
We Need Clean-Energy Innovation, and Lots of It - ph0rque
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Energy-Innovation
======
hackuser
> But when it comes to preventing the worst effects of climate change, the
> investments I make will matter much less than the choices that governments
> make.

How can he stay out of politics, in that case?

The Republican Party aggressively opposes any climate change policy, from
research to reduction to mitigation. They aggressively support the fossil fuel
industry. The Koch brothers, whose combined wealth is on Gates' scale, spend
billions to advocate similar positions. The Fox media network, from Fox News
to the Wall Street Journal, push propaganda supporting these positions. (These
statements are not partisan simply because one party looks bad. Much of it is
factual -- clearly that's the GOP's position -- and if you accept the science
of climate change, I think their claims clearly fall within the realm of
propaganda.)

There is no media outlet that pushes back or calls any of the above on their
propaganda, except those too small to matter, and the Democrats are passive.

The best investments Gates could make for climate change might be a political
organization and/or a media network. I can guess why he doesn't, but I'd be
interested to know. I wonder if he hoped, like many geeks, that he could avoid
it and just do good things.

~~~
radmuzom
Surprised that you are getting down-voted for saying the right thing. As I am
not American, I never took any interest in American politics. So I was never
aware of the right wing propaganda machine - till I subscribed to Wall Street
Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good" newspaper by some -
of course, I have cancelled my subscription now - it was the single most
important event in my life as it made me extremely liberal and progressive (as
a reaction to the pure nonsense produced by the journal).

~~~
hackuser
> I was never aware of the right wing propaganda machine - till I subscribed
> to Wall Street Journal. I was shocked that it's considered to be a "good"
> newspaper by some

This puzzles me too, to a degree. Most educated people can recognize the
propaganda on their editorial page, and most know, based on Fox News Channel,
that the owners have very low journalistic standards and are willing to
publish deceit. WSJ reporters even appear as Fox correspondents now (at least,
when I watched briefly a few months ago). Why would smart people still trust
the WSJ?

To address one counter-argument, the NY Times is not the same; it's editorial
page has much higher standards. I don't agree with everything, but rarely to I
read blatent lies and propaganda.

I suspect it's simple branding. The "Wall Street Journal" brand carries
integrity, and people don't think skeptically about it.

~~~
guimarin
Saying it's branding is a little disingenuous. I like to joke that NYC is just
a brand describing a truly shitty city, but that's not really the case. What
I've noticed about the WSJ is that a lot of the commentary is primarily
business focused. There is very little mainstream media that focuses on
business with the quality of the WSJ. It's also sort of like the National
Enquirer of the business world; so highly niche entertainment as well.

There are some realities of actually owning/running a business that are hard
to understand if you have not done it before. Realities like how cumbersome
and obnoxious most government attempts at regulation are, including and
especially taxation. I have yet to meet a person, including prominent SV
billionaires, who wouldn't give 100% of their money to the gov't if they
thought it was spent well and transparently. The reality is that it is not,
and these people feel rightly that they are better allocators of capital than
the government, and so oppose taxation. In the Hard Thing About Hard things,
Horowitz writes that most management books are written by people who have
never even managed a hot dog stand. I think that a publication that is so
overwhelming supported and favored by business owners even despite it's
obnoxiousness at times must have some underlying value. It's probably best not
to dismiss it as 'simple branding' just because you can't wrap your head
around that position.

~~~
hackuser
> There are some realities of actually owning/running a business that are hard
> to understand if you have not done it before. ...

Having done it I don't agree. It's a widely used cover story, 'you can't
understand X because you haven't done it', a way to avoid accountability or
having to make a reasoned argument. We all have directly experienced only a
tiny fraction of the world, yet we use our cognitive abilities to understand
much more.

I also disagree with your view on taxes and regulation. Our taxes should be
higher, certainly more fair (the wealthy sacrifice much less than poorer
Americans), and some industries need much stronger regulation, including Wall
Street and the medical industries. Finally, government, being a human
institution, is flawed; but I have yet to see a business (over a certain size)
that doesn't waste money, experience corruption and incompetence, etc. It's a
weak argument to simply dismiss serious issues with the unsupported meme that
government is somehow relatively incompetent.

Of course many agree with you. Some have good arguments, some are merely self-
interested (who wants to pay more or have to follow rules?), many merely
parrot what the read in the WSJ. You can identify the latter by the consistent
use of the same talking points.

Finally, the condescension is unnecessary. If you have a good argument, people
will be pursuaded. The condescension brands everything else you say as part of
the same rant, not to be taken seriously.

------
melling
Didn't Google drop RE<C because they realized current technologies weren't
enough?

