Climate Change Lecture — Kirsten Stasio — Stanford Understand Energy

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: - Happy Earth Week, this is exciting. Today we're gonna talk about climate change. So the scientific evidence that climate change is happening and that it's human caused and that we have to act today to avoid its worst impacts is overwhelming. Yet the policies and actions that are in place to address climate change fall far short of what the scientists say need to happen in order to effectively address it. So today we're gonna talk about this gap between what science says needs to happen and what people are actually doing and how we can close that gap. So this chart, it depicts that gap. It shows what historical greenhouse gas emissions have been and what they might look like in future different scenarios and what the resulting temperature increases are under those different scenarios. So the orange band at the top shows greenhouse gas emissions emissions in the future, what they look like if we adhere to current policies and actions that countries already are doing or have in place domestically. The blue band shows what would happen if all countries adhered to their pledges and targets that they submitted to the international climate negotiations under the United Nations, the UNFCCC. So you can already see that there's a gap between what countries say that they are gonna do internationally and what policies they have in place domestically. And then the green band at the bottom is what scientists say we need to do in order to live safely on this planet. And that's limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial times. All right. So this is the ambition gap for climate change that we need to seek to close. I want to give you a framework for solving complex science-based challenges like climate change. So to solve these types of problems, you need three components. You need science, so a clear understanding of the problem that you're trying to solve and what's causing it and what are the impacts. You need the solutions. You need viable technical and policy solutions to address it. And then you need the social will. You need support by both people and the decision makers, you know, politicians, policymakers to implement the solutions and solve the problem. So for climate change, like we talked about, the science is settled, right? We know that it's happening, it's human cause, and it's important that we address it today. On solutions, you know, we will, I'll talk about this more today. But we have the solutions, both technical and policy solutions available to us to scale and solve climate change. Maybe that wasn't the case 15, 20 years ago. But as the costs of solar and wind and batteries have come down and technologies improved and they become extremely cost competitive, they've, along with energy efficiency and electrification have become scalable and available solutions to us to solve climate change. So we have the science and we have the solutions, but where we're lacking in this three part framework for solving climate change climate change and why we still have such a large ambition gap is the lack of social will. We as a society, both in the U.S., particularly in the U.S., but also globally, have struggled to accept the science of climate change and act on it. So in the remainder of this class, I'm going to walk through these different components of solving climate change. I'll start with the science and then we'll move to social will and then we'll talk about we'll end by talking about solutions. All right, so let's talk about the science behind climate change. So Earth's climate is supported by a process known as the greenhouse effect. Hopefully this is a new concept for most of you where greenhouse gases occur naturally in our atmosphere and they play an important role in regulating Earth's temperature. The way that it works is sunlight enters Earth's atmosphere as radiation and some of it is reflected back out into space. But some of it is absorbed by the Earth and then re-radiated out as infrared radiation and greenhouse gases capture the infrared radiation. So we've known for a long time that as greenhouse gases increase in our atmosphere temperatures rise. And here's a quote from Svantevernius in 1908, a scientist observing that effect. So greenhouse gases or GHGs, they're heat trapping gases. And as they increase in our atmosphere, so does the Earth's temperature. And we can see in this chart what the primary greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, CO2, has been going back hundreds of thousands of years. Does anyone know how we are able to measure CO2 in our atmosphere, carbon dioxide, hundreds of thousands of years ago? Yeah, drilling ice core samples in the Arctic and Antarctic and measuring kind of ancient trapped atmospheric samples from that trapped in that ice. Great. And more recently, since about 1968, Charles David Keeling, a scientist, atmospheric scientist, has been measuring CO2 in our atmosphere directly at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. Well, and, you know, he passed away, but his son continues that work, excuse me, 1958. So we can see for the past hundreds of thousands of years that CO2 has largely fluctuated between 280 parts per million and 180 parts per million in the atmosphere. And you see this sharp and sudden increase at the end of the end of the graph, which is where we are today. We're at 430 parts per million in the atmosphere. And this is data directly from the Keeling Curve website taken yesterday. So you can see this is the significant deviation from hundreds of thousands of years prior. It looks like, you know, a data anomaly, something, you know, it looks like the edge of the graph, but that's, you know, the real data. And it tracks with the increase in CO2 tracks with the increase in carbon intensive human activity after the Industrial Revolution. An important thing to know