Episode 186: Ryan Panchadsaram, Kleiner Perkins
Today's guest is Ryan Panchadsaram, Technical Advisor to John Doerr, Chair of Kleiner Perkins, & Co-Author of Speed & Scale.
Speed & Scale is a new book that offers an unprecedented global plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions before it's too late.
Ryan joined Kleiner Perkins in 2016 to focus on venture-stage companies across the firm and serves as technical advisor to John Doerr, Chair of Kleiner Perkins. During the Obama Presidency, Ryan was the Deputy Chief Technology Officer for the United States. At the White House, Ryan helped shape how federal agencies can use an $80 billion budget to deliver on their missions in a more effective, design-centric, and data-driven way. Before working in the public sector, he co-founded Pipette, a digital health startup acquired by Ginger.io, an MIT Media Lab spin-off using big data and machine learning to improve the world's health. In addition, Ryan worked at Microsoft and Salesforce.com in product and engineering roles. He holds a degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of California, Berkeley.
I was looking forward to sitting down with Ryan because he's been on MCJ's guest wishlist for some time. First, Ryan and I dive into his new book, Speed & Scale, that he co-authored with John Doerr, his role as John's technical advisor, and how he assesses potential investments for Kleiner Perkins. We also explore the misconception that climate investors have to sacrifice returns for impact, the importance of policy and innovation, and why social justice and the climate crisis are interwoven. This is a fantastic episode, and Ryan is a great guest.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded November 15th, 2021
In Today's episode we cover:
Ryan's role as an advisor at Kleiner Perkins and why he focuses on climate
How Ryan thinks about the problem of climate change
Key takeaways Ryan has for readers from his new book Speed & Scale
A post-mortem of cleantech 1.0 at Kleiner Perkins and the assumptions around the best ways to address systems level climate problems
The importance of policy and innovation from an investment standpoint
The overlap between John's personal investing and that of the Kleiner funds & Kleiner LPs
How Ryan assesses whether an investment opportunity is right for Kleiner Perkins or John's personal investing
The misconception around climate tech investors having to sacrifice returns for impact
The need for climate funds to assemble diverse teams to succeed across the various sectors of climate change investing
Breakthrough technologies, why they are essential and often misunderstood
Why carbon removal needs both government funding and venture capital investment
How to navigate the tradeoffs of climate solutions and where energy poverty fits into the conversation
Where Ryan lands on carbon offsets and how to approach carbon removal
The role of oil & gas companies in the clean future
The importance of social justice and economic equity when addressing the climate crisis
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Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. I am the My Climate Journey show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the My Climate Journey or MCJ, as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education, but they were longing for a peer group as well. So we set up a Slack community for those people, that's now mushroomed into more than 1300 members. There is an application to become a member. It's not an exclusive thing. There's four criteria we screen for determination to tackle the problem of climate change, ambition to work on the most impactful solution areas, optimism that we can make a dent and we're not wasting our time for trying, and a collaborative spirit.
Beyond that the more diversity, the better. There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community, a number of founding teams that have met in there, a number of nonprofits that have been established, a bunch of hiring that's been done, a bunch of companies that have raised capital in there, a bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there, as well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members and some open source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well. At any rate, if you wanna learn more, you can go to myclimatejourney.co the website and click to become a member tab at the top. Enjoy the show.
Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Ryan Panchadsaram, technical advisor to John Doerr, Chair of Kleiner Perkins, and co-author with John of Speed & Scale, a new book that offers an unprecedented global plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions before it's too late.
I was excited for this one because John and Kleiner played such a central role in Cleantech 1.0 and Ryan was the former Deputy CTO of the United States where he helped shape how an $80 billion budget can be used by federal agencies to deliver on their missions in a more effective design centric and data-driven way. And they covered so much ground and talked to so many people when formulating the ideas for their book, given where we sit with the symptoms of climate change, becoming more visible and obvious, and increasingly unprecedented amounts of capital flung into climate tech.
It feels like a good time to take a breath, take stock, look at the lessons learned and key takeaways from the past, look at where we sit today, the best ways to move forward, and how these different pieces can and should fit together. It's a far ranging discussion. I think you'll get a lot out of it. I know I did. Ryan, welcome to the show.
Ryan Panchadsaram: Thank you for having me, Jason. It's wonderful to be here.
Jason Jacobs: Man, you and your colleague, John Doerr have been on my hit list for a long time. So I'm so excited to finally get one of you on the show 'cause I have so many questions for you. [laughs]
Ryan Panchadsaram: Oh, we've been wanting to spend time with you the whole year. As we've pulled this book together, you can't imagine the number of times we just go to your podcast to say, "Hey, who has Jason talked to that's incredible in these spaces?" I think the theme of My Climate Journey and Speed & Scale is that there are so many heroes doing this incredible work. And if you hear from them and their stories, hopefully it inspires people to get us to this net zero future that we want. So it's a pleasure to be here Jason.
Jason Jacobs: It's funny you say that because a lot of people don't wanna focus on climate, even though they're worried about it because they feel like it would be depressing or is a source of great anxiety. But actually I find, and I don't know if you feel the same. It sounds like it, but that the closer I get to it, the more optimistic I become, not because the magnitude of the problem or the stakes aren't as high as people say, and maybe they're even higher, but more like, man, we know so much about what to do. And there's so many people working hard behind the scenes, each area, and then those areas can feed off each other and virtuous cycle-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Totally.
Jason Jacobs: ... the same way people talk about the negative ones.
Ryan Panchadsaram: Someone once told me that climate and the climate crisis is a ratings killer. You wanna put a show about the climate crisis no one's gonna tune in, but what's exciting are the solutions, the people, the path. And so I think the neat part about a lot of the work that, that the folks who come on this show do is it's about paving that future. That's why people tune in. They tune into the hope 'cause we need hope, but we also need action to.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, I just, I wouldn't do good on a show about dwelling and spreadsheets and math and how-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Doom.
Jason Jacobs: ... big it's gonna get. It's like, look-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Doom.
Jason Jacobs: ... it's important to understand that stuff, but it's like, "Okay, I'm sold. What do we do about it?" And that's really where we live. But in anyway, where do you live? And I asked you before we started recording Ryan, but I wasn't even quite sure given how many hats you wear, how to introduce you. So can you just maybe-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: ... take a couple minutes and frame for us where you said and what you think about everyday?
