The Immune Response of Systems

Written By Chris W

Your immune system is there to keep you alive.

If it spots something invasive, alien, or disruptive, your immune system is programmed to capture it, dismantle it, and remember it, in case there is a next time.

We’ve noticed something similar going on in our day jobs working on systems change.

Whenever there is an innovation that looks like it might threaten the existing system, there is an immune response: capture, dismantle, and remember.

We’ve seen an immune response at work in our day jobs in the housing system, the financial system, and (irony alert!) in the healthcare system. 

Interestingly though, these immune responses seem to get weaker as existing, incumbent, systems age and, eventually, die.

It’s the natural order of things.

And that gives us hope.

It makes us think of Bill Sharpe’s 3 Horizons model where innovations eventually overcome the existing system. It takes longer than at first you might imagine, as the incumbents’ immune system tussles with the disruptors, both of them adapting and mutating over time as they evolve new ways to survive. Eventually, though, as in life, there is only one ending.

Visually it looks like the difference between the model version of 3 Horizons, and the real-life one:

3 Horizons, the model: as time flows from left to right, the incumbent system declines and falls as new innovations rise and take its place

3 Horizons, real-life: new innovations produce an immune response from the incumbent system and, as time flows from left to right, each adapts and mutates until, inevitably, the incumbent system dies

Two examples come to mind that tell the story of a systems immune response… 

o   The story of the EV1: the electric car technology that was, literally, crushed by the car industry and its fossil fuel friends 

o   And the story of carbon capture and storage: the paradoxical climate change technology that locks us into fossil fuel energy

The tale of the EV1

 It’s 1990, and California legislators have just decreed that the seven leading car manufacturers in the United States must produce and sell zero-emissions vehicles if they want to keep their access to the California market.

It’s a big change: in the preceding decade, more than 80% of US vehicles had V8 petrol engines (double the average size of UK vehicle engines); and California's air pollution exceeded the levels of the other 49 states put together. All California legislators want is 2% of vehicles to be zero-emission electric.

At the 1990 Los Angeles motor show, General Motors (GM) demonstrates the Impact electric car, for which the electronics were designed and built by Alan Cocconi. Remember his name. It will come up later in our story.

The trials of the Impact go well. Very well. The motoring press love it. The car sets a speed record for electric vehicles (183mph if you’re wondering). Drivers love it, although they didn’t get to own one, they were only loaned by GM, and only 50 were released. At the end of the trial, all 50 were recalled and destroyed. Remember that. It happens again later in our story. Capture. Dismantle. Remember. 

GM does something that looks very much like an immune response at this point. It says the trial has been a failure and asks California legislators to scrap the mandate for 2% zero-emission electric vehicles. Curious. And some bafflingly-named groups are popping up and campaigning vigorously against the legislation[1]. Californians Against Utility Company Abuse gathers petitions, lobbies legislators, sends 200,000 letters to electricity bill payers to try to block charging infrastructure for electric vehicles. They absent-mindedly forget to mention that they’re funded by the Western States Petroleum Association, which represents the big oil companies. The Clean Air Alliance (is it a coincidence they sound like they’d love electric cars?) presents technical and economic arguments against electric cars. It is also funded primarily by the oil industry. Big oil companies also seem to be advertising against electric cars in national publications, even when electric cars are, literally, none of their business. This is shaping up to be quite an immune response. Capture. Dismantle. Remember.

“That the oil companies are starting what they call a grass-roots effort . . . makes me feel the most positive yet that electric vehicles are really going to happen”
— Diane O. Wittenberg, manager of electric transportation at Southern California Edison Co.

California does not give way. And it is joined by other states who copy the legislation. So GM has another go at producing an electric vehicle. It’s 1996 now. 

This time they call it the EV1. 

Credit: National Museums of American History

Curiously, and like the Impact, GM only leases the EV1 to customers: explicitly prohibiting the option to buy in a clause in the contract. Celebrities, politicians and business folks sign up and, later, GM’s brand manager describes customers’ commitment as "wonderfully-maniacal loyalty".

