Ok, Doomer
by Sonam Velani & Lyn StolerFighting climate doom and gloom with a bi-weekly dose of solutions and sarcasm.
There are a lot of climate solutions out there — too many for us to keep up with.
We spend most of our time speaking to climate do-ers about the companies, policies, and technologies that will change the world. Since we introduced the idea of Climate Industrialism a few months ago, the trifecta of individuals, innovation, and industrial policy has taken off in cities across the world. The rate of progress is astounding!
Researching climate solutions has been like drinking from a firehose!
Researching climate solutions has kind of been like trying to drink from a firehose.
The good news is that there’s a bottomless well of creative ideas, climate action, and most importantly, hope. The bad news is that despite our best efforts, there’s no way we can research and write quickly enough to keep up with all of the bright ideas coming to the market everyday. It's a good problem to have!
But we set out to learn and build in public, and we think everyone should have access to the information we’re finding in real time. So today we’re launching two new projects (with some cheeky names) to accomplish just that:
1) Doom Diligence
We’ve built a database that tracks all of the technologies, policies, companies, nonprofits, and cities that we research. It’s what we use every single day to catalog our research for Parachute pieces — including the bits that don’t make it into the final draft. It’s called Doom Diligence (you know, like “due diligence”… we’re big on puns here), and for the first time, we’re sharing it publicly.
All paid subscribers to Parachute will get a password to access Doom Diligence — it’s our way to express our gratitude for your support! (You'll find your access code at the bottom of this post.) Doom Diligence lets you see the entire set of solutions we’ve researched and written about, all in one place. You can explore solutions by impacts, types, or even locations. You can see which companies were in the news, follow the deep dives in Parachute pieces, and even get a glimpse at our behind-the-scenes notes on climate solutions across the globe.
2) Ok, Doomer *
More importantly, we know that not everyone can afford a paid subscription, and our top priority is making sure that everyone has access to everything we find. Alternating with our longer-form Parachute essays, we’ll be publishing an issue of “Ok, Doomer” every two weeks!
Each issue of Ok, Doomer will be a round-up of the hottest additions to Doom Diligence, with our analysis of interesting trends or take-aways. Each week will have a few different themes, but you'll always find:
Highlights from the news that shows climate industrialism in action
Cities, companies, and communities that we’ve been researching and speaking to, with a quick breakdown of what makes their climate solution special and exciting
Gaps! This might be calls for startups, VCs, and policymakers to design, deploy, commercialize, and scale solutions that can benefit humanity at large.
*It’s been brought to our attention that the reference of “Ok, Doomer” may not be immediately obvious to everyone. We get that, no harm! It’s a reference to the popular Gen-Z phrase “Ok, Boomer”, which is used to mock outdated beliefs or opinions. While we don’t believe in mocking baby boomers, we do think that we should respond to climate doom with real solutions and some lighthearted sarcasm. For those who want to learn more, check out this Vox podcast on the Ok, Boomer phenomenon and a NYTimes essay on the real reason this phrase took off. We also need to admit that this is inspired by Packy McCormick's Weekly Dose of Optimism, which we highly recommend!
Now, without further ado, here’s our very first issue of Ok, Doomer.
Doom Diligence is currently home to all of the solutions, companies, and news stories that you’ve already had the chance to read about across our Parachute posts. So instead of re-summarizing those, here are a couple interesting take-aways of what we’ve covered so far.
We’ve researched and spoken with 90+ companies, nonprofits, government entities, and public-private partnerships! We’ve also explored over 60 individual solutions across 27 different themes. The most popular themes were:
Energy Storage
Greening
Infrastructure
While the most popular individual solutions were:
Solar Energy
Urban Gardens
Policy and Tech Incubators
Battery Storage
And of course, we focus a lot on co-benefits (or the impacts that climate solutions have on people and the places they call home). The most frequent co-benefits we saw were:
Food Security
Reduction in Heat Exposure
Energy / Grid Resilience
Breaking down our solutions has helped us to identify areas that we want to spend more time on and challenged our thinking on how to best map out this space. If you have feedback on our solution themes, inclusion or exclusion criteria, or the solutions themselves, we'd love to your feedback! That's the beauty of building on public, after all.
Caption: For a full, interactive view of the map, check out our page on Felt!
We've covered solutions all over the world, with a bias towards the United States thus far. This year, we’re going to expand our travels internationally and highlight solutions across the globe.
If you want to explore similar insights, poke through detailed location breakdowns, and access the entire set of solutions types, Doom Diligence is the place for you!
Climate Industrialism In Action:
The news is filled with climate solutions — here are our favorite highlights! Remember, all of this is broken down & beautifully organized in Doom Diligence. You can see it all in one place — and even get an early look at information for upcoming pieces — by getting a paid subscription! You will also earn our undying gratitude and probably elicit tears of joy.
Cities globally are deploying low-carbon technologies and policies.