Ryan Panchadsaram: Of course, so my name is Ryan Panchadsaram, I'm an advisor at Kleiner Perkins to the chairman as well as coauthor of Speed & Scale. And I spent the past five years working with John and our mission is to invest in disruptive companies. And that goes beyond just the technology ones. It really is ones in climate tech, healthcare, and prior to working at Kleiner, the quick brief background there as I was at the White House for about three and a half years, I was the Deputy Chief Technology Officer trying to ensure that our federal government used technology incredibly well.
If your listeners remember back in 2013 healthcare.gov, I was part of the team that helped turn that around and then create an institution called the United States Digital Service to recruit great talented people from across the country to serve in government. So I really believe in this bringing of incredible people around the table from multiple places to solve problems. Prior to DC and being in a now world, I was a health tech entrepreneur was then at Microsoft before that and Salesforce B before that. I kind of have this belief that the way the world works, the plumbing, the true plumbing can be better.
And whether that's when I worked on the office for Mac suite, when I was at Microsoft to the work we're doing now, like energy and how we live our lives as plumbing and how can we convert that into being cleaner, greener and, and better. And so I am physically though in San Francisco, I'm in the area called the Dogpatch, which I love. I like to think that, you know, when anybody comes to San Francisco, I wanna take them through here 'cause it's an incredible part of town that's changing really fast, but the people are so nice. It's like a little village. Um, so that's Ryan, Jason.
Jason Jacobs: And in terms of the intersection of that portfolio, and I don't mean investment portfolio, more like the portfolio of your time and climate change, what do you have going on at that intersection? I mean, I know about the book and-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Totally.
Jason Jacobs: ... it, it would be great to give listeners a quick debrief on that. And obviously given what Kleiner does for a living, um, just-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: ... startup investing involved. But how do you think about that problem and how do you think about the levers that you and John and, and-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Of course.
Jason Jacobs: ... [crosstalk 00:07:20] is focused on helping with?
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah, so I, I spend a good, perhaps significant amount of my time on you'd call it the b- broadly solutions to the climate crisis. And we try to pull on multiple levers. We try to prolong the for-profit lever, actually investing in companies. We pull on the nonprofit lever. How do you support nonprofit groups that are out there that are trying to advance de-carbonization efforts? And then we believe in advocacy as well to. Do you gotta change the policy and politics of things?
You were sharing that the first episode you did was in 2019. I think in 2019 for us was an important year as well, because we started to try to wrap ourselves, our heads around this problem, right? John's been working on trying to tackle the climate crisis for 15 years. For me, it's just been the past five and really it's been trying to keep up with him. And so in 2019 we, we had this moment to say, "Well, how can we take a step back?"
And if we were to take a step back on this crisis, what would it look like? And the question that we posed to each other at Christmas 2019, right? Pre COVID was, what would it look like if you applied OKRs to the climate crisis? What would it look like if you set objectives and key results? Like, that goal setting tool used by Google and others. And John wrote a book called Measure What Matters that I helped with that really unpacks his practice. Like, if you're going after an audacious large goal, using OKRs is a pretty neat way to do it.
And so what we did is we set out to try to answer that question. And so Christmas rolled around the start of 2020 happened and we just started having conversations where engineers and investors and whenever you're looking for a solution, you actually first go to talk to people and you actually go to learn. And so we started having these conversations in person, and then because of the pandemic, they switch virtual very quickly. And because of Zoom, we could click record on all these meetings.
By the time we got to conversation number 30, we realized that all the amazing gems that people were sharing in these interviews are what could inspire people. These OKRs are the numbers and maybe the framework of how to think about it, but the magic we're in these interviews. And so this project just to craft OKRs turned into one to say, "Well, what if we put together a book?" And so that's when Speed & Scale was born ad the idea for it, two years ago.
Jason Jacobs: So, my book is in transit. I have not read the book yet. I wish I had [laughs], but what is your hope for readers in terms of if there's one takeaway that they had coming out of reading the book or one thing inspired them to do, what would that be?
Ryan Panchadsaram: Oh my gosh, I can't wait for you to get your copy. Zip. One takeaway is that to tackle this crisis it'll take collective action. Not only the individual action. So individual actions are expected at this point. If you can afford it, you gotta switch to an electric vehicle. You gotta try to make your house more decarbonized, i.e. getting solar or getting rid of gas, but all of the individual actions that you and I can take, Jason, will only add up to so much. You and I don't control what flows into our grid individually. You and I don't control the subsidies that could go to electric vehicles to accelerate that transition.
And so one of the things we try to point out in the book is that if you can get three people together, five people together, 20 people together, you can create a movement around particular areas that go for the gigatons. And so what you and I can do if we lived in San Francisco would be to petition our government to put a proposition, to really pressure the politicians here to make this grid green and not in 2030 and beyond, but really push them to do it by 2025.
And by doing that, you actually remove so many more gigatons than the actions you're doing alone. Another example of this is we think about the transition to electrifying vehicles. You and I can make that switch, but for most folks, they're gonna keep their cars for another five, 10 years with a capital stock turnover these things is going to take a long time. And so that's where policy can come in, where policy can come in and say, "Hey, we're gonna incentivize people to switch now." "We're gonna incentivize people possibly getting rid of their fossil fuel vehicles and making that switch?" Or you know what? We can fund public transit that's electrified like electric buses." Or what if we introduce alternatives in cities that don't even require cars like protected bike lanes, right?"
Getting people out of a vehicle to begin with and actually just using their human power to move around the city. And so long answer to the very specific question is, what can people take away at that if we want truly go for the gigatons, it's gonna take us working together, and it's gonna take us working together to push on the particular points that true emissions come from.
Jason Jacobs: Now, I have a number of questions and topics would be fun to dig into there. But before we get too far down the path of where we sit now-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Jason Jacobs: ... and forwards, I'd love to take a step back and look backwards because John was quite active in Cleantech 1.0 and is increasingly getting active. Again, I hear a lot of debate about even how to frame the period that we went through. There's so many divergent opinions on, you know, because John says, well, a ton of money was spent in loss, but he also said in an interview that I watched that the billion and capital that, that Kleiner puts to work is worth three billion on paper today. So one, I'd like to understand what's the post-mortem for you and John, as you gear up to go forward-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Absolutely.
Jason Jacobs: ... on that era from a capital putting capital to work sample. But, and then I wanna ask the same question on back then what were the assumptions around the best ways to address it at the systems level and the role of innovation and how does that look the same or different as you venture down the path again today?
