With the COP26 Summit in Glasgow coming to a close, the consensus seems to be that capitalism, more than policy, will ultimately solve the climate problem.
The private sector collaborating with national laboratories and academia will develop technology necessary to economically remove billions of tons of greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere. It will be the private sector that has and will continue to create clean energy applications and products.
Private industry will gladly move into this space, because the $100+ trillion economic market opportunity involving carbon capitalism will become the largest economic opportunity in the history of the world.
So, where do things stand now and when can we expect carbon capitalism to really take off? To use a baseball analogy, we’re in the 1st inning. But, this transition will move quickly and it’s likely that major technological breakthroughs in direct air capture of carbon and methane will begin to be commercialized on a large scale within the next five years.