about greenhouse gases is that they are well mixed gases. So when Charles David Keeling or his son measures it at the Mona Loa Observatory in Hawaii, it's fairly representative of CO2 levels across the world. And what that means is that, you know, if the U.S. is emitting CO2 emissions, it's affecting the entire world. Or if China is emitting CO2 emissions, it's affecting the entire world. It's not just a localized environmental issue. So let's talk about the different types of greenhouse gases. I mentioned that carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas. We'll talk about its sources in a moment. We also have methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases. Methane you learned about in the natural gas lecture from Jane. It has a lot of different sources, but including natural gas, which is primarily made up of methane, but also landfills, livestock, coal mines, lots of different sources. Then you've got nitrous oxide, which shouldn't be confused with nitrogen dioxide, which is a pollutant that primarily comes from burning fuels. We'll talk about that more on Wednesday. But nitrous oxide comes from agricultural soil management, like fertilizers. And then you've got the fluorinated gases, which are manmade gases that have largely been used as a substitute for ozone depleting substances. So each of these gases have different lifespans and different heat trapping potentials. And so in order to combine them in charts like this, even though they're different, we normalize them based on their heat trapping potential in lifespans. And we normalize them using a factor called global warming potentials or GWPs. Global warming potential is how much heat trapping potential greenhouse gas has relative to CO2 within a particular time frame. So this is why we see CO2 measured and CO2 equivalencies. So when you see CO2eq or CO2e, that means different greenhouse gases have been normalized against each other using global warming potentials. So this table here, it shows international standards for global warming potentials for different greenhouse gases from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I should say a lot of the data that I show you comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It's an international panel of over 1200 scientists nominated by various countries across the world and is considered the ultimate authority on climate science. And they released regular reports on the state of our climate, as well as on things like global warming potentials. So you can see here, you know, global warming potentials are relative to CO2. So the global warming potential of CO2 is one. For methane, methane has a shorter lifespan than CO2. CO2 lasts in our atmosphere for hundreds of years. Methane, by contrast, is only about 12 years, so shorter, but it has a much higher heat trapping potential than CO2. So over a 20-year period, its global warming potential is 81 times that of CO2. And over a 100-year period, because it does have that shorter lifespan, it's 27. A lot of the data for the U.S. that I'll show you on greenhouse gases comes from the U.S.' annual inventory of greenhouse gases that comes out of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. One of the things to note is they use 100-year global warming potentials when they're converting methane for charts like these. And many people would argue that, you know, we care not necessarily about what's happening 100 years from now, but in the next 20 years. So we should be using the 20-year global warming potential for methane of 81. The other thing that the EPA greenhouse gas inventory often gets criticized for is they use typically emissions factors for estimating what the greenhouse gases are, where they'll say, you know, the upstream natural gas industry for every amount of natural gas that gets produced and transmitted through and distributed through the system, there's, you know, X amount of emissions. And there's a lot of criticism that those emissions factors are actually too low. And there have been a lot of studies, including coming out of Stanford, showing that there are, you know, there's a wide variability in leakage that happens in the upstream natural gas and oil industry that would push those emissions factors up. All right, so black carbon is listed here. It's not a greenhouse gas. It's actually the most light absorbing component of particulate matter, which is another air pollutant that we'll talk more about on Wednesday. So it's not a greenhouse gas, but it does have significant heat trapping potential, and it's much more localized and short lived than most greenhouse gases. So you'll hear some folks talk about how, you know, actually, if we reduce black carbon, we can have a pretty immediate impact on our climate. Okay, so let's talk about the sources of different greenhouse gases. So this chart, it shows anthropogenic or human caused greenhouse gases. And you can see that there are a variety of different sources from agriculture to electricity to transportation, you can really slice and dice this in different ways. But if you look only at the energy sources, energy is the primary contributor to our greenhouse gases, 77%. And this is because, you know, our energy use, as we talked about earlier in the class, is primarily dominated by carbon intensive fuels, fossil fuels. So the results of the recent increase, that significant increase in greenhouse gases that have occurred in our atmosphere are, you know, significant impacts in our society, right? Warming and other related impacts that we'll talk about. So since pre-industrial times, we've seen temperatures rise by about 1.3 degrees Celsius. That's about 2.4 degrees Fahrenheit. So when we talk about climate change, we often see charts like these with lots of squiggles on lines, and it might be a little hard to internalize. You know, maybe, maybe this is a little bit easier showing those, those temperature rises, average temperature rises