Hey, Dan from Giving Green here. Nice post, and glad to see more and more EAs thinking deeply about the climate problem. There are a lot of tough assumptions that go into these numbers, but I think the logic is sound that promoting clean energy innovation is among the most cost-effective ways to fight climate change.
That being said, I think the question of how to best promote clean energy is pretty complicated. I don’t know a lot about the MIT Energy Initiative in particular, but I think that directly funding specific research efforts is likely less cost-effective than trying to influence policy. The right policy victory can have huge leverage in terms of allocating government money for research funding (for instance, through the ARPA-E program ), and can also drive innovation through regulations like carbon pricing or fuel mileage standards. This pathway of influencing energy innovation through policy is what we have focused on at Giving Green, and also mirrors the approach of Founder’s Pledge and Let’s Fund.
Another way to drive innovation is through private-sector investments. The issue with this is that the investment space as a whole is not so neglected, with lots of “clean tech” funds popping up every year. But I do think there are likely some neglected pockets, specifically for early, unproven tech that has a long road to profitability. There could be space for philanthropic capital to have important impacts. At Giving Green, we’re planning to study this space in 2021.
Hey, Dan from Giving Green here. Nice post, and glad to see more and more EAs thinking deeply about the climate problem. There are a lot of tough assumptions that go into these numbers, but I think the logic is sound that promoting clean energy innovation is among the most cost-effective ways to fight climate change.
That being said, I think the question of how to best promote clean energy is pretty complicated. I don’t know a lot about the MIT Energy Initiative in particular, but I think that directly funding specific research efforts is likely less cost-effective than trying to influence policy. The right policy victory can have huge leverage in terms of allocating government money for research funding (for instance, through the ARPA-E program ), and can also drive innovation through regulations like carbon pricing or fuel mileage standards. This pathway of influencing energy innovation through policy is what we have focused on at Giving Green, and also mirrors the approach of Founder’s Pledge and Let’s Fund.
Another way to drive innovation is through private-sector investments. The issue with this is that the investment space as a whole is not so neglected, with lots of “clean tech” funds popping up every year. But I do think there are likely some neglected pockets, specifically for early, unproven tech that has a long road to profitability. There could be space for philanthropic capital to have important impacts. At Giving Green, we’re planning to study this space in 2021.