A New Strategy for Climate: Make the Clean Stuff Cheap

Abstract:

For more than 30 years, climate advocates have pursued a strategy that can be described as “make the dirty stuff expensive”—put a price on carbon to make carbon emitting technologies costlier than low and zero-carbon alternatives and catalyze a switch. But that strategy hasn’t worked, and emissions have continued to climb, reaching a crisis point. In contrast, the Breakthrough Agenda represents an explicit commitment to a strategy that can be referred to as “make the clean stuff cheap”—use policy to drive down the costs of zero-carbon technologies until they put emitting technologies out of business. Research by our group at Oxford and our collaborators shows that it just might work.