over time, you know, or maybe you like climate stripes, but, you know, I typically find it very hard to internalize what's actually happening with these charts. Wildfires are one example of an impact of climate change, and many studies have linked increased wildfires, or in particular, increased acreage burned from wildfires to climate change. You know, and the effects on us are serious, right? There's a threat to people's homes and lives, but also widespread air pollution effects that can increase asthma and other lung-related illnesses and heart disease. We've also seen increased ocean temperatures as well, with increased atmospheric temperatures. And because of this, the world's coral reefs are experiencing increased bleaching events. I know, I have a close friend who is a marine biologist who studies coral reefs at the University of Sydney, and the Great Barrier Reef in Australia has experienced several mass coral bleaching events just in the past few years. And I know many people are worried about our coral reefs and the future of our coral reefs. As a result of temperature increases, we've seen Arctic and Antarctic sea ice melt at really unprecedented rates. Again, I think the charts are hard to internalize what's actually happening, but this event actually is pretty striking. In March 2022, in Antarctica, experienced a pretty unprecedented heat wave, with temperatures jumping by nearly 40 degrees Celsius, or 70 degrees Fahrenheit. And that heat is likely what triggered the collapse of the Conger ice shelf in East Antarctica. So you can see satellite imagery of here. I remember when I was in school, we actually went on a trip to Antarctica at the business school. And at the time, everyone thought that the East Antarctic ice shelf was the most stable. People were more worried about the West Antarctic ice shelf. So this is pretty stunning to a lot of scientists. And then we've also seen sea level rise pretty significantly as a result of the loss of land-based ice from melting, but also from thermal expansion of the ocean as the ocean heats up. And this sea level rise, you know, it means pretty significant flooding in low-lying areas from, you know, Florida to low-lying parts of the Bay Area even, to the island nation of the Maldives. And there are, you know, Maldives, there are a lot of different island nations out there that are whose livelihoods are threatened by sea level rise. And the Maldives is a great example of that. All right. And we've also seen an increase in extreme weather events. This is a chart from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization, NOAA, which is an entity of the federal government that shows the increase in billion-dollar disaster events that the U.S. has experienced, including hurricanes in Florida. It's interesting, since updating this lecture, these lecture slides over the past week, a lot of the data is still available, luckily, but this is the first time I came across an instance when it wasn't. There are also what are called positive feedback loops, whereby increases in temperature result in or trigger additional increases in temperature or increases in greenhouse gas emissions. To give a couple of examples, you've got the permafrost, which is a layer of soil and rock in the Arctic Circle that has significant amounts of CO2 and CH4 frozen inside that permafrost. And so as temperatures increase and that permafrost melts, that releases significant amounts of CO2 and CH4. And so this is an image of some scientists lighting that CH4 that's in the permafrost on fire to kind of help visualize it. Another positive feedback loop is what's called the reduction in the Earth's ice albedo. So I mentioned earlier when solar radiation enters our atmosphere, a portion of it gets reflected back out and the ice cover on Earth helps reflect that solar radiation out rather than allowing it to be absorbed by the Earth and then re-radiated as infrared radiation or heat, which is what's trapped by the greenhouse gases. So Earth has an ice albedo of about 30 percent. That means 30 percent is reflected back out. So as ice melts, that's a reduction in our albedo and reduces the amount of solar radiation that gets reflected back out. So that's another example of a positive feedback loop. Do you all know, have other ideas of positive feedback loops? Wildfires are a great example, right? As increased wildfires happen, that releases more CO2 in the air and black carbon as well. Another one that people often talk about is, you know, with increased temperatures, that's driving up air conditioning demand, which if that air conditioning demand isn't met by clean energy resources, then that's also going to increase greenhouse gases as well. Okay, so that's the science of climate change. It's probably the most depressing part of the lecture. Let's move on to talking about more positive, you know, how do we think about closing the ambition gap and scaling solutions. So we're going to talk about how to garner the social will to act on climate change. So as we talked about, the science of climate change is settled, right? The scientific consensus that climate change is happening, that it's human-caused, is overwhelming. You rarely see this level of scientific consensus in the scientific community. The American public, however, differs quite starkly from the scientific community. And there are a variety of reasons why that's the case, and why it's so hard for the public to accept the science of climate change and act on it. And many of them relate to fundamental human biases that impact our ability as humans to perceive risks and to act on them. For example, you know, climate change, it's a really big, scary issue, right? Often when people learn about the scale of the challenge and what it takes to solve it, they feel overwhelmed and they kind of shut down. They feel helpless. So what the climate change community has realized over time is that they actually shouldn't talk about the