Ensuring a livable planet - free from GHG emissions

By replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy

and adopting sustainable land use practices.

I believe most people agree that:

Climate change is a looming crisis that we must act with urgency to avoid [1].
We, as a society, are not doing enough to combat it, since emissions keep growing (as reported by WRI [2]).
Individually, we are willing to take action if we know our effort would be effective.

But not all of us have the means or opportunity to make impactful choices, such as installing solar panels, drive an EV or even use public transportation regularly. So the question is - how can we better focus our eagerness and resources to make a significant difference?

To answer this question, let me introduce the following idea:

The Plan

People would contribute part of their credit card “cash back” balance to a common fund.
The fund would invest in renewable energy projects serving mainly non-profit utility co-ops,
- located, primarily on idle or marginal farming/grazing land, anywhere in the world.

Note: this idea is presented from a North american perspective, but it should by no means be seen as limited to any particular part of the world.
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Funding

Most credit cards comes with a so called cash back reward, typically in the range of 1-5% of spending [3]. Why not use it, or a portion thereof, as a (pre-set) voluntary contribution? It would be easy (automatic) and card issuers could make matching contributions and offer incentives, thereby marketing their brand in a positive way. Additionally, this setup is by default progressive, as your contribution is based on your amount of spending.

So instead of receiving a “cash back”, you would make a “cash forward” to the Future Fund!

In 2018, an estimated 66% of the 255 million adults in the United States had a credit card account. The total purchase volume was $3.7 trillion, with consumers having superprime credit scores accounting for 82% [4]. Assuming that half of the people with superprime credit scores are willing to contribute 1% of their spending, this would generate an amount of $1.5 billion (37000000000*0.82/2=15170000000). Extrapolated over developed countries (or more accurately the most wealthy population), we are talking about a number potentially in the tens of billions of $USD, per year, from individual consumers only!

Co-op Utilities

First of all, it would be naive to think that people, in general, would be comfortable financing commercial energy projects with their hard-earned money. Neither does it seem reasonable to, in effect, subsidize private residential projects. Instead, a more palatable and effective option is to target so called utility cooperatives.

There are nearly 1000 not-for-profit electric cooperatives in the USA, delivering more than 10% of all electricity in the country (according to America’s Electric Cooperatives [5]). Besides such co-ops, potential recipients include: tribal nations (often underserved), schools and other public institutions.

The focus would be on relatively small “microgrids” with a capacity around 1MW (example: Blue Lake Rancheria microgrid [6]). An important benefit of distributed energy grids, is the resiliency they provide compared to standard centralized energy infrastructure [7, 8]. An issue increasingly important, as the frequency of extreme weather conditions accelerate, due to climate change.

It seems reasonable to deduce that this concept could be used as a generic scalable model - Please let me know if you disagree (feedback form below).

Renewable Energy and Farmers

The location of renewable energy projects on farms, has a number of advantages, as farmers, by virtue, are:

Capable and equipped to handle minor construction jobs such as installing: solar arrays, biogas [9] and small scale wind turbines [10].
Ideally situated to perform operations and maintenance.
Inclined to maintain a healthy sustainable natural habitat.

Furthermore, land for agriculture and grazing is generally more suitable for siting small-scale projects in a less obtrusive way than traditional industrial scale projects, allowing the farms to utilize their remaining land in an otherwise normal way.

The planting of trees and native plants, in conjunction with the construction, as determined by the farmer/owner, would be incentivized. Thereby, not only sequestering CO2, but also providing habitat for wildlife and pollinators [11].

Investment Model

The fund would not function as a philanthropy, simply paying for everything, but rather by offering:

Competitive financing (low/no interest loans).
Leasing of land at a fair price (including planting of trees as a carbon offset).
Develop open project instruction kits (for example: how to install a ground-mounted solar system [12]).

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Thus, reducing the total system cost, for the recipient (utility co-op), to essentially: permitting, hardware, special knowledge skills (such as licensed electricians) and ongoing operations. This, together with the presumably overall cheaper, local farm based concept, should provide an advantage over traditional models, thereby accelerating the transition to renewables.

There may also exist opportunities to commingle other investments including: internet-, phone- and water-infrastructure. Those would of course be of particular interest in remote and/or underdeveloped areas.

I realize that expecting ~~people~~ the richest ~10% to voluntarily pay a ~~consumption tax~~ downpayment for future generations, is an extraordinary ask, but these are no ordinary times. So then - is it?