These 3 government climate actions could trigger a cascade of positive tipping points

Tackling climate change means transforming the entire economy. But each action toward that future isn’t equal: a specific set could act as “super leverage points” that would have outsize positive impact.

“I think there is a very unhelpful and mistaken message that’s been around for a long time, which is, the more we try to reduce emissions, the more it all costs—as if we’re on a journey uphill that never ends,” says Simon Sharpe, director of economics at Climate Champions Team and one of the authors of a new report, The Breakthrough Effect, which analyzes what it could take for climate tech to reach key tipping points so it quickly becomes ubiquitous. “And we’ve seen, actually, that’s not true.”

Transitions take effort, but when they reach a certain tipping point, they can suddenly get much easier. Whenever shifts from one technology to another have happened—horse-and-buggies to cars, or film cameras to digital, or landlines to smartphones—they reach a critical point when consumers “decide they want the new thing and not the old thing,” he says. Manufacturers decide they should only make the new product, and investors stop investing in the outdated product. New products go from niche to commonplace.

“The question is, how might we find those tipping points in the technology transitions that we have to go through to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and avoid dangerous climate change?” he says. “And surprisingly, that’s not what economists have been advising governments to look for so far. Instead, they’ve come up with very different ideas, like you should try and work out how much the whole of climate change costs.”

Crossing one tipping point can lead to a “tipping cascade”—meaning it speeds up progress in other areas, according to the report, which was produced by the systems change company Systemiq along with the University of Exeter and the Bezos Earth Fund. It highlights three key actions, or “super leverage points,” that could help catalyze those changes:

Zero-emission vehicle mandates

The shift to electric cars needs multiple types of support, including incentives and new networks of EV chargers. But government mandates that require car manufacturers to sell more EVs could force brands to move faster to make the vehicles. More production would then push prices down, which would increase demand.

With faster growth in EVs, battery production would also scale up. If EV adoption grew to 60% of global passenger vehicle sales by the end of the decade (something that could be possible with a push from China, the U.S., and the EU), it could mean 10 times more battery production. That could push battery costs down by 60%. Cheaper batteries could then help renewable energy reach its next tipping point. Wind and solar are already cheap, but the next step will be for the combination of renewables and battery storage to reach price parity with fossil fuels.

That would also create a positive feedback loop: As electricity gets cheaper, it would get cheaper to charge cars, increasing demand for EVs even more—and further reducing battery costs. Electric cars could also double as energy storage for the grid, helping wind and solar grow. And cheaper renewable energy could also speed up the transition to electric heat pumps in homes. All of the increased demand for electricity would also lower electricity costs, creating another positive feedback loop that accelerated the uptake of EVs and other electric-powered clean tech.

Public procurement of plant-based protein

In another key leverage point, governments could start buying more meat and dairy alternatives for government offices, schools, prisons, and other institutions. That could mean a significant increase in demand for plant-based brands—for example, in the U.K. alone, government institutions spend 2.4 billion pounds (the equivalent of $2.97 billion) on food each year. That demand could help manufacturers reach economies of scale that bring down the cost of the products.

Public procurement could help double the market share for alt protein in 2035, from 10% to 20%, the report suggests. With less demand for beef and other animal products, hundreds of millions of hectares of land (equal to more than twice the volume of acres) would become available. It would make reforestation possible and also make it easier to protect existing forests that are threatened by expanding agriculture.

Requiring “green ammonia” in fertilizer

Right now, fertilizer is typically made with ammonia, which requires natural gas to produce. But ammonia also can be made from green hydrogen (hydrogen produced with clean energy), eliminating emissions. If governments required a 25% blend of such green ammonia in fertilizer, it could boost the demand for the equipment used to make green hydrogen so much that capital costs could fall by 70%.

The switch could happen relatively easily and affordably, helping cut one of the sources of climate pollution in agriculture. Also, it could bring down costs for other industries that also plan to use hydrogen, including steel production and cargo shipping.

It’s not a policy that exists now, though India has proposed this type of mandate. The report’s authors are hoping that more policymakers consider it and the other strategic steps, and that the report helps to shift the international conversation about what’s possible.

“The diplomacy can shift from one that’s negative, about how we share the cost of reducing emissions, to one that’s positive,” says Sharpe. “How do we work together to get to the ‘better thing’ more quickly? If you look at the super leverage points, you can actually only realize the full benefits of activating those if you have some countries working together to do that. That’s what we’re really hoping to encourage.”