Ryan Panchadsaram: Totally, yeah.
Jason Jacobs: So those are two big questions that probably should have been separate and distinct, but there you go.
Ryan Panchadsaram: [laughs] Yeah, I know. Well, we'll, we'll take them as, as two parts. So let's go for the first one, which is, this has been the first time that Kleiner has shared its true returns. I think the takeaway very broadly from the public was that Cleantech 1.0, was a failure. And that's absolutely not true. The Kleiner funds that invested in green investments deployed about a billion dollars over that period of time. And if returned over three billion today. If you go and poke and kind of nudge some of the other investors in this space, they'll say the same thing as well too.
With that said, there were a lot of companies during the Cleantech 1.0 moment that didn't make it. And you actually really gotta unpack the why those companies that make it. And Kleiner Perkins invested in seven solar companies and six went under. They all were doing incredibly well until you had competition abroad, until the oil crisis, until there were a lot of factors that played, but particularly in solar and in batteries, if you wanna poke on that as well too, you had a country that said, "We're gonna make this an industrial priority."
And in the US we spend far too much time saying, "Hey, well, this one company got a loan. Well, this company does that. Hey, Kleiner is going in this space, but it doesn't look like it's going too well." And you had China say, "Well, no, we're gonna actually invest in this solar thing. And we're gonna fund and use this as a jobs program." And because of that, you fast forward to today and you have a few things to think you can thank them for the record low prices. You can thank them for the record low prices, both of solar and batteries, but just the sheer production of them that now we can take advantage of.
But I always have to think what could have happened if the US backed and supported the solar industry like China did. It would probably be a different place. If you look at the world's green billionaires, that list just came out. You've got Elon Musk, of course at the top, but the rest, the rest of the top 10 are from China, from solar and battery storage businesses, right? Those could have been hours in that first era, Jason, but we let that go. And so I think almost the charge and take away from that right now in 2021 and going into 2022 is, what clean tech industries does the United States wanna win at?
And the question goes just as true for any other country that picks up speed and scale. What do we wanna be great at? What do we wanna specialize at and what do we wanna export? When you look back though, if we wrote Speed & Scale three years ago, we wouldn't have this success story that we have today, right? Just in the past three years, you've got Enphase, Sunrun, Beyond Meat. You've got Tesla, of course, you've got quantum scape as well too. You've got these incredibly large public companies in the multi-billion dollar, as well as in Tesla's case, the trillion dollar range that have come from clean tech.
And so only now, only recently can we now point to the actual financial successes of it, but it took a lot of grit. It took a lot of persistence, the Kleiner team, the founders themselves behind each of these companies, Jason, that was a hard, hard, hard time when the world was saying, "Hey, clean tech is not working. Why is this space happening?" And you have these founders just tearing through finally making it public. And then now you fast forward to today, there's a true excitement. There's this clean tech 2.0 revolution that's happening right now because one, we have proof points of it working, but there's just a lot of scar tissue now of what people know they can get their hands into. What's a good space to get in trouble in. And if you're gonna get in trouble in a space, you know who to ask for help.
Jason Jacobs: So what I heard from you and, and tell me if I heard it incorrectly, but that largely the failures from Cleantech 1.0, that did occur. Although maybe in the aggregate, it wasn't nearly as much of a failure or even a failure at all as the conventional narrative. But that though the failures that did occur were largely because you had a country that decided it was gonna be a core strategic priority and therefore they were just playing a different game, almost like what Tiger Global is doing in venture today, right-
Ryan Panchadsaram: [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: ... like scheming in as a different sport where it's like, well, you're measuring against this and you need to report against this and achieve these things with those dollars while I'm playing a totally different game where I don't care if those dollars do that or not because long term, like this is just a stepping stone, a building block. And so I guess, is it largely th- that, or were there other factors, for example, and I don't wanna leave-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yes, yes.
Jason Jacobs: ... I've heard about equity getting over at skis and playing a role that should have largely been project enhance or, or-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Oh, yeah.
Jason Jacobs: ... investing, investing in areas that they didn't understand. It didn't have the domain expertise for it, but doing anyways because of the is okay with it.
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yes. Yeah. The story about China is to talk about a, a pattern of success, but you're right. By 2011, the capital got deployed in '07, '08, '09, nearly every startup did fail. And when you look at the why, if you are a biofuels company, well, you are betting on oil and gas going up, up and up. And all of a sudden when the fall of those oil and gas prices happened, you didn't have a business model to be able to go after. That's like one of the big takeaways from that time is if you're gonna play in a commodity market, selling energy, selling food in some cases, but really truly selling energy, you gotta compete on true cost.
But also what happened in 2008, you had our financial crisis, you had a credit crunch, you couldn't loan or take capital in the way that you used to, um, of course the China piece comes in, but there were technical challenges to Jason. You had investors that were going out, there going after fields that they didn't know enough about, but they thought there was some hope there. And those didn't pan out because even though some of those ideas came to fruition, there still wasn't enough capital to shift from R and D to scaled production.
To give to the listeners kinda a sense of scale here is like, when you think about, at that time, you barely had a couple of hundred million dollars going into, uh, when I say by at that time, 2011, 2012, 2013 kinda range going into Cleantech, climate tech technologies. And then when the Paris Agreement got signed, that number nicely went up to 2 billion, 3 billion. There was some excitement there. But this year alone, the amount of money that's gonna go into climate technologies, I think is on pace to being more than 30 billion.
And that change, that tide is happening, but we can't let the lessons go away in a bit of reflection and parts of this are in the book, but because we're here, we can talk about it a little bit longer. It's like, "Well, what did we learn from this first wave that we can ensure not to get wrong this time?" And I think the first piece to know is that you've gotta be ruthless in removing the key risks upfront. When any investment that you do that we do that anybody does, you have to first identify what are the key risks at this moment and how can this capital be used to remove it.
That lingering risk keeps going from around, around, around you likely are gonna set yourself up for an unfortunate surprise. The other realization from wave 1.O is that you're always raising money. The amount of money and capital it takes to make these businesses successful is far more than an enterprise startup, a consumer startup. And so how you raise, you've gotta be strategic. You've gotta syndicate, you've gotta find ways to find corporate partners. The third takeaway was that unit economics rule these commodity markets. So no matter how great your idea is, look at that curve and how it goes down and see where it goes, see what's technically possible.
