Hi all, Welcome to Net Zero by Narsi, a newsletter on industry decarbonization and climate action. Thank you very much for subscribing to it.
I'm starting off the newsletter with an...
...opinion poll, what can be more cool?
Background for the Poll
Net Zero is a part of most people's talk these days, beaten only by AI - and at least temporarily by Shakira and Burna Boy.
Unless the world goes Net Zero in the next few decades, and also sequesters a lot of those pesky greenhouse gases already accumulated in the atmosphere, global warming is likely to persist. And increase.
Not a pleasant prospect.
As a result, everyone in the world wants to go Net Zero as soon as possible - except that hardly anyone knows how best to do it.
If getting to Net Zero itself appears a steep challenge, sucking out - and storing somewhere - a good part of about 3000 billion tons of CO2 in our atmosphere (just imagine that humungous amount for a few seconds - 3 trillion tons), looks like Mission Impossible.
Add to the complexity the fact that many of these challenging initiatives might not have a clear business and economic case, and it makes the whole initiative even more unviable for large industries to invest.
While large-scale CO2 sequestration represents perhaps one of the more extreme decarbonization challenges, in a way it is a canary in the coal mine - many other high potential Net Zero pathways such as green hydrogen, nuclear fusion, and bio-energy also face significant economic and implementation challenges.
Given all the above, here's the poll question, in the first edition of Net Zero by Narsi:
How should businesses and industries worldwide configure themselves to make a real impact to Net Zero and decarbonization efforts?
Tell me which of the following is the closest to your answer/opinion for the above question:
- Yes, industry can - If industry gets creative, we should be able come up with strong and viable business cases for these high-impact decarbonization initiatives
- Go PPP - Taking learnings from PPP models (Public Private Partnerships), businesses should prioritize working and collaborating with the government so that the latter becomes a critical partner and shoulders many of the financial costs that these initiatives need, while the industry takes care of innovation and implementation.
- Business should be about business - While industry can work on those initiatives that have a strong business & economic case, high risk and poor business case domains such as carbon sequestration should be solely pursued by the government. Instead of getting together for lame COP meetings, governments across the world should perhaps get together and do a Manhattan Project equivalent for such high impact, high risk domains.
- Hitch the wagon to a star - Utilize some of the decarbonization domains that have been able to provide impact at scale - solar photovoltaic power for instance - and explore how these can be used as the key levers to enhancing the feasibility of more challenging domains such as carbon sequestration, low carbon aviation etc.
- I have a completely different opinion (you are welcome!)
Do let me know in the comments what your opinion is. You can either simply type in one of the numbers above (1-5) or indicate your choice and write your specific opinions about it.
Whatever, but will be wonderful to get your opinion in some way!
All the best!
Narasimhan Santhanam (Narsi)