User:Clayoquot/BG

Work on energy and climate change

Gates considers climate change and global access to energy to be critical, interrelated issues. He has urged governments and the private sector to invest in research and development to make clean, reliable energy cheaper. Gates envisions that a breakthrough innovation in sustainable energy technology could drive down both greenhouse gas emissions and poverty, and bring economic benefits by stabilizing energy prices.^[1] In 2011, he said:

If you gave me the choice between picking the next 10 presidents or ensuring that energy is environmentally friendly and a quarter as costly, I'd pick the energy thing.^[2]

In 2015 he wrote about the challenge of transitioning the world’s energy system from one based primarily on fossil fuels to one based on sustainable energy sources. Global energy transitions have historically taken decades. He wrote, “I believe we can make this transition faster, both because the pace of innovation is accelerating, and because we have never had such an urgent reason to move from one source of energy to another.”^[3] This rapid transition, according to Gates, would depend on increased government funding for basic research and private-sector investment in financially risky technological innovation in diverse areas including nuclear energy, grid energy storage to facilitate greater use of solar and wind energy, and solar fuels.^[4]

Gates spearheaded two initiatives that he announced at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. One was Mission Innovation, in which 20 national governments pledged to double their spending on research and development for carbon-free energy over five years.^[1] Another initiative was Breakthrough Energy, a group of investors who agreed to fund high-risk startups in clean energy technologies. Gates, who had already invested $1 billion of his own money in innovative energy startups, committed a further $1 billion to Breakthrough Energy.^[4] In December 2020, he called for the U.S. federal government to create institutes for clean energy research, analogous to the National Institutes of Health.^[5]

Gates's views have been criticized as undermining strategies to aggressively deploy existing solar and wind energy technologies, which have also led to innovation and to plummeting costs.^[6][7] Gates has rejected calls from environmentalists to divest from fossil fuels, saying that doing so would have little impact compared to increasing investment in clean energy innovation.^[4]