But what that also means too, is don't just look at your equivalent product. Let's say you and I, Jason decide start a green hydrogen company and we're racing to get that price down. We're not just competing with other green hydrogen companies. We're competing look a little bit to the left and right. Oh my gosh, we're competing with the storage companies that are trying to do something similar. And you look to the other side, "Oh no, we're not just competing with the storage companies and the hydrogen companies. We're also competing with the other forms of energy that could be produced geothermal, solar, wind, et cetera. In this space, your competitors are everywhere and that cost is key. Two more that come to mind as well too are the importance of owning the customer relationship.
And we look back at a handful of the companies that succeeded or didn't succeed. The ones that didn't succeed tended to be a bit farther away from the customer. When you look at Matt Rogers and nest direct relationship with customer, Tesla, direct relationships, Sunrun direct relationship, and the world of end phase a direct relationship as well too, to the solar deployers. And so if you truly own the relationship, you're likely in control of your destiny. The other thing though, I know it keeps saying unit economics and, and the commodity markets piece, but there are some places buyers may pay more. And that's in the areas where performance comes to play.
People were willing to pay a bit more for an electric car. People were willing to pay a bit more for plant-based meats, but in those cases, those products truly perform better. People weren't doing it as a, as a sacrifice. The Tesla was pretty awesome and Beyond Meat tasted pretty darn good. And so if you are playing in the more consumer realm, just know that you have to win on performance. You have to be close to cost, or guess what? People aren't gonna pick this product, you know, our products. And you know, this, this intent of getting to net zero will be slowed down.
Jason Jacobs: Now from you, as I'm listening here is a pretty pragmatic view where you're not saying that entrepreneurship is the only answer, and you're not saying government is the only answer you're saying that we need both. And I've heard views from people that remain nameless on one side that say, "Give me a dozen entrepreneurs and I'll solve climate change." And, and on the other side, people that say fricking Silicon valley all the airtime and do none of the health, like we already know it and it's all about government and policy and a Manhattan project. And so I guess I wanna double-click on that because I , you hear that my companies need to stand on their own two feet and they're gonna be strong and I'm not gonna rely on future policy, but then you also hear, but we'll need the policy and inevitably it's gotta come and therefore you can kinda get out ahead of it in certain cases where it makes sense, where does the truth lie or, or what's the Ryan view or the John view or the Kleiner view or whatever you wanna give me?agree with your pragmatic perspective. But what I wanna talk about is from an investment standpoint
Ryan Panchadsaram: I'll give you the Speed & Scale view, which is the John, Ryan, but also the near a hundred people that we spend time with to try to craft these OKR. And so the book is made into two parts. The first part are the solutions and there are six objectives there. These are the ones that you and I can recite off the top of our head to get to net zero. We've gotta electrify transportation, we've gotta decarbonize the grid, fix our food systems, protect nature, i.e., stop deforestation, clean up industry steel and the hard things. And then we've gotta remove what's left over.
So those are the solutions. If we let nature takes its course, right, or just time take its course, it might take us to 2100 to get there. So how do you make it happen faster? That's the second part of the book. And the second part of the book talks about the four accelerants that we have. We purposefully put them on the same pedestal because each of these accelerants are the things that you and I, and everyone listening, we can shape. You've got the ability to shape politics and policy, right? We've gotta when the policy and politics, we need countries to set bold commitments and follow through. So that's one lever.
The next lever is turning movements into action. That is everything from getting people out to vote, getting people to push their employers, to make these net zero commitments, it's to change what's happening in the boardrooms, right? Truly movements becoming action. The third lever is innovation. The world that we hail from, and the true measure of success for innovation is, can you drive down the green premium, the cost of these green technologies? That's the true north star there. And then the fourth lever accelerant is investment. We've got to invest more in R and D. We've got to invest more in venture and deployment and philanthropy.
And so at any time you feel like one lever is not living up to its potential. You've gotta pull on the other three. And so Jason, we're rolling off the end of cup right now. And you have some words of promise and hope from it. Like, it's the first time that coal is truly being talked about in a way that it's gonna end. You've got some 2030 targets for methane and forests, but on the flip side, you've got goals that this group is setting that are in 2070, in '60 some countries putting milestones so far out, that you don't even think any action is truly gonna happen in the next 10 years.
And so if you're feeling like the policy and politics is failing you, in this case at corp, well, we've got to pull on the other three. We've gotta get people out to vote, to change leaders, turning movements into action. We've gotta get companies to say, "Hey, you know what? That Paris thing, 2050 is cute. Let's do it in 2040. Let's actually step up our ambition." You and I, and the crew. That's our investors that listen to this. We've gotta invest in companies that can drive down the premium 'cause there's no way this transition happens if the cleaner and greener thing is more expensive. And so if there's a north star for all of our investment activity, it's to drive down that premium.
And for listeners, the green premium is the added cost of the cleaner and greener thing. It's a term that Bill Gates really coined and writes so beautifully about in his book. And the thing is when the green premium drives down to zero and flips, you get a green discount. And when a green discount happens, you can't stop the market's Jason, like they're just gonna flow. And then of course, invest, invest, invest. If you look out there and seeing oil being used, you look out there and see cars physically being driven around, the only way for people to turn those over is if money is flowing. So those are the four things we can pull on. In the book we've got these 10 objectives that are paired with key results as well too. And so there's measurable things in the Speed & Scale action plan that show up for a successful at these are not.
Jason Jacobs: Now, th- this is more of a logistics question, but in terms of climate investment, what is the overlap between the climate investing that you and John do-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Jason Jacobs: ... and the Kleiner funds and Kleiner LPs versus personal or other sources?
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah, the investing that John does, and we do Kleiner invests in clean green tech companies still you've got watershed that we're proud investors of. John is an LP and a handful of clean tech funds from the breakthrough energy ventures, G2VP, earth shot. And then also there's just a healthy amount of investment coming directly from the family office into companies directly. And so for us right now, it's really about instigating. It's about supporting teams that are approaching this crisis with an engineer's hat on their head, as well as a business plan in hand, as well as all the scar tissue from the past. And so we are active investors, Jason, through every lever, financial lever that we have, and we're proud of each of the teams that are going after it 'cause each team is different and they bring a different set of skills to the table in investing in these different kinds of clean tech companies.
