Unfashionable climate interventions that work & fashionable ones that don’t | Johannes Ackva (2023)

Core Philosophy: Climate philanthropists should prioritize reducing expected climate damage rather than minimizing near-term carbon emissions, as damage functions are highly non-linear.

• Implication: A ton of CO2 avoided in a high-warming scenario (e.g., 4°C+) is orders of magnitude more valuable than a ton avoided in a low-warming scenario (1.5°C).
• Implication: Near-term emission reductions are often negatively correlated with true long-term impact because mature technologies (e.g., solar, wind) currently offer the cheapest immediate cuts but have the least marginal trajectory-changing potential.

Risk Management & Hedging: Climate strategy must hedge against "bad futures" where mainstream technological bets fail.

• Bad Future Scenarios: High emissions driven by the failure of renewables to integrate, the impossibility of electrifying heavy industry, or a breakdown in international cooperation.
• Hedging Strategy: Fund technologies and policies robust to these scenarios, such as advanced nuclear, super-hot rock geothermal, and industrial decarbonization (shipping, concrete, steel), rather than concentrating solely on mainstream renewable deployment.
• Policy Robustness: Advocacy should favor interventions that are robust to low international cooperation, such as making clean tech so cheap that decarbonization is economically rational even without global agreements.

Carbon Lock-in vs. Innovation: The climate challenge is a race between rapid technological innovation and "carbon lock-in" from long-lived infrastructure.

• Carbon Lock-in: New coal plants in Asia (China, India, Indonesia) built in the last decade commit emissions for decades; retiring them is economically prohibitive.
• Innovation Strategy: Focus on "repowering" existing coal plants with clean heat sources (nuclear, advanced geothermal) rather than just shutting them down or building new green infrastructure.
• Leverage: Innovation is the primary driver of trajectory change; historical subsidies in Germany and California transformed global solar costs, proving sustained public support drives cost reduction more than inherent technological potential.

Grant-Making Strategy & Neglect: Philanthropy should target areas where the mainstream response is "predictably broken" or underfunded.

• Crowded vs. Neglected: Do not fund highly visible grassroots activism (e.g., Extinction Rebellion) or mature tech deployment (e.g., standard solar/wind) where the "pie" is already being sliced.
• High-Leverage Targets: Fund advocacy to improve allocative efficiency of government spending (e.g., Clean Air Task Force influencing the US Inflation Reduction Act) and early-stage innovation (e.g., Super-hot rock, advanced nuclear).
• Additionality: In regions with strict carbon caps, direct deployment often displaces emissions rather than reducing them; advocacy to shift the cap or fund R&D is more effective.

Geographic Prioritization: Focus areas depend on the theory of change applied to the region.

• Innovation Theory: Prioritize the US and EU, which hold the majority of global innovation capacity; philanthropy in Europe is relatively more neglected in innovation funding than in the US.
• Lock-in Theory: Prioritize China, India, and Southeast Asia to target new coal infrastructure and promote repowering strategies.
• Effectability: Avoid regions with negligible future emissions (e.g., Sub-Saharan Africa) unless targeting specific, high-additionality opportunities like early-stage innovation systems.

Specific Technology Assessments:

• Advanced Nuclear: Highly underfunded by traditional climate philanthropists due to anti-nuclear bias; prioritizing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) is a low-risk, high-additionality bet.
• Super-Hot Rock Geothermal: Uses fracking tech to make geothermal location-independent; requires sustained public advocacy and drilling experimentation that private capital avoids.
• Fusion: Viewed as too far out for current climate timelines; funding it risks diverting attention from near-term feasible solutions like advanced fission.
• Hard-to-Abate Sectors: Shipping, concrete, and agriculture are neglected and critical for worst-case scenarios; decarbonizing these requires solving energy density and grid integration challenges.
• NIMBY/Permitting: A major bottleneck in the US; funding campaigns to streamline zoning for renewables is a high-impact, neglected area.

Air Pollution & Co-benefits: Climate action has significant near-term co-benefits for air pollution (killing 6–7 million people/year) and energy poverty alleviation.

• Implication: Framing clean energy as a solution for energy access and health increases its moral urgency for near-termists, potentially tripling its perceived importance compared to a climate-only frame.

Career Advice:

• Timing: The window for high-impact climate intervention is narrowing; careers in climate should yield impact earlier rather than later in a professional's life.
• Skill Transfer: For long-term hedging, cultivate skills in policy and institutional decision-making that remain valuable even if climate is solved, or build a "portfolio" career that can pivot to other causes if the climate outlook shifts.

Ex-Post Facto Evaluation of Past Actions:

• Germany's Solar Subsidies: While inefficient for local emissions reduction, they were globally consequential for driving down solar costs; local short-term inefficiency can correlate with massive global long-term benefit.
• Lifestyle Changes: Individual carbon footprint reduction is negligible at scale; the "carbon footprint" concept is often a distraction shifting focus from political/technological solutions.

Emerging Opportunities for Founders Pledge:

• Hiring: Actively recruiting researchers for climate-focused grant-making (salaries $95k–$120k) to expand capacity in policy advocacy and innovation research.
• Grant Focus: Supporting organizations like Clean Air Task Force to globalize their work and targeting specific repowering projects in China.