Author Talks: Can OKRs solve our planet’s climate crisis?

This editionThis is Author Talks, McKinsey Global Publishing’s Raju Narisetti chats with John Doerr, investor and the chairman of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins. His new book is available here Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now (Penguin Random House, November 2021), Doerr offers an actionable plan to conquer humanity’s greatest challenge: climate change. This edited version of their conversation includes quotations from Doerr’s book by policy makers, scientists, entrepreneurs, activists, and others (in blue).

What gives you hope for this issue?

There’s no guarantee we’re going to cut our carbon emissions in time. We’ve got a very, very long way to go, and we’re not moving nearly fast enough. There are some things that give me hope compared to 12 or 14 years ago. First of all, there’s tens of millions of climate activists, who are now getting mobilized, and I’m truly inspired by the international school strikes. Greta Thunberg, one student, was in 2018 She mobilized four million people worldwide in September 2019.

The commitments made by Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 global corporations, such as Apple and Walmart to reduce or eliminate their emissions by 2030 is another reason to be optimistic. Third, there’s the potential for really radical innovation to make clean energy more affordable. It is the cost that matters here. Whether it’s better batteries, green hydrogen, or low-carbon cement, we have an enormous amount of work to do in innovation. Finally, there’s awe-inspiring pressure from employees, shareholders, and investors: $29 trillion of investor capital is now committed to push corporations for sustainability. These are all encouraging signs for me.

What surprised and astonished you most about this book?

Here are a few. I knew this was a complicated topic, but I didn’t grasp the enormity of the challenge when I began the book. First of all, let’s talk about speed. According to the United Nations, at the world’s current rate of carbon emissions, we’re going to cross the red line into irreversible climate damage in less than seven years. The global carbon budget that can be extended or emitted is 400 gigatons, so it is a race against the clock. Then there’s the scale of the problem. To reach carbon net zero, which is the only way to control global warming, we can’t just decarbonize the grid or electrify transportation or improve our food systems or any of the many other emissions cuts that are in our book.

We’re also going to literally have to remove carbon from the atmosphere and pump—the estimates are—five billion tons of CO₂Every year, underground. Five billion tons. That’s the equivalent of running the entire global oil industry in reverse. All in all, this is a bigger mobilization than what we had in World War II, when you’ll remember the Allied factories stopped making cars and appliances to make 14,000 battleships and 286,000 airplanes. It’s the enormity of the challenge that really came home
As I did the research.

We are committed to providing equal access for all people with disabilities to our website. We are happy to provide information about this content. Email us at: [email protected]

Please tell us about the ten major goals you have set.

They’re pragmatic and based on actions grounded in the current science. If we focus on the things that matter—not the bright, shiny objects, but the essence of this plan—there are ten big, truly global objectives by which we’ll directly cut or remove carbon emissions, including how we electrify transportation, how we decarbonize the grid, how we feed ten billion people, how we protect our forests and our oceans, how we clean up concrete and steel, essential materials, and then remove the stubborn carbon that’s left in the atmosphere.

This job can be accomplished in a short time by using ten big solutions and four accelerators. We can’t wait until 2060 to solve this problem. If we enact the right policies, turn movements into action, we innovate like crazy, and invest like our lives depended on it—because they do—those distinguishing elements of this plan, based on Objectives and Key Results, give me hope.

Will there be a global embrace of the idea?

For each of these ten objectives, there’s a handful of key results that, if we achieve them, will meet the objective that’s put forth. These are the details of speed, scale. Now, that’s in the context of a planet that’s been miserable in our response to the COVID-19 crisis. It’s clear that being science based, having steady and consistent leadership, and investing ahead of the problem are relevant to the climate crisis.

The first principle here, I believe, is that in a global economy, global markets are going to push countries to pursue what’s in their national self-interest. Two points are made about this. The 21st century’s greatest economic opportunity is the transition towards a net-zero society. In fact, there’s 25 million new net jobs to be had this decade. The climate crisis is the second important point. This climate crisis is not going to be solved by one country. We will all be able to swim together or sink together.