Jason Jacobs: And when a climate opportunity lands on your desk, how do you assess whether it's a better fit for Kleiner or for the personal investing? And what I'm really getting at is there's a lot of words that get thrown around about double bottom line or concessionary or additionality or timeframes or risk or capital intensity or whatever.
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: And so is the most impactful stuff, inevitably gonna be the best financial investment over enough time period, or is there some stuff that can be really impactful that just doesn't belong in an ambitious venture style portfolio?
Ryan Panchadsaram: It's a great question. Every company that John and I spend time with, we always go to Kleiner first, that's the hat we wear. It's also our team, it's our home base, but there are some companies that don't fall into scope. You've got a lot of hard tech, clean tech companies that are a better fit for the breakthrough energy ventures crew, or you've got companies that are in that vein that are a bit farther along that fit better for the G2 VP investors. And then there are some that just captivate us so much that we feel like we wanna support from the family office.
I would say that that's kind of on the surface a pattern, but really I think what we're gonna see now, though, this is maybe a prediction for the future a little bit is I think you're gonna see more investors wanting to jump in to the clean tech space and to make bets in companies that match their expertise. Like, if you are a firm that's really good at software and that world, you will see a clean tech climate tech venture that's more software oriented and you'll run behind it.
I think you're gonna see more hard tech venture funds go, "Hey, this new type of battery or this new type of energy generation isn't so far off from my other portfolio. Maybe I wanna jump in here," or, "Hey, these carbon removal technologies don't look too different from the stuff that we fund today." And so I think what you're gonna see in the next two years, really in, in the next year coming up is this expansion that now just like you have many venture funds have a enterprise portfolio, a consumer portfolio and a healthcare one, I, I think you're gonna see a clean tech one, a climate tech one be there as well too, because John always says that this is, this opportunity around clean tech is underhyped.
He was famously back in the 90s, said that the internet was underhyped. And he's like, "Ryan, that's true today too, for the climate tech revolution." Because when you look out there and the sheer amount of turnover that has to happen, the market sizes are so big. We barely, what 4% of cars are electric? That means 96% of cars not only need to be new cars, but new batteries. When you look at our grids, they're still incredibly behind on zero emission technologies. That's an opportunity as well too. And so the tam is sitting in front of us. This economic opportunity is sitting in front of folks and I think smart investors, smart venture capitalists are gonna say, "Well, hey, how do I take my skills and take and get a portion of that?" And so you're gonna see more capital flowing here.
Jason Jacobs: One question I have is for a bunch of Silicon valley, repeat founders or investors, and things like that, they might look at something like Web 3, for example, or some of these other markets that could materialize. If you're just optimizing for the near term say over the course of the next several years or, or even one fund life cycle, let's say it might be easier paths to faster capital appreciation. And so you might sit and say, "Well, if I'm gonna have the biggest impact in my better devoting myself here and building a bigger war chest that I can then plow back over there with more of a philanthropic bent," or I can try to make a living over in this more impactful thing from the, from the get-go. How do you think about that calculus and what advice would you have for people that are wrestling with that conundrum? And do you agree that that's a conundrum?
Ryan Panchadsaram: I think there's a misconception around if you are a climate tech investor that you're doing it only because of the impact or that you have to do it because it's impactful and the returns are gonna be sacrificed. If you look at any of the publicly traded companies that have been in this space that are sh- shining, right? The Teslas, the Beyond Meats, the end phases of the world, Nest and Sunrun when S was acquired. Those are venture returns on a series A that are multiple thousand X. And so the real, maybe secret here is how do you find the climate tech companies that are really gonna be making a difference?
And if you do, you are not only gonna have incredible returns. Those companies will be making an impact too, because guess what? If your company is successful in this space, you are taking away emissions. And so that's one way to look at it. Your question was kind of specifically also around Web 3 and this revolution that's happening on the internet.
Jason Jacobs: Or just other areas where there's seemingly quicker pastor riches.
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah.
Ryan Panchadsaram: I think then if the goal you're optimizing for is riches will run after those paths. But I think what you're going to realize is you're missing out on the incredible riches that are gonna happen from seeding the companies that need to exist 10 years from now, the next Tesla's, the next Beyond Meats, the next end phases and the others. And so sure go after that Web 3 world, and we support you because there's likely innovations that are gonna happen there, that are gonna help us on this side, but for those that are looking for that beautiful intersection between incredibly huge market and incredible impact to humanity and the planet, this is the place to play.
Jason Jacobs: When it comes to diligence, when you mentioned software, for example, so you could bring on someone who has a lot of experience with enterprise SaaS or you could bring on someone that has a lot of experience with ad tech or someone that has a lot of experience in ag or in mobility, but climate, climate is not a sector in, in that way because climate touches all of those sectors and many other, other sectors. So if you are framing yourselves as a climate fund, let's say, how do you staff up and be in a position where you feed rounds and not be a reckless fiduciary?
Ryan Panchadsaram: The neat thing here is what you're seeing is you're seeing funds assemble really diverse characters, right? Not just financial investors, you're seeing them assemble scientists and engineers and former plant managers and folks that have had, you know, you know, rolled, rolled up their sleeves before and, and try to tackle this. And so I think for a fund to be successful in this space, you've gotta have the experience on the ground. In the world of consumer tech and enterprise tech, a lot of investors have that experience because they've worked in those companies, there are from Silicon Valley and they have, but in the climate tech space, you're gonna want to assemble a team that is either been a founder or been a, you know, a key employee in one of these kinds of companies.
And you're also gonna want to have a team that knows how to fund a business, raise capital for it, because I think one thing here is for any of us investing in clean tech, this isn't a passive exercise. We're all gonna have to roll up our sleeves and help our companies as well, too. So, that's something to keep in mind.
Jason Jacobs: So if one were, and this is a feel like I'm getting some, I would pay money on pain experts site to ask you this question, selfishly. But if someone were to say, look at and Andreessen Horowitz, who's got, I don't know, what do they have a couple 100 employees or, or something now. And that's in their fund and in... A lot of them are not investors picking companies, but they're operating resources that they can put to work on behalf of the portfolio. Post-investment if someone were to do that for a climate fund, what type of expertise, if you were doing that, what type of expertise would you want to put in a house?
Ryan Panchadsaram: Oh my gosh. Yeah. So if you could, I mean, in some ways I'll talk about how the team of breakthrough has assembled their team, right? They've got amazing business operations, scaling side crafted by Carmichael Roberts and the team there. And then they also have it paired up with an amazing science, true science side with Eric Toon and Dave Daniels and that crew there, and this like juxtaposition of the two is really exciting. You've got strong business operations, strong science. And so if anybody wants to kind of take that playbook and replay it in house, just think of each of the levers you could pull to make your company successful. You of course need the business side.