From Auckland to Medellín to Seattle, over 100 cities around the world are sourcing a majority of their electricity from renewable sources. They are leveraging the cost competitiveness of solar and wind, as well as newer geothermal and hydropower technologies to transform their energy mix. Cities account for 70% of global emissions — if we get it right here, we can get it right everywhere!
Ithaca, New York is the first city in the US to announce plans to fully decarbonize by 2030. The city is helping businesses and residents install heat pumps in all of its 6,000 buildings (40% of which are over 100 years old!). The key: the city aggregated blocks of buildings to spread risk, securitized the project, and attracted $105 million of private funds from Blocpower and Alturus.
Nairobi, Kenya is the second fastest growing city in the world; to feed its energy demand, it’s tapping into the heat under its feet. Kenya depends on geothermal steam for 38% of its power — a greater proportion than any other nation — and its latest investment in the Olkaria Geothermal Project will increase capacity.
All new houses built in Tokyo, Japan will be required to install solar panels to reduce GHG emissions. Only 4% of buildings in Tokyo have solar panels today. Japan aims to halve its emissions by 2030 — this ambitious new policy will certainly help.
Do you think parking lots suck? So do we! And the Government of France agrees! New legislation requires any parking lot with more than 80 spots to be covered with solar panels. Mickey and Minnie are already on it at Disneyland Paris — the parking lots are covered by 67,500 solar panels, creating one of Europe’s largest solar canopy plants!
The battery belt is booming.
The American Midwest, Southeast, and South are seeing huge industrial and public investments in battery manufacturing and adjacent technologies. We're seeing the emergence of a "Battery Belt", which is creating thousands of jobs and breathing new life into the great American manufacturing centers of the 20th century. One of its most exciting features is that we're seeing the talent and infrastructure of the oil, gas, and coal industries become the seeds for this new climate industrial revolution.
This graphic is adapted from a video shared by Brian Deese (the White House Director of the National Economic Council). Check out the OG version on Twitter!
Key Capture and Talen Energy are partnering to convert the coal-burning unit at the HA Wagner energy plant outside Baltimore, MD into a 20-megawatt energy storage system. This battery transition will be the first in the nation!
Redwood Materials, which recycles battery materials for domestic battery production, just announced their new battery materials campus in Charleston, South Carolina. By recycling and reusing battery components, Redwood drives down costs across the industry and keeps production onshore.
General Motors and LG are building yet another Ultium plant in Lansing, Michigan to produce EV batteries. Greenlink Education is working with the local school district to electrify its infrastructure and train the next generation of battery manufacturers – a pipeline of talent coming full circle!
Form Energy will be manufacturing their novel, iron-air batteries in Weirton, Virginia — a town that has fallen victim to the collapse of the US steel industry. Senator Joe Manchin’s favorite legislation is now at work right in his backyard.
MineSense Technologies just raised $42m to boost copper output at existing mines. The company uses hardware and software to help mining companies precisely measure ore, thus increasing production and reducing waste. (We know that Vancouver isn't the battery belt, but it's still cool).
US solar production is soaring.
Solar energy not only helps decarbonize our grid; it makes it more resilient to climate threats! Spurred on by IRA investments, both international and domestic companies are investing in enormous manufacturing facilities across the country. Each is creating hundreds — if not thousands — of jobs, and contributing to the US's growing solar PV capacity! For solar to account for 30% of energy generation by 2030 across the US, we need to install 125 GW annually – up from 19 GW in 2020. Hockey stick growth, anyone?
This graph is adapted from Our World in Data — you can (and should) explore this interactive data tool and others on their site!
Enel North America is set to build one of the largest solar photovoltaic manufacturing facilities in the US, creating 1,500 new clean energy jobs. There are less than 5 large-scale solar manufacturing factories in the US currently (less than 1 GW each). Enel’s new gigafactory will produce 6 GW in just one site that’s yet to be located. We know plenty of economic development officials across the country vying for this deal!
First Solar is building a 3.5 gigawatt solar module manufacturing facility in Lawrence County, Alabama, creating 700 direct manufacturing jobs. This will be a sister facility to the company’s R&D centers in California and Ohio that are developing top-of-the-line industry standards for quality, durability, reliability, design, and environmental performance.
CubicPV will soon be announcing the location of a new 10 gigawatt silicon wafer manufacturing facility (Loacker wafers might be tasty, but silicon wafers are the real winners here). These critical components for solar PV cells will be rolling off the assembly line in 2024, and the facility will create 1,500 new jobs!
Last spring, Qcells announced a new solar panel manufacturing facility in Dalton, Georgia, bringing 500 jobs to Whitfield County.
Wisconsin's Public Service Commission voted to allow families to lease solar panels directly from private companies, not just from regulated utilities. Now with options for third-party financing, many more households will be able to access and afford this renewable energy technology.
Location Check: Lyn and Anson will be in Baltimore, MD and Atlanta, GA conducting site visits, interviews, and filming for a new Parachute project! Sonam is starting the year hosting potlucks for women founders and funders in climate — reach out if you’re interested in joining her in New York!