[http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-
engineers...](http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/google-engineers-
explain-why-they-stopped-rd-in-renewable-energy)

"Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy
technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach,"
wrote Google's Ross Koningstein and David Fork in a piece published yesterday
in IEEE's Spectrum"

~~~
crpatino
You cannot combat climate change by producing electricity cheaper than coal.
If that was the case, the market would find a way not to replace coal, but to
consume the extra on top of coal.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> If that was the case, the market would find a way not to replace coal, but
> to consume the extra on top of coal.

That's not how PPAs and generation works. Nuclear power is already barely
viable in the Illinois market (dominated by Exelon) because wind sells its
power so much cheaper.

There's a new generation facility coming online near Vegas that's going to be
selling solar at around 4 cents/kwh, the lowest price in the nation.

Cheap renewables don't get consumed above existing fossil generation; cheap
renewables push out existing fossil fuel generation. For an example, see
Germany and how their utilities can barely keep some generation running
because they don't get enough revenue with solar dominating during daylight
hours.

Solution: Continue to heavily subsidize solar, wind, utility-scale battery
storage. Continue to shut down coal plants. Purchase peaking combined cycle
natural gas generators, put them into non-profits (because they won't be
profitable) to meet the generation gap until enough utility-scale battery
storage can allow renewables to be firmly dispatchable resources (they can be
relied on to provide power at a constant rate, vs intermittent resources).
Profit (or rather, help stop climate change).

~~~
danmaz74
> coming online near Vegas that's going to be selling solar at around 4
> cents/kwh

The big problem there is that they'll sell you that energy when they have it,
not when you need it. Production is really becoming cheap with renewables;
storage is the real problem (and a very big one).

~~~
toomuchtodo
Correct. I mention utility-scale battery storage for that very reason. Until
you have utility-scale battery storage, you burn natural gas to make up the
difference. Faster response time than coal or nuclear, less carbon output than
coal, easier to move across the country, no radioactive waste to store onsite
"temporarily" for decades.

Hydro could help, but in places with almost no water (California/Nevada), it
can't be relied on.

------
cmarschner
I agree with much of what Gates writes, but at least in Europe this is more or
less common sense. Although there is a lot of inertia, and there could be much
more government-funded research, we are slowly getting there - not by
presidential decrees, but through a slow process of expert groups, democratic
decisions, and small innovations. But it all is offset by the fact that as
these 450 million people are trying to reduce their - arguably high -
footprint, at the same time 2-3 billion people are in the process of getting
access to the same energy resources that we are trying to get away from. And
half of the world's biggest polluter's population is voting for a party that
is so far off common sense that their horrible example could continue for
decades.

All this makes me pessimistic that mankind can fix the problem in my lifetime,
and I will have to tell my daughter: i'm deeply sorry. We screwed up.

A breakthrough in innovation seems to be our only chance.

------
BrandonMarc
About 10 years ago a new company appeared, with great promise for a clean-
energy future. With the awkward name XsunX, their goal was to produce what
they called "power glass" ... a type of glass that contained barely-visible
solar cells and wiring. Tie it appropriately into a building's electrical
system, and viola! a window becomes a power generation source.

The notion was that since the modern aesthetic is glass skin for large
buildings, then why not let that new skyscraper in London, NYC, Houston, etc
generate some of its own power from the acres (yes, acres) of glass covering
its exterior?

The solar cells would be less efficient for a variety of reasons, and most
windows wouldn't face direct sunlight all day, but these inefficiencies would
be countered by volume: the entire building would be covered in solar cells.

Fantastic idea! And ... it fizzled. The XsunX website still exists, but you
have to find really old press-release PDFs buried within to find any mention
of Power Glass.

Use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, though, and you'll see their
website years ago focused almost entirely on Power Glass and its promise.

I really wish this idea could take off ...

------
prawn
I'm really impressed not only at Gates' actions post-Microsoft, but that he
makes the effort to explain them in such an accessible and public way. I think
that's a really positive step and others in a similar position could learn
from him.

~~~
thirdreplicator
Yeah, I hate Windows and IE as much as the next techie, but Bill Gates is a
great man -- period. I'm a fan. In his early days, he was just thinking
business is just a game, so he was kind of ruthless in his business practices.
But now that he has already made it, it's great to see his true colors and how
deeply benevolent he is. I'm going to start following his blog posts on
renewable energy.

~~~
UserRights
Very cool comment :)

------
Animats
No, we don't need clean energy innovation. And that's a problem.

Right now, there's an oil glut and a natural gas glut. The US may be self-
sufficient in energy in about four years without even trying. The fear that
fossil fuels will run out in the near term is gone. This has taken the
pressure off the need for alternative energy.

