While I think it is a mistake to motivate this estimate with a 2017 BOTEC (here we agree!), it is also mistaken to claim that such a range – spanning more than two OOMs and high and fairly low cost-effectiveness – is implausible as a quite uncertain best guess.
As discussed many times, CCF grantmaking does not rely on 2017 BOTECs and neither does my best guess on cost-effectiveness (Vasco operationalized it one specific way I am not going to defend here, I am just defending a view that expected cost-effectiveness is roughly in the 0.1 USD/t to to 10 USD/t range).
Why an estimate in this range seems plausible
This seems plausible for many reasons, none of which depending on the specific BOTEC:
I. Outside-view multiplier reasoning
(1) It is clearly possible to reduce tons of CO2eq for USD 100/t through direct and high-certainty action.
(2) If you only assumed a conventional advocacy multiplier – of the form that many EA orgs assume when modeling policy work (e.g. OP) and that is well-substantiated by empirical political science research and many studies on successes in philanthropy – you would assume a 10x multiplier.
(3) You now “only” need another 10x multiplier to get to USD 1/t and there seem many plausible mechanisms to get there – e.g. focusing on actions with transformative potential such as innovation, avoiding carbon lock-in etc. or – more meta – driving in additional funding from other donors / foundations when supporting early-stage organizations.
(4) Obviously, one also needs to discount for things like funding additionality, execution risk. Etc.
(5) This will result in a very uncertain range, but it is well-approximated by what Vasco has chosen to model this.
Note that these are overall quite weak assumptions and, crucially, if you do not buy them you should probably also not buy the cost-effectiveness analyses on corporate campaigns for chicken welfare.
II. Observations of grants and inside-view modeling
(1) While I generally put less stock in them than in comparative analysis, we also do more inside-view cost-effectiveness analyses that often have a range close to USD 0.1-USD 10t/CO2e.
(2) While the CCF does not exist long enough to be confident in long-run emissions outcomes – we generally invest in theories of change that need time – there is a lot of reason to expect that some of those bets will pay off at the very high cost-effectiveness:
(a) Many of the charities supported – such as TerraPraxis, Future Cleantech Architects etc. – have crowded in multiples of the funding we allocated to them often as a direct result of our recommendation and/or organizational development we enabled with early grants.
(b) While hard to disentangle, they also play key roles in many policy changes – e.g. Carbon180 was a leading advocacy org on carbon removal in the IRA/IIJA window, two of our grantees are pushing a conversation on repowering with advanced heat sources (nuclear or geothermal) and one of our grantees (FCA) had several policy wins in the EU (not all they can talk about).
(c) More nascent work is focused electricity market liberalization to advance renewables in emerging economies (Energy for Growth), a stronger climate civil society on the right (DEPLOY/US), as well as geothermal innovation in Canada (Cascade).
(d) This is a diversified sets of bets that leverages different mechanisms, with the uniting theme of leveraging advocacy, the focus on actions / spaces that are neglected, that have the potential to change trajectories, and that have a risk-reducing quality (hedging).
III. Learning from other areas of philanthropy
Most areas of philanthropy seem structured such that, when being alright with risk neutrality and leveraged theories of change, one can get significant multiplier.
For example, I am quite confident that the implied multiplier for the case of chicken welfare campaigns compared to direct action is likely similarly large for what we are assuming for the case of Climate Fund. I also do not think any nuclear risk grant-maker would find it implausible that they could reduce nuclear risk 100x more cost-effectively (in expectation) than whatever the direct action equivalent would be. Or a global health grant-maker that would expect that their grants are 100x more cost-effective by influencing advocacy to have government invest in vaccine RD&D rather than buying equipment for their local hospital.
Bottom line: This cost-effectiveness range as a risk-neutral best guess does not depend on a 2017 BOTEC, but rather can be motivated via different streams of reasoning and evidence.
(I also think the critique of the 2017 BOTEC is way over-confident but this would be a separate comment)
Thanks, this updates me, I had cached something more skeptical on chicken welfare campaigns.
Do you have a sense of what “advocacy multiplier” this implies? Is this >1000x of helping animals directly?
I have the suspicion that the relative results between causes are—to a significant degree—not driven by cause-differences but by comfort with risk and the kind of multipliers that are expected to be feasible.
FWIW, I also do believe that marginal donations to help farmed animals will do more good than marginal climate donations.