impacts of climate change, or at least start by talking about the science behind climate change. And rather they should seek to empower people with solutions so that they don't feel helpless. So don't do what I did with this lecture and start with the science. Another human bias that makes it hard for us to think about climate change is our fight or flight bias bias, right? We see a line and we run. We're hardwired to respond to short-term immediate threats in our surrounding environment. Whereas climate change, it's this global, you know, slow-moving challenge that's really hard to visualize. And, you know, I think because we tend to discount future risks, particularly when there's short-term costs to action, we end up being procrastinators by nature when it comes to these slow-moving issues like climate change. Another challenge is that we don't necessarily have the right people communicating about climate change. Historically, scientists were criticized for speaking up and advocating around their research and their findings. And Steven Schneider, who was in a video that you guys watch for today, is an exception to that. He was a scientist here at Stanford who advocated about climate change and the need to act on it. Over time, scientists have realized that they need to be more like Steven Schneider. So we see a lot of scientists be much more activists around their work and their research and trying to communicate to the public in a more effective way about climate science and the need to act. Yeah. And, you know, I think another contributing factor to this deviation is that we had and still have private interests who've been actively trying to promote misinformation. ExxonMobil was chief among Americans who, you know, all of a lot of people in them where they would fund scientists or, you know, other communications groups to actively sow doubt about climate science and whether or not it was actually happening and whether or not it was actually caused by fossil fuels. And today we're seeing many cities and counties sue ExxonMobil and fossil fuel companies for these misinformation campaigns. Another challenge is that often the way people perceive climate change is not as a science based issue, but as a values based issue. And as a result, you know, it's based on personal values or, you know, whether or not you're a Republican or a Democrat. So climate change is a highly politicized issue. All right. So let's talk about what some of the what some effective communication techniques might be for overcoming some of these challenges. So you guys had some some readings and videos to watch that took different approaches to trying to communicate about climate change and why it's important and how we might be able to solve it. Which communication techniques were more or less effective for you. And then you can also talk about what you think might be more or less effective for people in general. Yeah, it's interesting how different people are affected, right, differently by these communication techniques. But making it personal, you know, is important for a lot of people who might not be able to empathize with like the frogs or care about the science, right? Whereas like, you know, someone like me might respond to charismatic megafauna, if you show me a picture of a polar bear whose ice that it's standing on is melting, that'll tug at my heartstrings strings. But it's actually not necessarily the most effective on the general public. So connecting it to impacts that people are actually feeling is a great way to help people realize how climate change is actually affecting them. When I was in business school, I partnered up with a PhD student in the EIPER program who focused on behavioral psychology. And we did a study of the business students to try to understand what might motivate our future business leaders to act. And one of the communication techniques that we use that we found helpful was using an analogy similar to the coronavirus analogy between acting on climate change and like insurance and how business people think about taking out insurance to protect against you know, fire on your house or a vehicle crash, right? We know the risk is there and we can quantify it fairly well. And let's figure out how we can take out insurance against this risk. Yeah, it's on the how to reduce your carbon footprint. We get mixed reviews from students on this one, right? Some, like you say, who might have like a desire to take action and find ways to take action, find this empowering. Others don't, you know, don't necessarily find it that empowering. They I think for two reasons. One, not everyone has the ability to act, right? They don't necessarily have the resources or the environment around them. Like if you live in a dorm to say invest in an electric vehicle or change how you source your energy. But I think the other issue too, and it kind of relates to the David Roberts Vox article, is that climate change is a systemic issue, right? And it's something where any one person acting, you know, taking these actions alone isn't necessarily going to move the needle very much on solving climate change. And really we need to think about large scale solutions and systems changes to help us solve this issue. And speaking of ExxonMobil and misinformation campaigns, the carbon footprint is a concept that was actually came out of the fossil fuel industry to deflect responsibility from businesses and the polluters themselves to individuals. I'm not saying don't do all those great things. You know, I certainly do. But we also have to, you know, do them and we have to think bigger about systemic solutions. As you might have guessed, there's a whole field of behavioral psychology focused on how humans react to climate change and understanding these biases. The Yale Project on Climate Communication has a lot of good resources on this topic and they conduct regular studies of the U.S. population on how they're thinking about