You need the science side, but I would also explore thinking about what policy levers you can pull as an investor to help your companies get a chance. And then of course the investment side to it. And I realized investors knowing the investment side seems repetitive, but you can't take for granted the relationships that an investor can have to larger checks, the investor that has formed relationships with the corporate investors that care about this problem or the larger investors, the sovereign wealth funds that are putting money behind this space. So, if you have a great investment fund, you know, you're going to have a bit of the four. Innovators in house, are you the scientist? Builders of the companies? The more investment focused folks? And then a policy person or a team that can help guide.
Jason Jacobs: Now, one debate I've heard is when it comes to breakthrough technology, when people from the broader climate world that aren't sort of people hear innovation. You and I, I think means something different than what they hear, because when we say innovation and dumb, if you think definitely, but I assume you're talking about just small high-growth companies, some breakthroughs, some less hard science, a wide range, but just a for-profit small high growth growing something from small to hopefully really big some data pick off one meaningful problem with unique differentiated solution. But what they hear is they hear breakthrough like new, novel, in the lab, right? And they're like, "We don't have time. And it's a distraction because we just need to deploy what we've got."
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yes.
Jason Jacobs: Wha- What would you say back when you get that objection? Which I'm sure you get a lot.
Ryan Panchadsaram: You'll hear this saying that we have all the technology we need. We don't need to invent anything new. Why are we obsessing with technology? And the truth is we have maybe 70% of what we need to get to net zero with solar and wind prices at record lows, lithium ion batteries at the record lows, both are just causing deployment at a scale we haven't seen before, but the reality is still, you can't flip on the sun or wind at a flip of a switch. And so you can't yet replace the gas peaker with that. And so you need to develop storage technologies. You need to develop possibly advanced, safer nuclear to fill in those gaps.
And so what we like to say, what I like to say is we need both the now and the new, and we need to scale up the now, which is gonna still be incredibly hard, but we also need to invent the new because there are harder things we haven't solved yet. Like, how do we completely decarbonize concrete and cement? How do we completely decarbonize steel? We still need pathways to that. When I think of innovation in this space, and I'm gonna point to the key results that are crafted for chapter nine, which is the innovation chapter in the book.
There's a KR around batteries. Innovative companies around batteries that can help us reach the 10,000 gigawatt hours of scale that we're going to need every year. And to do it less than 80 bucks, a kilowatt hour, both of those targets were way off. We're a bit closer on the kilowatt hour, dollar, dollar one, but definitely not at the pace of building. You're gonna have to KR-92 is on electricity. If you're an innovative company, you may look out there and say, "Hey, I have a pretty neat way of generating electricity. It's a safer form of nuclear or a different form of geothermal."
We've got a KR on green hydrogen. If all the promises to green hydrogen are to come to fruition, the cost of that has to go down, down, down. We have a KR around carbon removal. We're going to need anywhere on the order of five to 10 billion, tons of carbon removal by 2050. This year alone, I think only 4,000 tons have gone into the earth. And so to go from 4,000 to 5 billion, that's gonna require innovation and some incredible companies. And then of course, carbon neutral fuels, Jason. We still see a world that isn't going to stop flying.
And so if we truly want to get to net zero, we've got to make the acceleration to sustainable air fuel and then really invent and then scale up carbon neutral fuels. So, in the realm of innovation, those are sort of the five areas that just stand out to both John and I, and they are our KRS and the Speed & Scale plan. And for any of them to be successful, there are dollar targets for each.
Jason Jacobs: I have maybe just a punch list of topics that we haven't happened to meander around to yet-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: But I think to get your take on a while back, if that's okay?
Ryan Panchadsaram: Absolutely.
Jason Jacobs: So one, you touch on it with the KR on carbon removal, but take direct air capture just as an example of something that relies on future policy, at least in its current form-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Of course.
Jason Jacobs: ... maybe carbon to value and converting carbon into valuable products you can sell and stuff like that. There can be a market other than the government, but for right now, it sure seems like the government is the best. Does that have any business getting funded by, uh, by the venture capital model, as an example?
Ryan Panchadsaram: For carbon removal, it does, because of twofold. You have companies that are stepping up ahead of countries. The carbon removal markets that have been created by Microsoft and Stripe and Shopify have really instigated and gotten the flywheel going. And hopefully from postcorp, you're gonna see more companies make that earlier than 2050 commitment. And then they're gonna make high quality carbon removal purchases, but you are also right in the longer arc. To get to the 5 billion tons that you're gonna need, you're gonna have to have some sort of pollution tax, i.e., a carbon tax that funds the removal.
And so if you're a polluting industry in the United States, and you're not able to switch to cleaner technology while you get hit with a fee that fee you pay for, and it goes to a carbon removal entity. And I think the way carbon removal happens, the approaches you've got everything from direct capture, from the climb works, to the carbon engineerings. You've got the bio oil movement, like the charms and the others do. Each of these are... Or heirloom in the merit. Like, there's just so many cool companies that are popping to mind. There's gonna be an opportunity for all of them to scale up and take a piece of the market.
Jason Jacobs: Another one is just around sacrifice. You mentioned before the green premium for performance, let's say, but given what, some of the models and what a lot of experts seem to say about how bad things are gonna get, how do you navigate, for example, energy poverty, and the billion plus people that don't have access to basic electricity and, and the people like the de-growth or the people that say like, "We need to slow down and get back to yesteryear when we didn't have, like, when we read by candle light or something." How do you navigate? Or how should we navigate and think about those trade-offs?
Ryan Panchadsaram: In the book, we talk about this very carefully because there's a few important points to make. The first is as the historic alpha emitter, the United States, Jason, we've got to run first. We've got to be the first to decarbonize. We've got to be able to be the ones that show the world that it's possible. Not only 'cause it's the right thing to do. It's also a selfish reason to do it too. If we do that, we'd likely will be the creators of the companies that are championing this revolution. Countries like Europe and China need to be there right behind us, 'cause they are also the alpha emitters. You have a category of countries that aren't as energy rich as the United States. There's a lot of countries that fit in that bucket.
