How Does Bill Gates Plan to Tackle Climate Change?

One of the richest men in the world Bill Gates used last month’s climate change summit talks in Paris COP21 as the springboard for his new consortium, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. This conglomerate of billionaires from all walks of business aims to counteract our energy woes through significant investment in new technologies.

In their own words, the group will endeavour to provide “early-stage capital for technologies that offer promise in bringing affordable clean energy to billions of people, especially in the developing world. The only way to accomplish that goal is by developing new tools to power the world,” explains a statement on their website. “That innovation will result from a dramatically scaled up public research pipeline linked to truly patient, flexible investments committed to developing the technologies that will create a new energy mix.”

Pomp over Particulars

The emergence of the group and their apparent good intentions were greeted with much fanfare at the Paris climate talks, though tellingly, Bill Gates and his associates neglected to reveal much in the way of details. Crucially, no figures for investment were cited, nor exactly what shape this investment will take.

Gates is an outspoken supporter of nuclear power, as are several other prominent members of the Coalition, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Virgin Group owner Richard Branson. Meanwhile, the name of the Coalition is suspiciously similar to the Breakthrough Institute, a nuclear energy front consortium.

The smart money would, therefore, assume that Gates and company are seeking to circumvent the problems of climate change by investing heavily in nuclear power – especially nuclear fusion. For more information on this innovative new technology, see the article How Does Nuclear Fusion Work?

Is Nuclear the Answer?

While the potential energy of nuclear is undoubtedly massive, not everyone shares Gates’ and others’ enthusiasm for the power source. Linda Pentz Gunter of Beyond Nuclear believes that nuclear energy represents a distraction rather than a solution to our energy crisis. Instead of pouring money and time into “patient research”, Gunter believes we should be using those funds to deploy existing technologies on a mass scale.

The advance of the solar power industry makes it an ideal candidate for investment. Similarly, wind farms offer a clean, renewable energy source that can take advantage of natural power. Offshore wave power plants are an underinvested route of generating massive amounts of electricity – though of course, such power will need to be stored and transferred to the mainland, requiring new innovation. Biotechnology and the use of landfill gas and energy from waste (EfW) represents another sustainable practice in meeting our energy needs.

Instead of focusing on the golden goose of nuclear fusion, Gunter believes the Breakthrough Energy Coalition’s billions of dollars would be better spent elsewhere. According to her, investment in innovation is not needed since the innovation is already there – all that’s needed now is to implement it.