Bill Gates, through his Breakthrough Energy work, argues that the current global climate conversation is overly concentrated on near-term emissions targets and national accounting. Ahead of the UN climate meetings he published a memo urging broader, high-level discussions that look sector by sector at how to cut emissions from energy and heavy industry. He points out that many industrial processes are similar worldwide, citing steel, cement and fertilizer production, and says innovation must drive down the cost of clean alternatives so they can be widely adopted.
On power generation, Gates expects that in the long run either fission or fusion will likely become the cheapest way to produce electricity. He acknowledges a vested interest because Breakthrough Energy Ventures has invested in both fission and fusion companies, and he cautions that advanced reactors are unlikely to come online quickly enough to meet near-term electricity demand growth. He highlighted Chinau2019s large investments in fusion, noting that the scale of Chinese funding exceeds the rest of the world combined by a substantial margin, and that many fusion approaches being pursued in the United States have parallel projects in China.
Gates discussed carbon removal and offsets with skepticism about their current scale and cost effectiveness. He says he purchases offsets to cover his personal emissions but does not expect most existing offset or removal technologies to make a major dent in global progress unless their costs fall dramatically. He described many current approaches as dead ends while acknowledging there are a few emerging technologies that could become meaningful if they achieve large cost reductions.
Artificial Intelligence featured repeatedly in Gatesu2019 remarks. He argued that Artificial Intelligence will increase electricity demand but will also dramatically accelerate innovation pipelines across fields such as material science and catalysis, enabling energy startups to move faster. The pieceu2019s author notes a degree of skepticism about grand claims that Artificial Intelligence is a universal silver bullet, but records Gatesu2019 view that these tools are the largest current change agent and will speed progress for many breakthrough energy companies.