And the message to them is to reach energy security. They should be able to deploy the technologies that they have in front of them. And in most cases, that technology choice might be gas, but we put the humongous reminder out there is that investment in a gas plant. Definitely not coal. Coal has to end. It as economically not financially, not a smart business decision, nor is it good for the planet, but you're gonna see countries deploy gas, but our reminder is solar and wind costs are dropping so fast.
Don't build your grids like the United States did leapfrog us, put solar in the ground, put wind in the ground, do things more decentralized, get the storage that you need. And of course you likely are going to have, to have one or two gas peakers, but don't put all your chips in the direction of the fossil fuel past. Sacrifice was a word you used. And I think that the movement around that needs to be proud and loud because that is one way to tackle this, but it's not the way that's gonna get us to zero.
When you look at this problem, we actually have to find ways to cut switching to the alternatives. I think when you look at COVID and look at how countries reacted to it, you couldn't find sacrifice in there from one group of the United States. And that was really sad to see, because in this crisis, that's the climate crisis. You hope that we can sacrifice, but you see examples around us where that's not possible. And so like I kinda said earlier, well, when one thing fails, pull on another lever, it's where the costs of the cleaner greener thing have to drop.
And so you and I, and our entire community need to run and deploy and invest and drive down these costs because that's the only way where sacrifice isn't the choice. It's actually the alternative is. So instead of buying that fossil fuel vehicle, you're buying the EV, that's affordable. The energy that comes into your house is from solar wind, or nuclear, or something cleaner. And so if I'm putting my chips behind anything, it really is around driving down this cost because that 59 billion tons of emissions are someone else's business model and they're not stopping. And so the only way to take those emissions away from them is to create competitive businesses and technologies that are better than the fossil fuel alternative. And so that's kind of what's on my mind.
Jason Jacobs: Well, one critic I hear about, about offsets is that there a head fake that distracts from the hard work that we need to do for the systems level change and doing the real deep decarbonization, I guess, I would ask you the same question about personal behavior change. I mean, you've kind of danced around it. You've said a few times that you should do that. And, but I would ask you, is it an ad or is that just a head fake where really we should just focus on systems change and not have to seeding ourselves into thinking because we eat three less hamburgers a month or something that, you know, apart?
Ryan Panchadsaram: If leaning on carbon removal is your first choice as a company or an individual, you're approaching it wrong. You actually gotta first see the best way to net zero is first you've gotta cut and you do that by switching to the alternatives, cleaner cars, cleaner house, cleaner all those things. You then get there by being more efficient. We've gotta be better stewards and users of the energy that we have, and then you can remove. And then when you remove most offsets being sold today are a lovely exercise in greenwashing. "Hey, Jason, you don't emit. So then I can." That's not a real offset. We talk about what a true offset, a good definition is and what it is, is true carbon removal that comes from a nature-based source or an engineered source.
And for each of them, you have to be able to quantify the durability. How long will that removal last for? Was it truly additional or was that activity gonna happen, anyway? These are the set of questions you have to ask. And so when a company or when an individual buys an offset, if it's in category, it should count, but also know that it on the nature based side, that durability number, in the Mike Fay folks have read, there's a great white paper by Microsoft that really breaks down where they've purchased their offsets and the durability of each you'll see the years of 40 years or 60 or 20 for some of their nature based ones.
And that's being factually honest. You can buy that removable, but guess what? In 20 or 40 years, it may go away whereas the engineered ones, which costs 10 to 20X more have the 10,000 year plus because they're capturing CO2 and sticking it back down in the earth. So, we've gotta not allow the greenwashing exercise of really poor offsets. We've gotta ensure that they're the high, true, good quality nature-based or engineered ones. And removal has to be the crutch of last resort. You first gotta prioritize, cutting, being more efficient, and then you can lean on this last one.
Jason Jacobs: I know we're about up on time. I have a couple other quick ones on the punch list and [crosstalk 00:49:26]-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah, please.
Jason Jacobs: ... close out, but one is just the elephant in the room is, I guess, figuratively and literally is, or the oil and gas companies. And that's why I wanna ask you, are they essential collaborator in this transition or are they a foe? And also what is the role of fossil fuels in our future? And what are the role of the fossil fuel companies? Are the big energy providers of today what percentage of them will be the big energy providers of tomorrow and beyond?
Ryan Panchadsaram: The fossil fuel giants are the biggest foes in this transition. For them, they've got a business model that makes a lot of money on every emission that happens. In the book we share a story of Ørsted, a Danish fossil fuel oil and gas giant. And when put under cost pressure, by the way, they were a gas exporter. And because the United States, we got really lucky with fracking, gas prices got really low. And so for Ørsted, they couldn't sell their natural gas, but they looked and saw we're really good at offshore rigs. Let's try this wind thing. And within four years Ørsted dropped the cost of wind deployments by 60%. They are now a $50 billion market cap company. I think they have almost over a third of the market.
And that's an example of a fossil fuel giant saying, "I'm under pressure. Where can I innovate? I'm in the business of providing energy. Let me go do that in this new way." And they did. When you look at the fossil fuel giants like Shell and Exxon and others, they had an opportunity seven issue years ago, Jason, when they were sitting on some of the most record profits that they'd ever experienced. And instead of investing into the future, they decided not to. And now that seven years goes by, markets play their role, I use solar and wind cost go down, there under competitive pressures in ways where they're struggling to invest into invest in the cleaner and greener thing.
And so if someone that's listening to this is from the oil and gas industry, you have to find a way to transition now, right? You have to look at your customers. There is an interview on the Ted stage with the Shell CEO. And he said, "I can only be responsible for my scope one and two emissions, what I can do, but not scope three, what my customers do." Yet, just 30 seconds before he was touting, "We're building hydrogen factories for our maritime customers and so forth." And he kept using the word customer. And if you're an oil gas company, you are responsible for the energy use of your customer and you're responsible for it because that's your market.
And so if you look at the 10 years ahead and say, "How do we still own our customer?" It isn't to keep them addicted to gas and oil, it's to help them transition, it's to get into batteries, it's to get into wind, it's to get into the clean energy producers of the future, because if they don't Jason, right now, their economics are gonna get continually squeezed and squeezed, and they will just go out of business. I think you and I both come from the tech sector before coming into climate tech.