climate change. And they've identified six segments of the population based on how they think about climate change. You've got people in one segment who are dismissive of the issue because they don't believe it's happening. Others are doubtful that it's human caused. Others are disengaged and don't think about it at all. A larger segment, the 17% of the population are cautious and they haven't necessarily made up their mind yet. Then you've got the biggest segment, or I'll go to the second biggest segment. You've got 25% of the population, a fourth of the population who is, you know, alarmed and think that climate change is happening and that we need to act today to address it. And they strongly support climate policies and climate action. And then you've got the biggest segment, which is the concerned. These are folks that they believe that human caused climate change is happening and it's a serious threat. But they don't necessarily prioritize it above other issues like the economy or you know, housing, whatever. And they tend to believe that climate impacts are still distant in the future or that they aren't going to impact themselves. So you can imagine targeting communications to these two biggest segments to help ignite people into acting on climate change. For the alarmed, they just need to be empowered with actual solutions and actions that they can take to act on climate change. Whereas the concerned, uh, they need to be given examples of how climate change is affecting them, right? Um, uh, whether it be drought, wildfires and air pollution from wildfires, um, or, uh, hurricanes, um, and other extreme weather events. But yeah, I think, uh, we still see a lot of examples of businesses at scale acting on climate change. Um, you know, whether you're talking about Microsoft and how they're investing a billion dollars into, uh, climate solutions, you know, yeah, they, um, canceled some of their carbon contracts recently, but that was, uh, not as much of a big deal as people were making it out to be, frankly. Um, um, but, uh, yeah, and you know, working in, uh, uh, working at a green bank and in Nevada and in Nevada's communities, um, these businesses also need a social license to operate, right? So they, um, if they want to get permitted for their facilities in a community, um, that's a big motivator as well. But yeah, I think at the end of the day, what we need is, uh, the right market signals and, um, mandates from a policy standpoint to help business, um, which is something that we lack at the federal level right now in the U S uh, these maps show you why we have such a big segment of the population that's in the concerned segment. Um, because while 63% of adults believe that global warming, uh, is happening and is going to harm people only 45% of adults believe it's actually going to harm themselves. So this is why targeting communications that help people understand how climate change is affecting them personally, uh, is, can be so effective. Um, and striking for me, you know, I talk about climate change all the time with my family and my work, uh, in my community. Uh, but for a large part of the population, that's not the case. 64% of adults, uh, never rarely or never discuss global warming. And this is one of the reasons why I get excited about, um, public education, uh, techniques and campaigns that help, um, turn these purple areas more green. All right. So, uh, the human behavior biases are one reason why one major reason why it's so hard to garner the social will to act on climate change. Uh, but another reason why is that we have, uh, uh, a limited carbon budget where scientists have said we need to limit emissions, uh, to, uh, uh, keep warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius. Um, and, uh, then that leaves the question of like, who has responsibility to limit their emissions, um, who, you know, which countries or which individuals are most responsible for limiting their emissions. And that creates equity issues, right. Um, where, uh, you know, different countries have different abilities to reduce their emissions. Um, you know, many countries in the developing world, uh, still lack access to reliable energy. So, uh, what right do developed nations have to, uh, ask those countries to reduce their emissions and limit their human development? So the stakeholders involved, uh, include about 200 different countries with varying levels of contributions to the problem and different levels of impacts that they're experiencing on climate change. So a lot of the discussions that the international climate negotiations center around who has responsibility to act and how to divvy up space in this limited carbon budget. So if you look at it based on annual emissions, you might conclude that, you know, China is by a long shot, the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions today. So they have the biggest responsibility to act, right? But what are some other ways that we might be able to think about responsibility to act? You guys got the two big ones, cumulative or historic CO2 emissions are important per capita. Um, you can also normalize it based on GDP, uh, gross domestic product, um, which is an economic indicator of a country. Uh, that's, um, factor known as carbon intensity when you're normalizing it based on the economy or, uh, you know, instead of GDP, many might point to human development index or HDI, which helps account for other, um, non-economic factors that are indicators of a country's development, um, like health. And then CO2 per total primary energy supply. So how much energy you're supplying, uh, to the world, basically is another factor. So, uh, if you look at per capita emissions, uh, you know, the picture looks a lot different, right? Uh, uh, China is no longer at the top. Uh, you've got Australia, Canada, the US, uh, Russia. If you look at cumulative emissions by far, uh, the US and the EU are the biggest cumulative emitters. Uh, so