Ship what’s on the truck…
Why we need to deploy the climate solutions available today as quickly as possible to start having impact today
One of the many Americanisms that I picked up during my time in US tech firms was “ship what’s on the truck” meaning to sell what’s available today not the hypothetical products of the future. There is no place where this holds more true than in climate-positive solutions. We need to reduce as much emissions as quickly as possible and act like we’re running out of time.
As a Climate Tech investor I get to see some amazing innovation in nascent stages. Hyper-efficient solar panels, new even more efficient heat pumps, novel battery architectures for EVs. And those are all amazingly meaningful innovations. But…
Putting geopolitics aside, China is already supplying the world with abundant solar panels (80% of world panels by some accounts). ±$50 billion worth of solar panels were exported by China in 2023 with half of those landing in Europe
The scale of Chinese solar companies now outpaces oil majors in terms of energy outputs. Let that sink in…
So yes groundbreaking research, like this one in Colorado might lead to the commercialisation of solar panels 10x more efficient than the ones we currently deploy and should be pursued. But in the meantime we should “ship what’s on the truck.”
The same applies to heat pumps. Those little boxes are truly magical. They generate over two times (or even three times) the heating or cooling energy output for every unit of energy to power it (Coefficient of Performance or COP)
Heat Pumps are the single action that a homeowner or landlord can take to have the greatest impact on the CO2 footprint of the residence. Period. And with incentives and grants, such as the one in the UK, they are at price parity to other actions such as insulation (which should also be pursued).
And while there are startups working on even higher efficiency gains, my bias will always be to help accelerate the deployment of the existing heat pumps already being shipped in the millions by scaled out manufacturers.
Companies that we have backed such as Aeroseal, Hometree, 1Komma5, OpenSolar and Kelvin all focus on the deployment of solutions available TODAY that can start having an impact TODAY. And that impact is accelerating in scale:
Not only are these solutions available at scale today, they are also the lowest cost way to have the greatest possible CO2 mitigation impact TODAY according to the World Resource Insititute.
After all, as I mentioned in a 2021 post “It is the next 9 years that will determine whether we can achieve the targets of net-zero by mid-century” so every day, every deployment, every home, every kg of CO2 today counts…
Ship what’s on the truck!