What will this look like for India, perhaps?

What would it take to get India committed to net zero or, even more difficult, Russia to commit to net 0. They’re two really very different cases. India’s leadership sees clean energy as a chance to leapfrog old fossil fuels.

The developed world must make clean-energy solutions more accessible to all. Electric vehicles, for example, will be competitive in the US at $35,000 To compete with the internal-combustion engines in India, electric vehicles must cost $11,000. This is to avoid what Bill Gates calls “the green premium”. At the grid level in India, they’ve declared a national mission to become a global leader in solar energy. To do so, they’re going to need substantial financing from wealthier countries, namely the US, China, and members of the European Union.

What about Russia?

Russia is a completely different story. The question is, what can Russia do to get into solar and wind? The market is the most powerful lever here. Russia could be forced into a reassessment of its energy policy if there is a global price for carbon or carbon-bordered adjustment tariffs. Russia is averse to renewable-energy trends even if there is no carbon price.

There’s another petrostate that recently took a different course. That’s Saudi Arabia. Despite its huge oil reserves, Saudi Arabia is hedging its bets by launching one of the world’s biggest solar programs. The Saudis have done the math. They know that the countries that don’t embrace a clean-energy future are going to lose out.

We are committed to providing equal access for all people with disabilities to our website. We are happy to provide information about this content. Email us at: [email protected]

You were inspired by your daughter to write the book. Is it enough for her to read?

As a father, I can assure you Mary will not be satisfied by the book, and for very good reason: it’s because we’ve got a long way to go. This action plan has ten goals. Each of these objectives is supported by a few key results. Each of these key results is crucial to reaching net zero. So the action that I’m looking for—that Mary’s looking for, that we want the world to look for—is to measure our success based on these key results.

We’re going to be tracking those at SpeedandScale.com. I invite you to join us on this crusade because this is humanity’s greatest challenge, and we are quickly running out of time. We need to activate leaders from all walks of life to move others to act before it’s too late. That means we need the leader in us all, within ourselves.
your audience.

Here’s one thing I’ve learned, over my career, from Andy Grove—when teams set truly audacious goals, with a plan to meet them, the results can surpass all expectations. We have an action program, and we must get to net zero. We’re going to go for the gigatons. Six of our ten objectives directly cut or remove carbon emissions: those are how we electrify transportation, decarbonize the grid, feed ten billion people, protect our forests and our oceans, clean up concrete and steel, and remove the stubborn carbon that’s left in the atmosphere.

There are four accelerators that can help us get the job done, as we need to do this in a short time. We need to put in place the right policies, make movements happen, innovate like crazy, invest like our lives depend on it, because they do. What sets our plans apart is that this has been built on Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs, Andy Grove’s proven goal-setting system. Each of these ten objectives are supported by a handful measurable key outcomes so that we can show how we intend to achieve them.

What was it like to turn your plans into a book.

We began with the science—the bewildering array of reports—and said, “We want to be grounded in that and reach out to leaders in the field.” We conducted over 100 interviews and gathered 1,000 different data points, which we verified. There’s 500 research footnotes in the back of the book. We came to the conclusion that we didn’t need another book on climate itself, and we didn’t need to inspire people for individual actions; that’s really expected. We aimed the book at each individual’s leader. That’s the part of us that can move others, because we urgently need action now.

This is the crucial decade. So with interviews and with research, we said, “Let’s apply a proven framework for achieving audacious goals: the Objectives and Key Results. And rather than let the case rest with a precise but dry recital of what must be done, let’s enliven the book with stories from entrepreneurs, from activists, from youth, from policy makers—both their struggles and their successes.”

I admit, I cheated a bit. I’m an engineer and I have a hard time with words. The words of Mary Barra, John Kerry, Jeff Bezos, and Mary Barra make up nearly half of the book. I think those stories are what’s memorable, and they make this all-important agenda come to life. My dream is that we’ll come out into the world right at the time of COP26, and we can use this as a framework to judge how far the nations have gone in their commitments and then, importantly, hold them to these actions.

You can watch the entire video