again, what right do the US and the EU have to tell China, uh, or other developing nations, uh, not to emit, uh, CO2 emissions, um, when they, when the US and the EU are the biggest contributors to the warming that we're seeing today. Looking forward though, the developing world, uh, particularly China and India, uh, are gonna be the biggest emitters to climate change, uh, with emissions from the US and EU, uh, going flat and in some cases declining. But part of the challenge is that many of the developing countries have, um, you know, still lack access to reliable energy. Um, one third of the world still lacks access to reliable energy. Although there are clean energy solutions to help give them that access without contributing to climate change. Um, it's also not necessarily that straightforward or simple, right? Um, if you're, uh, someone in sub-Saharan Africa who doesn't have energy access, you don't care if it's going to be clean or, or not, right? You just want that energy access. Moreover, uh, the hardest hit by climate change aren't the ones that are contributing the most to the issue. Uh, so, um, you know, folks in sub-Saharan Africa, uh, and, and the developing world are the hardest hit by climate change. So, again, not only is there a question of who has responsibility to act, but there's also the question in the international climate negotiations of what responsibility do, uh, developed nations have, uh, to help these vulnerable developing countries in adapting to the impacts of climate change that they're already feeling. So, these are the big questions relating to climate equity that hold up progress in the international climate negotiations and hinder the ability to garner the collective social will among those 200 countries to act. All right. So, let's talk about how we solve climate change. Um, you know, closing that emissions gap, it's a significant undertaking. It requires, uh, multiple large scale, uh, actions across the world, um, in scaling solutions. Um, and it calls not for just a continuation of, uh, what we're doing, but an acceleration of investments in clean energy solutions and climate solutions, but it is achievable. Um, so there's no one silver bullet, uh, but, uh, we do have the resources available to us, um, and the solutions that are both technically and economically feasible to address climate change. Before talking about solutions though, I want to revisit how we think about, um, measuring, uh, the problem, uh, because you can't manage what you can't measure. So measuring and understanding the problem and the sources is the first step to solving it. This, you know, is a chart from project drawdown that shows the sources of greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the sinks, right? Because, uh, we've got the ocean that absorbs, uh, CO2, uh, and also, um, trees and shrubs that also, uh, can absorb CO2. So you've got your sources and your sinks here, the carbon sinks, and this is a useful way to think about sources. Um, but you can really slice and dice it in different ways, right? Um, like you could break electricity production out into different end uses because electricity isn't an end use, right? It's that currency. Um, you could think about it in terms of like motor drives or heat. Um, you could also break this out, uh, by country and then by sector if you wanted to understand, uh, uh, how different, uh, countries have different sources and sectors that are dominant. Um, but it's also important to remember that the data that you're looking at is only as good as its source, right? We talked about how the U S greenhouse gas inventory, um, which is kind of a top down measurement method that uses emissions factors can be criticized for the emissions factors it uses, but also for things like the global warming potential, uh, uh, time frame that it applies. Um, so oftentimes, you know, top down measurement methods are, uh, or, um, are, are paired with bottom up measurement methods like here at Stanford, direct measurement of greenhouse gases in, uh, the natural gas system, um, or, you know, upstream or in the distribution system to help us better understand, you know, where are those big emitters and are there ways that we can better target our solutions to help bring down emissions in the most cost effective way. Um, stakeholders have created a standardized way for businesses and organizations to measure their greenhouse gases and, uh, called scope one, two, and three emissions, which split emissions into categories based on the direct impact that a business has on those emissions. So scope one emissions are, uh, you know, direct emissions from a company's operations, like fuel combustion in a company's vehicles, um, or fugitive emissions in a company's, uh, natural gas pipes. Scope two includes indirect emissions from things like electricity, uh, that you purchase from say a utility where the, those electricity emissions are the scope one emissions for the utility, but that there's scope two emissions for the end user. And then you've got scope three emissions that are kind of like all other emissions in the supply chain, um, uh, that are indirect emissions in a company's value chains, like, um, the emissions associated with manufactured goods bought by the company. Say a company buys a laptop. It's the emissions of, uh, of manufacturing that laptop. All right. So there are, uh, uh, several great science-based frameworks, um, available that outline cost-effective solutions that we can scale today, uh, to address climate change. And one of those is project drawdown. Um, and, uh, this depicts their main scenario for different solutions for stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions at safe levels. And you can see that energy is a huge component of the solution. And we'll talk more about energy, but, um, uh, I think I want to call out, um, the natural and engineered carbon sinks that are also a very significant portion of the solution, uh, about 