There is an immune response happening out of sight. Ovonics, the battery maker in which GM holds a controlling share, seems muted in not announcing a breakthrough that might double the range of an EV1. GM would later sell its controlling share to Chevron (the US multinational fossil fuel company), who also bought the patents. Capture. Dismantle. Remember. 

In 1999 GM ceases production of the EV1. They’d made more than a thousand and their peers at Chrysler, Ford, et al brought the total to 5,000 electric vehicles.

In 2002, GM recalls every single EV1 (remember they were leased, not sold. Curious). Plenty of leaseholders want to keep theirs, so they send money to GM to extend their leases and volunteer to cover all the costs themselves. GM sends their cheques back. $1.9m is offered for the last 78 EV1’s in existence. There are protests, and arrests. But GM collects them anyway, and crushes them. Capture. Dismantle. Remember.

In 2003, under pressure from a lawsuit led by car companies and supported by the federal government, and after 12 years of evading the immune response of the incumbent system, California drastically scales back its legislation on electric vehicles.

By the end of 2003, US roads have been entirely cleansed of EV1’s. As if they were invisible. As if they never existed. As if they had never been intended to exist. Capture. Dismantle. Remember.

The fate of EV1s: captured and dismantled. Remember.

But there’s a redemption story to conclude our tale.

Alan Cocconi, remember him? His company, AC Propulsion, had created the electronics in the Impact: the parent of the EV1 in the family tree of electric vehicles. Well, they had also been experimenting with their own electric vehicle, this time by strapping together the kind of battery packs you find in laptops. And that gave their electric vehicle (the tZero) a 300-mile range. In 2003! This is innovators doing what innovators do best. Create, adapt, evolve; evade the immune response of the current system.

It turns out that 2003 has other plans than GM's destruction of the EV1 and the retreat of the legislation that gave it life. Horrified by GM, but inspired by Alan Cocconi and the tZero, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning established Tesla Motors that year, as a kind of refuge for the idea of the electric car. Six months later, a little known South African Canadian American by the name of Elon Musk provides the early funding.

And the world now has 50 million electric vehicles.

Your move, incumbents.

 

The tale of carbon capture and storage 

In the autumn of 2024, the UK government announced £22bn of funding for carbon capture and storage.

At face value, that sounded like a good thing, right? Who wouldn’t want to reduce greenhouse emissions from burning fossil fuels to produce steel, or chemicals, or hydrogen?

But hang on, aren’t we supposed to be reducing greenhouse gas emissions by maybe not consuming as much steel, or chemicals, or hydrogen; or by being more energy efficient; or by generating energy from the wind and the sun? 

Not if the immune response of the existing (fossil fuel) system is going to survive for longer. Capture. Dismantle. Remember. 

Maybe a scroll through the facts will help us decide if this is an immune response from a fossil fuel system trying to put off the inevitable:

  • There are around 40 operational carbon capture projects globally, with another 25 under construction, and more than 300 in planning.

  • If all those projects were complete, total carbon capture would be around 0.7% of today’s global greenhouse gas emissions[2]

  • Additional energy is also required to power the carbon capture system. Depending on the application, up to 45% more[3]

  • There are no scenarios in which carbon capture would allow continued use of fossil fuels at current levels, let alone expansion of oil and gas production[4]

  • “building too much capacity for such projects too soon may lock the UK into years of avoidable gas dependence, prolonging the dangers of dependence on volatile global gas markets and leading to supply chain emissions”[5]

  • “This notion that carbon capture can allow us to avoid or slow the process phasing out fossil fuels is not only factually inaccurate but incredibly dangerous and would guarantee that we blow past our climate goals and put our collective future at risk.”[6]

Oh, and that’s not to mention that ‘the government’ announcing £22bn of funding forgets to mention how it is going to be paid for: 75% from levies on consumer bills[7] and the rest from taxation or borrowing.

…all of which sounds an awful lot like an immune response from the fossil fuel system: capturing public subsidy of £22bn to help the incumbents survive.

Your move, innovators.

Chris W
Next

One simple trick to solve systems change.