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The interesting question about green technology is no longer whether it works. Most of it does. The question is which parts are cheap enough, fast enough to build and boring enough to deploy at the scale the problem actually has.
The technologies that are already winning
Solar photovoltaics and lithium batteries have followed the same curve as every mass-manufactured product before them: each doubling of cumulative production takes a predictable slice off the unit cost. That is not a breakthrough, it is a factory, and it is why both are now the default choice on cost alone in most of the world.
The technologies that still need work
- Long-duration storage, for the weeks that are neither sunny nor windy
- Industrial heat above 400C, where electrification is genuinely hard
- Cement and steel chemistry, where the emissions come from the reaction rather than the fuel
- Aviation and shipping fuels at a price anyone will pay
Where the leverage is
The unglamorous answer is deployment. A technology that is 90 per cent as good and available now will decarbonise more than one that is perfect and five years away, because the emissions are cumulative and the clock is the constraint.
That reframes the innovation problem usefully. Most of what is needed next is not invention but permitting, grid connection, trained installers and supply chains — the parts of the work that no one writes press releases about.