30% in this scenario. Um, so, uh, you know, 10 years, 10 years ago, maybe 15, I'm getting, getting older, uh, carbon sinks were not a big part of the discussion on solutions. And in fact, many, uh, people advocated for not talking about carbon sinks because they didn't want us to think that we could engineer our way out of this problem that we've created for ourselves, um, as, uh, an excuse for continuing to, uh, emit, uh, significant amounts of greenhouse gases. But as we've exhausted our carbon budget, the importance of carbon sinks and capturing carbon out of the air, um, both naturally and through engineered solutions have increased. So that's why you see it here as a significant part of the solution. And so this, this is dominated by things like, uh, reforestation efforts, uh, regenerative agriculture. Um, those are natural carbon, carbon sinks that help, uh, bring carbon out of the, out of the air. Uh, but there's also engineered solutions like direct air capture, um, or capturing carbon, uh, from, uh, your fossil fuel plant, um, that are costly and take energy. Um, but you know, um, maybe an important part of the solution to climate change. I'll also just mention, um, I like that project drawdown includes education and health, this important social component of addressing climate change. Uh, uh, they, uh, believe that family planning and universal education are not only just fundamental human rights, but also, uh, an important component of solving climate change because they can help stabilize population growth, um, which can reduce, uh, uh, climate and other environmental impacts as well. In addition to project drawdown, this is another great framework for solving climate change. It's called the exponential roadmap, uh, that was released in 2019. Um, which is interesting, you know, 2019 that's, you know, seven years ago now, uh, and we've seen even more technology innovation and improvements and cost improvements from a lot of these technology solutions that make these even more cost effective than they were seven years ago. Uh, but it's published by an international group of experts, including some Stanford scientists, that maps out 36 cost-effective solutions that we can scale today to put a dent in climate change. And you can see energy is a huge component. Uh, it plays a role not just in the top row, but also in industry buildings, transportation. Um, and then you see that big role for, they focused particularly on natural carbon sinks, uh, down here. Uh, so we really just need to focus on scaling these already cost-effective and available solutions. Um, and let's dig into this concept of cost-effectiveness, uh, because if solutions aren't cost-effective, it's very hard to scale them. And, uh, this chart, it's, uh, comes from a seminal study from McKinsey that was originally published in 2010 and then republished in 2017. Uh, the x-axis shows the, um, greenhouse gas abatement potential of different technology solutions and the y-axis basically shows the cost. Um, of, of abatement. So you see a lot of, uh, negative cost applications. These are a lot of energy efficiency applications. They're opportunities that a lot of businesses and individuals are just leaving on the table. Uh, things like LED lighting. Um, and then, you know, you have, uh, opportunities that cost money, you know, above the x-axis, um, uh, that, you know, again, since 2017, when the study was released, there've been a lot of cost declines to the point where, you know, I hope we've hammered into you already if we, uh, in this class that, um, wind and solar and increasingly battery energy storage are the cheapest sources of electricity that we can build on the grid today. And these solutions are even more cost effective if we integrate the social cost of carbon into the price we put, we pay for goods and services. As you learned about in the first class from Diana, there's often a difference between the private cost that we pay for a good and service and the total cost of that good to society, uh, with negative externalities, um, uh, in the form of things like pollution and climate impacts from greenhouse gases. Um, so putting a price on carbon, uh, that social cost of carbon can help ensure that the polluter is the one who pays that price, uh, uh, of, of climate impacts. And it sends the appropriate market signals to help reduce demand for those carbon intensive products. There are a lot of different countries and jurisdictions that have actually put in place a price on carbon, um, including in California, uh, and the EU, both with, uh, emissions trading mechanisms, emissions trading schemes, ETSs. Um, so they're, uh, taking a step back, there are really two different ways that you can put a price on carbon. Uh, one is by mandating it, uh, through policies like an emissions trading scheme or carbon trading mechanism, uh, or a carbon tax, uh, or there, uh, there are voluntary efforts as well, um, uh, that, uh, aren't mandated, but you know, many businesses or organizations have voluntarily put a price on carbon. Um, the U S we don't have a comprehensive, you know, nationwide price on carbon, but we've seen, you know, the Northeast and California and, uh, I think Washington as well, uh, pass policies to that, that price in carbon. Uh, we've just, you know, as a, as a country, uh, it's been hard to garner the social will, um, to pass legislation that would properly price, um, carbon. So we see, uh, you know, several companies like Microsoft and Google actually put a price on carbon internally, um, as well. And that's more voluntary, uh, that they use for decision-making. But one of the big challenges about putting a price on carbon is what price do you put it at? Uh, we see prices on carbon across these different, um, markets ranging from $20 a ton to a hundred dollars a ton, but many scientists would say that that's not enough. That really the cost of each ton of carbon that we're emitting, I think there was a