Gigaton Press. Getting the nuance right.
The press on Gigaton Throwdown has been mostly positive and mostly
accurate. But there seems to be a bit of confusion, including in the FT,
that we wanted to clear up before any inaccuracies got repeated.
The FT recently wrote:
A bigger cloud still hangs over the industry, says Sunil Paul, a
venture capital investor who has led lobbying in Washington.Far larger amounts of capital – he estimates $8,000bn over the next
decade – need to be sunk in the industry to make it truly competitive
with traditional sources of energy, which have a huge advantage thanks
to past infrastructure investments.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/28586e22-8e7b-11de-87d0-00144feabdc0.html
Its important to be clear what we found through our study: A massive
scale up for clean energy and efficiency is possible to achieve at
prices that are cost competitive with fossil-fuel technology. This
scale up could displace current fossil-fuel energy production
infrastructure to the tune of about $8 trillion over ten years out of
the expected $13 trillion expected to be invested in all energy
infrastructure.
For examples of press that got it right see these three:
Currently more than $13 trillion in private capital is prepared to
invest in the traditional base of energy technologies over the next
decade. Redirecting that capital to clean energy is an $8 trillion
opportunity that will depend in large part on US energy and climate
policy.
San Francisco Business Journal:
Energy demand will cost $13 trillion over the next decade and most of
that will be paid for by the private sector. Annual private investment
will have to more than triple over the next ten years to $500 to $800
billion to satisfy 60 percent or $8 trillion of that demand with
alternative energy. And that’s where the government comes in.
“Annual private investment must grow by more than three times in the
next 10 years to scale up renewable energy technologies to meet
climate stabilization goals. This level of growth is feasible, but
policy action is needed immediately to support it.”
The necessary cumulative investment over a decade would be $8.4
trillion, the study said, compared to currently projected global
expenditures of nearly $3.7 trillion.