programs to reduce green premiums from green innovations to zero and level the playing field.  We should put efforts in to making carbon free things cheaper and making carbon emitting things more expensive.

Some barriers to green technology are due to lack of information, incentives or training.  New buildings provide good opportunities to use carbon free alternatives.  Government policies can help this.

It's important to also keep government policies up to date.  For example the latest building codes should take into account the most up to date carbon free solutions available.

Plan for transitions that take place due to green innovations.  For example if meat consumption declines provide support to those affected by shifting market changes.

Chapter 11: A plan for getting to zero

Expanding the Supply of Innovation.

Improvements not only just to technology but processes and methods.

We should focus on getting to zero by 2050 and not somewhat by 2030 as we lose sight of getting to zero if we reduce emissions somewhat.

Technologies needed to get to zero:

• Hydrogen produced with emitting carbon
• Grid-scale electricity storage that can last a full season
• Electrofuels
• Advanced biofuels
• Zero-carbon cement
• Zero-carbon steel
• Plant and cell based meat and dairy
• Zero-carbon fertilizer
• Next-generation nuclear fission
• Nuclear fusion
• Carbon capture (both direct air and point capture)
• Underground electricity transmission
• Zero-carbon plastics
• Geothermal plastics
• Pumped hydro
• Thermal Storage
• Drough and flood tolerant food crops
• Zero-carbon alternatives to palm oil
• Coolants that don't contain F-gases

Policies that that can spark creation and adoption of energy breakthroughs:

1. Quintuple clean energy and climate-related R&D over the next decade
2. Make bigger bets on high-risk, high-reward R&D projects
3. Match R&D with our greatest needs
4. Work with industry from the beginning
5. Use procurement power
6. Create incentives that lower costs and reduce risk
7. Build the infrastucture that will get new technologies to the market
8. Change the rules so new technologies can compete

Policies that allow for rapid, large-scale deployment:

1. Put a price on carbon - signal to the market that extra costs associated with fossil fuels
2. Clean electricity standards
3. Clean fuel standards
4. Clean product standards
5. Out with the old (technologies that emit carbon)

Federal, state and local governments also play a key role in legislating and supporting programs that support zero carbon emissions.

Most important is to instigate programs that help lower green premiums.

Chapter 12: What Each of us can do

As a citizen:

• Make calls, write letters, attend town halls
• Look locally as well as nationally
• Run for office

As a consumer:

• Sign up for green pricing program with your electric utility
• Reduce your home's emissions
• Buy an electric vehicle

As an employee / employer:

• Set up an internal carbon tax
• Prioritize innovation in low-carbon solutions
• Be an early adopter
• Engage in the policy-making process
• Connect with government-funded research
• Help early-stage innovators get across the valley of death.