Bill Gates To Help Fight Climate Change By Investing Up To $2 Billion In Green Technology

[applegrove]

Bill Gates To Help Fight Climate Change By Investing Up To $2 Billion In Green Technology

by Nick Visser at the Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/29/bill-gates-renewable-energy_n_7690418.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

"SNIP...............


Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates announced plans to spend up to $2 billion on innovative renewable technologies over the next five years. In an interview with the Financial Times (paywall), Gates said he hopes to "bend the curve" through the cultivation of "breakthrough" technologies, doubling an already impressive billion-dollar investment. He has so far written checks to 15 green companies, he said, and has contributed venture capital funds to another 30.

In the interview, Gates calls for far greater funding for renewable research, saying investment "should be like the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project in the sense that the government should put in a serious amount of R&D." He pointed to the drawbacks of now-commonplace technologies like solar, which can only provide power during the day.

"There’s no battery technology that’s even close to allowing us to take all of our energy from renewables and be able to use battery storage in order to deal not only with the 24-hour cycle but also with long periods of time where it’s cloudy and you don’t have sun or you don’t have wind," he said.

Despite the recent Supreme Court ruling that undercut the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants, the U.S. has been making strides in the fight against climate change.




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[postulater]

1. Thanks for your drop in the bucket Bill.

Now if only the rest of the 0.0000000001% would release the rest of us from their trickle-up profit generator maybe we could create a sustainable clean future.

[Bill USA]

2. great news. This puts Gates personally responsible for 5.5% of all private sector investement in

green technology in the U.S. - as of 2013 data (latest I could find)...

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/report/2014/06/10/91228/clean-energy-investment-in-the-united-states/

The United States has attracted capital in clean energy markets for more than a decade. Renewable energy, or RE, investment in U.S. wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal power has increased nearly 250 percent since 2004, reaching 36.7 billion in 2013.

... although, given the crisis the world is in, it would be nice if he upped his investment a bit. He is probably more than any one person, capable of making a noticeable difference in progress toward slowing GW down (probably too late to stop it. Likely the best we can hope for is to slow it down in hopes of developing technology - in time - to extract CO2 from the atmosphere in large amounts).

[Nihil]

3. I have issues with some of his "charitable" work but best of luck to him in this one.

It's good (though sadly rare) to see someone of that wealth putting money
into the future rather than just their own present-day luxury.