~~~
danieltillett
There is still the need to do something about the GHG’s we are dumping into
the atmosphere. This large uncontrolled geoengineering experiment may not go
so well given the current usage of fossil fuels.

~~~
guscost
I'm fairly well convinced that farming is a much more significant
geoengineering experiment, but not a peep out of the CO2 folks about that. Are
you sure that one or the other will definitely have good or bad effects? Can
you explain the logic if so?

~~~
danieltillett
Farming is a massive geonegineering experiment, but it was one that was run
many thousands of years ago. It has changed the entire planet, but the
difference with our more recent GHG experiment is one of scale. We massively
underestimate the effect that all these GHG will have. On top of this we are
only about 10% of the way into the GHG experiment - the world will not be a
pretty place once we get to 1200 ppm CO2.

~~~
guscost
> Farming is a massive geonegineering experiment, but it was one that was run
> many thousands of years ago.

Industrial farming at scale is much newer than that. This is like claiming
that GHG is from "many thousands of years ago" because people made wood fires
back then.

> It has changed the entire planet, but the difference with our more recent
> GHG experiment is one of scale.

Yes, and if you asked me for a guess I'd say the scale of the farming
"experiment" is much greater. I'm interested to hear _reasons_ you believe the
opposite is true, not just an assertion.

> We massively underestimate the effect that all these GHG will have.

We do? Are you saying that you understand the true future effect of one change
to a very complex non-linear system?

> On top of this we are only about 10% of the way into the GHG experiment

Similar to the last point, but this should be followed by "according to
[Researchers'] model" and not left as a plain assertion.

> the world will not be a pretty place once we get to 1200 ppm CO2.

Please name the model or whatever logical progression you are using to arrive
at this idea, too.

~~~
danieltillett
_Industrial farming at scale is much newer than that. This is like claiming
that GHG is from "many thousands of years ago" because people made wood fires
back then._

Actually most agricultural land clearing did happen many hundred to thousands
of years ago. People have proposed that all the carbon released by this
activity did have an impact on the planet and this prevented us from re-
entering another ice age. I am not too sure how much evidence supports this
hypothesis as the amount of carbon released was relatively low until we
started burning fossil fuels in the last century.

 _Yes, and if you asked me for a guess I 'd say the scale of the farming
"experiment" is much greater. I'm interested to hear reasons you believe the
opposite is true, not just an assertion._

The effect of farming has probably had more impact to date on the planet, but
it is not as large as what the GHG experiment will have on the planet if we do
nothing.

 _We do? Are you saying that you understand the true future effect of one
change to a very complex non-linear system?_

Actually the effect of adding GHG is very easy to predict - it increases the
amount of energy trapped in a concentration dependent effect. What is hard to
model is what the precise effect will be and when it will happen. A nice
analogy to use is what will happen if you drive your car at 100 mph into a
brick wall without wearing a seat belt or having an airbag. You can’t predict
in advance what will happen to you, but none of the likely outcomes will be
good.

 _Similar to the last point, but this should be followed by "according to
[Researchers'] model" and not left as a plain assertion._

Under the "do-nothing” model (effectively our current model) we just keep
burning all the fossil fuels until they are all gone. We do have a pretty good
idea of how much fossil fuels we can extract and so it is easy to calculate
how much CO2 will be released if we burn them all. Unfortunately all the
changes to the model over the last few years is much of the fossil fuels we
thought were uneconomic to extract (and so were not counted as being
releasable) have proven extractable (i.e. fracking and shale oil).

 _Please name the model or whatever logical progression you are using to
arrive at this idea, too_

My model is our current “do-nothing” model where all the fossil fuels that can
be burnt will be burnt. The end outcome of this is a CO2 concentration north
of 1200ppm. While we can’t predict exactly what will happen if we reach this
level we do have a pretty good idea from the past that it won’t be nice.

~~~
guscost
All the captive carbon will go straight into the atmosphere and stay there? No
nonlinear effects are possible that would make that happen differently?

~~~
danieltillett
No. Currently about 50% of the carbon ends up in sinks like oceans and some
forests. Unfortunately, these sinks look to be getting full, but even if they
are able to absorb 50% of the emissions we are still going to go over 1200ppm
if we burn all the fossil fuels.