study out of Stanford that pegged it more at $230 a ton. So getting, you know, getting the right carbon market design and pricing carbon correctly is, is important. All right. So I want to talk a little bit about the international climate negotiations and the time that I have left. Um, so because CO2 is a well-mixed gas, uh, uh, climate change, uh, we have an economic phenomenon that's known as the prisoner's dilemma where any one country acting on their own isn't going to solve the problem. But if all countries acted together to address climate change, everyone would be better off. But, um, in the absence of cooperation, no single country has the incentive to act unilaterally. So because of this, uh, international coordination and cooperation, uh, is extremely important to overcome this prisoner's dilemma that, um, creates a disincentive for unilateral action. Um, so since 1992, the world has been, uh, trying to garner, uh, a collective agreement between countries, um, to address climate change. Uh, they, uh, around 200 countries signed the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, uh, agreeing to do just that, to come together and come up with those solutions. Uh, those negotiations resulted in the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, uh, where, uh, which was a treaty that was, um, adopted by those nearly 200 countries, uh, that included legally binding targets only for developed nations. Um, because it only had targets for developed nations, the U.S. decided not to ratify it. And the U.S. was also worried that it would cost too much to comply with their targets. Um, at the end of the day, though, uh, the U.S. would have met their targets under the Kyoto Protocol because of coal to gas switching, switching and transportation efficiencies. Russia and Japan also missed their Kyoto Protocol targets. Uh, so Kyoto Protocol had mixed results. Um, but since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed to in 1997, there have been efforts to come up with a new treaty that includes both developed countries and developing countries and targets for, for both of those. Um, and those efforts resulted in the Paris Agreement in 2015. Um, and we have continued negotiations focused on how do we continue to increase the ambition of people's targets, of countries' targets. And you can imagine the negotiations are pretty challenging, right? Um, the U.S. is limited by what policies we have in place domestically, which varies quite significantly. You know, China, I think historically, uh, they didn't want to do anything unless the U.S. did something because they didn't think it was fair. Um, but over the past few years, they've really done a 180 and, um, started being much more proactive, realizing that it's a competitive advantage for them to lead on clean energy. Uh, you know, they're a leader on solar manufacturing, battery manufacturing, and advancing clean energy helps reduce air pollution. And then you can imagine Saudi Arabia generally has an interest in not advancing climate solutions. Uh, decisions in the UNFCCC are made by consensus, which means that any one country can speak up and prevent progress. So you could imagine moving things forward with interests, bearing interests like these are really challenging. And then you've got, you know, small island development, developing states like the Maldives, who didn't contribute to the problem, but they need help adapting to it, right? And to drive this point home, the president of the Maldives, uh, um, held a cabinet meeting underwater in 2009 to raise awareness about the importance of the issue for the Maldives. So you've got, you know, global equity issues hindering progress in the international climate negotiations, um, resulting in the breakdown of negotiations. These are some of the negotiations that I attended when I worked on the UNFCCC, where you can see total breakdown. Uh, and that's why we're left with this ambitious, ambition gap, between what the pledges and targets are at the international level and, uh, what the science says needs to happen. But, you know, as you'll learn throughout this class, we're seeing lots of progress happening outside of policy, uh, with tons of growth of renewable energy, of vehicle electrification, both in the U S and worldwide, um, you know, blowing past expectations. And really it's driven by the fact that these solutions are economic. They're the most cost effective, right? Who doesn't want an electric vehicle when you can cut your fuel costs and maintenance costs by more than half. And we're seeing, you know, investors flocking to renewable energy and clean energy solutions with investments in clean energy rivaling investments globally in fossil fuels. Um, we see entities like green banks advancing solutions. Um, you know, and at the end of the day, uh, you know, I hope one of the things that you take away from this class is the ways that you can have an impact on climate change and help solve this issue. Um, you know, you can focus on your own carbon footprint, but I challenge you to take a step back, um, you know, and make the problem bigger and think about the levers that you have available to you to make systemic impact, whether it's, you know, how you vote, how you influence the corporations that you work for, the institutions that you operate in, like Stanford, um, or the businesses that you buy products from, or, you know, how you, uh, advocate within your own communities and, uh, social circles. So I look forward to hearing about the actions that, that you take and, and, um, learning from you as, uh, you help [00:55:53] Speaker 2: solve climate change. Thank you. If you want to learn more about this topic or other energy topics, visit our Stanford Understand Energy Learning Hub for free resources, including signing up for our monthly energy spotlight. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and tap the notification bell to be notified for our newest content.