The Green Premium
Teacher Resources
Driving Question: What is a green premium and why is it key for addressing climate change?
Solving the problem of climate change will be hard, and it will be expensive. Our societies have limited resources, and those resources are distributed unequally. But for the sake of our health, our environments, and our livelihoods, we to need to find innovative ways to overcome the obstacles presented by the green premium, the additional expense for a low- or zero-carbon alternative. In this lesson, we explore the green premium and how it can be a helpful tool for evaluating climate solutions and helping us decide where to focus our efforts.
- Define the term green premium and explain the role it plays in climate solutions.
- Explain the relationship between green premiums and behavior, policy, and innovation.
- Evaluate the ways the green premium can be used to assess climate solutions and inform action.
Opener
Review some of the climate change-specific vocab you’ve learned and preview some new terms to come.
Visual Aid
The green premium is the cost difference between a low-carbon product and the traditional option. Understanding the green premium can help us decide where to focus our efforts and help make low-carbon solutions more accessible.
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Observe
Skim the full infographic, paying attention to things like prominent colors, numbers, charts, and types of text. How do you know where to start and which direction to read? How do you know what numbers are most important? What concept is the focus of the graphic? What big questions do you have?
Key Ideas
- What is the green premium?
- What does a high green premium reveal about a product or service?
- What is the green premium for low-carbon cement? What can be done to reduce it?
- What is a negative green premium? How can we encourage people to buy technologies with negative green premiums?
Evaluate
- What are other ways that individuals, businesses, or governments can work to lower the green premiums for low-carbon technologies?
Green Premiums: The Extra Cost to Decarbonize
The green premium is a tool you’ll use throughout the course to understand one of the major obstacles facing many net-zero technologies: the cost of implementation. Understanding the green premium will help us determine where to focus our efforts.
Key Ideas
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Before you watch
Before you watch the video, it’s a good idea to open and skim the video transcript. And always read the questions below so you know what to look and listen for as you watch!
While you watch
- What is the green premium?
- How might the green premium impact a school cafeteria’s ability to serve plant-based burgers?
- In addition to sales price, what other factors are included when determining the green premium for an electric vehicle?
- What is a negative green premium? What’s an example of a negative green premium?
- Why do heat pumps continue to have low adoption rates?
- Why is understanding the green premium an important part of reducing emissions?
After you watch
- Choose one of the examples discussed in the video. What’s one way to overcome the challenges presented by the green premium in your community?
Article
Green premiums make climate-friendly choices costly—but fossil fuels have their own hidden costs, too. We’ll need to reduce green premiums through continued to innovation to make climate-friendly options more accessible and widespread.
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Skim
Before you read, you should quickly skim the article, by looking at the headings of each section and the charts. Read the questions below as well, so you know what to look for when you read!
Key Ideas
- What is a green premium?
- Why does the green premium matter?
- How can the green premium be a useful tool?
- What is one reason that green premiums are high?
- How can governments help reduce green premiums?
- How can businesses help reduce green premiums?
- How can individuals help reduce green premiums?
Evaluate
- What can individuals, companies, and governments do to ensure that green premiums—and the costs of climate change more generally—are distributed equitably on local, regional, and global scales?
Activity
Calculate the green premium for four different low-carbon products to explore what the green premium is and how it differs amongst various clean technologies. This will help you evaluate the most successful strategies to confront and lower these additional costs.
Closer
You’ve learned that that the green premium can be an important tool to help us decide where to focus our energy when it comes to solving climate change. Now, you’ll pitch a product or service to a group that has the power to help lower the green premium it carries.
Assessment
This writing assessment is an opportunity for you to showcase your critical thinking, analysis, and argumentation skills by analyzing documents in response to a specific prompt.