Climate Tech & Innovation
Rapid progress is being made on many of the game-changing technologies needed to achieve climate and environmental goals, both in the United States and around the world. Precipitous declines in the cost of solar power and battery storage, massive improvements in the performance of electric vehicles, and far faster detection and more accurate modeling of fast-moving wildfires are just a few examples that illustrate how quickly we can develop and scale real solutions to pressing climate and environmental challenges – especially when the public and private sectors work together.
But significant gaps remain in the U.S. innovation ecosystem for climate and the environment. For instance, solutions to support large-scale adaptation to the impacts of climate change – such as efficient cooling technologies and cheap but ultrastrong building materials – are increasingly needed, and economically compelling: studies indicate that investments in climate resilience could generate nearly fourfold net benefits over a decade. Yet promising adaptation and resilience (A&R) technologies often struggle to move from research and development to scaling and commercialization. The upshot is that A&R finance needs are significantly greater than A&R finance flows…and the United States risks ceding leadership in a market for climate resilience that could soon be worth trillions.
In addition, while a relentless focus on mitigation (i.e., accelerating clean technology transitions and carbon dioxide removal over time) is critical to climate stabilization, there is a real possibility of passing critical climate “tipping points” before mitigation strategies have sufficient impact. It may therefore make sense to pair mitigation with emerging climate interventions that could avoid or limit the consequences of threshold overshoot and reduce tipping point risk. But much remains unknown about the feasibility and potential adverse effects of proposed climate interventions. Robust research is needed to answer these questions, alongside creation of forward-thinking governance structures to ensure that research and potential future development is carried out responsibly.
FAS’s Climate Tech and Innovation program is exploring these and other topics – working with the science, policy, and stakeholder communities to build support for cutting-edge research in overlooked areas, while harnessing market and economic forces to scale high-impact environmental and climate solutions.