It must be tough being a judge on the world’s most prestigious environmental prize: imagine having to choose between an ingenious machine that removes microplastics from a river in Europe, or a company in East Africa that sells clean cookstoves through affordable weekly instalments.
Over the last six months, we have been working with colleagues at Green Futures Solutions at the University of Exeter to make that job a little easier. We have found a way to distinguish between solutions that carry on working as long as people keep putting money into them, and those with “tipping potential” that get better, cheaper and easier to adopt the more successful they are. Our new report applies the science of positive tipping points to the five Earthshot categories – nature, air, oceans, waste and climate – for the first time.
After a northern summer of record-breaking heat, wildfires, floods and a deadly glacier collapse in the Nepal-Tibet border region, it would be easy to conclude the planet is only headed towards collapse. But tipping points science says otherwise. The same dynamic principle that leaves coral reefs and rainforests vulnerable to a relatively abrupt breakdown can also work in our favour – if we know the right levers to pull.
What is a positive tipping point?
Most environmental interventions assume change is incremental and proportionate: bigger problems require bigger budgets and lead to slower progress. But many complex systems we rely on (technologies, markets, societal norms, ecosystems) can shift abruptly once a critical threshold is crossed.
Solar power is a great example. Its cost fell around 90% in a decade because every panel sold stimulated innovation that made the next one cheaper. This attracted more investment, which cut costs again and improved performance. The tipping point happened when self-propelling feedback took over. Clean electricity, our report finds, is now a “master cascade”: as solar and wind have tipped in many markets, clean power can accelerate further progress in electric mobility, residential heating, industrial emissions and air quality.
Our report identifies the potential for such self-propelling feedback across 51 solution areas. Specifically, we identify whether the innovative solution is, or could quickly become, more affordable, accessible, and attractive than the polluting incumbent system it seeks to replace. We have also assigned measurable 2030 targets to each solution area, so progress can be tracked.
Three that could soon tip
Around 2.1 billion people still cook on wood, charcoal or dung and the smoke kills nearly 3 million people a year, including more than 300,000 children under five. Pay-as-you-go finance (borrowed from off-grid solar), turns an unaffordable stove into a small weekly payment. Clean cooking is now close to tipping in several African markets. People switch primarily because it saves them time and money.
@TheEarthshotPrize
Methane is responsible for about 30% of global heating so far, but lasts only around 12 years in the atmosphere. Cutting methane emissions therefore helps cool climate within a decade, rather than a century. A new generation of satellites can now pinpoint methane leaks from individual oil and gas facilities from space, and they are cheap to fix. The gas saved is worth more than the repair.
Inside a well-enforced marine-protected area, where commercial fishing is banned, fish biomass typically reaches four to seven times that of the surrounding waters within five to ten years. Fish spill out across the boundary, nearby fish catches rise, and the fishers who initially opposed the marine-protected area become the constituency demanding more of them. Only around 3% of the ocean is fully protected, but the landmark high seas treaty (itself an Earthshot prizewinner) entered into force this year and aims to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030. Satellites can now monitor some industrial fishing fleets, so enforcement of marine-protected areas is getting easier. The science, the technology and the politics are coming together.
The Earthshot Prize
Not everything is about to tip. The biggest brake is investment: Africa receives only 3% of clean energy finance despite holding 60% of the world’s best solar resources. Our report shows where innovative financing could create the conditions to address these barriers, and highlights how the current investment gaps in adaptation financing can be closed.
By using our research to shape how the prize searches for, selects and supports solutions, Earthshot can help trigger positive tipping points to accelerate out of trouble.
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