Startup Ideas from COP21

Paul Graham’s oft-referenced article, Startup Ideas, states that the best way to come up with a startup idea is to look for problems. In a background piece for the COP21 UN climate summit, The Guardian offers some insight on how cities are positioned to impact and be impacted by climate change, which in turn highlights a number of climate-related challenges cities face. Startups building solutions to these challenges have taken a number of approaches.

Approaches tend to fall into two buckets — mitigation and adaptation.

Mitigation deals with actions that could lead to a reduction of environmental threats like growing GHG emissions, aiming to reverse climate change. Mitigating actions focus on things like water management, heating and cooling control, curbing pollution, reducing congestion, increasing resource efficiency, and improving waste management.

Adaptation is used to address changes that are already “locked in”. Locked in changes are happening as a result of GHG emissions to date, but are also based on assumptions about how well we will do on our carbon diet. These include things like public health, storm water handling, storm surge management, public safety, and disaster response. All of these problems represent very large market opportunities and are still ripe for solving with disruptive solutions.

We also like to think about a 3rd category — perception. If we are to benefit from the efficiencies afforded by cities, we need to ensure that city life is an attractive option. This perspective brings things like economic development, education, walkability, safety, and other things that make cities attractive into the conversation about climate.