And we were put through transitions every five to 10 years. And so for technology companies, you're very aware of a transition that happens and how you have to jump and make that leap. Apple, Microsoft, Google, like these are large companies that have jumped through these transitions. Oil companies and energy companies don't make transitions over the five to 10 year period. They're used to the 40, 60, 70 year kind of cycle. And so right now they need to think of themselves being disrupted just like a tech company. And if they want to see themselves still publicly listed or listed in the marketplace in five to 10 years from now or 20 years from now, they've gotta be a head on this transition or they're gonna be left behind.
Jason Jacobs: So, what does that mean practically if I've got, so one of the climate funds that you mentioned that John's an LP in for example, or an entrepreneur who's driven by climate and building a company that's trying to tackle decarbonisation as a core mission. If oil and gas shows up and wants to put money in and partner or sign on as a customer or all the above, what should they say?
Ryan Panchadsaram: You should approach the capital cautiously. You need partners around you that are gonna support you and ask you to go faster, not slower. And so be really conscious about the dollars that flow in, where they come from, be conscious about the contracts you sign if you're gonna do a partnership or agreement, because you should be a little bit cynical about it. For them investing in you is putting them out of business. It's as clear as that. And so explore the capital. Don't let them waste your time. If you are gonna get an agreement with them, truly make sure that you are signing it in ways that put you in control. They keep you running as fast as you can, because you can't let that relationship with them being an anchor, not like an anchor in a good way, like the anchor that's sending you overboard.
Jason Jacobs: So my last question is decarbonization and addressing the climate crisis, obviously super important and social justice, also super important economic inequality, gender inequality, and other minorities and racism and discrimination, et cetera, are these separate and distinct or are they intertwined? And if they're intertwined, how are they intertwined? And how do you and John and, and the different entities that you touch think about that?
Ryan Panchadsaram: They're intertwined. This economic transitions that's happening cannot leave people behind what we always kind of kept going back to the KRS. And by the way, anyone can get the Speed & Scale action plan at speedandscale.com and look at all 55 key results. And what you'll see is in the term movements into action chapter, the objective. We've got three KRS on equity, education equity, health equity, and economic equity. Remember, the accelerants that are the second part of the book, or how do we just get his transition faster? And so on education equity, if we achieve universal primary and secondary education for boys and girls, we know that's gonna accelerate this transition.
We know that by empowering women, this transition, i.e. the decarbonization of the world goes faster. On the health equity KR, it's eliminating the gaps among racial and social economic groups in greenhouse gas related mortality rates. You do that just focuses at a healthcare problem of reducing those inequities and unfortunate, just disparities and death counts. You tackle this problem. You look at economic equity too, this transition needs to create 65 million new jobs, and it needs to outpace the loss of fossil fuel ones. You do that, this transition happens faster.
And so because of how our lives are so close to the way we power it, the way we feed and the way we move equity, Jason, is a core, core part of it because this transition can happen in an inequitable way, in an unfair way. And it's up to us as this generation to not let that happen. Folks like you and myself and others, like we can't let this transition be an inequitable one.
Jason Jacobs: And two closing questions. One is just for anyone listening-
Ryan Panchadsaram: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: ... that's inspired by your work other than going and reading the book and following the action plan. What else can they do? Where do you need help? And who, if anyone do you wanna hear from?
Ryan Panchadsaram: We wanna hear what your OKRs are. And honestly, look at the OKR is that our from Speed & Scale and tell us which ones you're working on, and tell us which ones you're trying to tackle in 2022. We have this belief that if all of us set aggressive, audacious goals on this fight together and share them with each other and set key results that say, "If we're on track, we're actually gonna get there faster." And we're going to find ourselves stretching even farther in a good way. And so for anybody, ryan@wherejohnatspeedandscale.com, tell us what you're working on. And I think what you'll find is you'll actually be circling a bunch of the KRS that you see, 'cause you're like, "I'm working on these accelerants and these solutions." And so you can find us both at ryan@andjohnatspeedandscale.com.
Jason Jacobs: Great. And last question is it's just, if you could wave your magic wand and change one thing, that's outside of the scope of your control, that would most accelerate your efforts and the efforts that you're evangelizing, what would you change and how would you change it?
Ryan Panchadsaram: Ooh, what would I change? Um, can I pick two things?
Jason Jacobs: Yeah. Go for it.
Ryan Panchadsaram: Okay. You're like Jason. No.
Jason Jacobs: Even if you say that question almost every time, it, it seems to throw guests off guard.
Ryan Panchadsaram: The magic wand one is actually the hardest policy that I'm least optimistic that will pass. It's the magic wand to actually put a price on carbon pollution. I was really in the optimistic camp around it until I saw that Exxon video leak about that policy, their lobbyists go, "Yeah, we love the carbon tax. You know why we get to save our fans of it? And we know it's never gonna pass." And you're like, "Oh, shoot, that guy's right. It's such a beautiful, bold idea, but politically impossible." And so magic wand, I would wave that. But the learning from that lesson of that Exxon leak is that the right way to put a pollution carbon tax is actually sector-based, industry-based 'cause different sectors can kind of tolerate the added cost there.
And then the other one, I know this is the magic wand one that I think would be near impossible to do, but it's one of those simple solutions that truly going for the gigatons. We look at where you can see in the plan where they all come from is, in the United States, if I can wave a magic wand, I would create a network of protected bike lanes in every city that is safe enough for a twelve-year-old to ride by themselves, a network that connects you everywhere where you need to go that a 12 year old can ride by themselves. There's this sort of feeling right now where it's like, "Well, no one wants to ride their bike. And it's like, "Well, we need more bikers."
And you're like, "Bikers, like, yo, like I don't want to die today." Like, sharing a bike with a road, car on the road and with COVID you saw all these cities taking back their streets, Jason, then you look at the research behind it. And you, you saw these droves of kids, riding, women riding, young adults riding. And when asked, why are you doing it now? They're like, "It's safer."And so rather than wait 14 years for the EV transition to happen, or 10 years, just this year wave a magic wand. And I guarantee the quality of life in our cities would just go up in a heartbeat and the emissions would be cut by like some 40% in some cities. So, those are my two ones, carbon tax and protected bike lanes.
Jason Jacobs: Amazing. Well, I can't wait to read Speed & Scale when it shows up and what an awesome discussion I could have gone on two hours more. So Ryan, thank you so much for making the time and keep up the awesome work.
Ryan Panchadsaram: Thank you, Jason. We must move at speed with scale.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is .co not .com. Someday we'll get the .com but right now .co. You can also find me on Twitter @jjacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers made me say that. Thank you.