Actually one of the big worries is that some of the large carbon sinks like
the arctic tundra will start warming up enough to result in a non-linear
runaway release of GHG. We don’t know if this will happen, but I am none to
keen to find out.

~~~
guscost
I'm using "nonlinear" in a very different sense, but thanks for the answer.

------
UserRights
TWR is NOT clean energy.

[http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/09/22/twr-vs-
ifr/](http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/09/22/twr-vs-ifr/)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Great to see someone else linking to bravenewclimate.com - this is a sorely
under-read and under-linked resource.

Also, I used to live in Adelaide where Barry Brook held the Sir Hubert Wilkins
Chair of Climate Change. He then moved to Tasmania about a year after I did,
thereby fixing our electricity related emissions because Tasmania's
electricity is almost entirely hydroelectric.

------
ZeroGravitas
I'm sure I read last week that Gates had invested 200 million in a software
company to more efficiently extract oil and gas, which seems to contradict his
stance here.

Can't find the article now, was titled something like "Silicon Valley taking
on the Fossil Fuel Industry".

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Regardless of whether we burn oil and gas for energy we will still need them
for other purposes like lubricants and feedstock for chemical processes, so it
doesn't necessarily contradict.

------
afarrell
One avenue to explore would be genetically engineering strains of corn, rice,
and wheat that have nitrogen-fixing bacteria. This would have the impact of
reducing the vast quantities of fossil fuel we spend on the Haber-Bosch
process and also free poor farmers from having to spend money on artificial
fertilizer.

I am however utterly ignorant of the difficulty of doing this. I doubt this
research would be funded by Monsanto or other companies which sell artificial
fertilizer.

~~~
danieltillett
>I am however utterly ignorant of the difficulty of doing this.

It is very difficult since the symbiotic relationship needed is difficult to
recreate - it is not just a matter of introducing a few new genes.

Even doing this would not avoid the need for the Haber-Bosch process. The
symbiotic bacteria just can’t produce the amount of organic nitrogen that we
need to get into modern crops to have them produce at the level we need to
feed everyone. Even crops like legumes which have the symbiotic bacteria are
supplied with artificial nitrogen when grown under modern agricultural
conditions.

------
shoo
I am glad to see Gates throwing his money and influence in a progressive
direction.

> we need to be able to power all sectors of the economy with sources that do
> not emit any carbon dioxide.

Yes. That said, I think a lot of the optimistic future trajectories for world
climate models rely on the assumption of CCS technology permitting negative
net carbon emissions later in the century. On the positive side:
hypothetically if the technology were to exist we could get away with some
emissions; negative side: this technology doesn't actually exist.

> But when it comes to preventing the worst effects of climate change, the
> investments I make will matter much less than the choices that governments
> make.

I completely agree. A global price on carbon would help here. It's going to be
difficult for clean-energy alternatives to compete with existing energy
sources such as coal, that (i) are priced in a way that ignores the negative
externalities of greenhouse gas emissions, and (ii) are heavily subsidised.
The global economy needs to be appropriately regulated in order to coerce it
into doing more useful activities.

> Scientists generally agree that preventing the worst effects of climate
> change requires limiting the temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, and
> that doing so requires the biggest emitters to cut emissions 80 percent by
> 2050 and all countries to essentially eliminate them by the end of the
> century.

Indeed!

> These are solvable problems.

Here I disagree. We are not going to limit temperature rise to 2 degrees
Celsius. We missed that window by a few decades.

It would still be a VERY good idea to limit temperature rise to +3 degrees
Celsius, or something, instead of ending up with a world where it is +4
degrees C and still rising.

I recently finished reading the book "Windfall: The Booming Business of Global
Warming" by McKenzie Funk. I am actually more optimistic about the future now:
we still have geoengineering options available, such as pumping sulphur into
the atmosphere to reduce the amount of sunlight heating the world by a
fraction of a percent.

It's worth pointing out, however, that:

* geoengineering gives us a means to partially/completely address one of the _symptoms_ (temperature rise) of the problem, and continue to avoid addressing the causes. other symptoms: nitrogen cycle disruption, species mass extinction, extinction of non-renewable resources, extinction of _renewable_ resources (global fish stocks), ...

* geoengineering options will also cause some climate change, and these changes will not be uniformly or fairly distributed over the world. All things being equal, powerful countries will run geoengineering projects, and as far as it can be predicted and controlled, the climate will be adjusted to preferentially favour the countries running these projects.

* the long-term, large-scale secondary consequences of things we do that seem like a good idea are not always anticipated!

* geoengineering options are akin to patching a highly complex system by adding _more complexity_ to patch a symptom. this requires upkeep and potentially makes the entire thing more fragile.

~~~
Bluestrike2
Geoengineering might make the entire system more complex, but it sure beats
the alternative. None of the more viable options that have been proposed have
potential side effects worse than what we'll expect if we do nothing. And
while it might just be treating the symptoms, it also gives us the time
necessary for technological innovations to change the causes of those same
symptoms. Electric cars, improved and more efficient power systems (fourth gen
reactors, improved renewables, and better battery tech for starters), cleaner
production systems, even the eventual benefits of building orbital
manufacturing infrastructure will all combine to solve many of the root causes
we're struggling with.

------
danieltillett
What we need is to buy up all the FF energy companies and have them not
dig/pump/burn the carbon they control. While the FF industry is large, it is
not that large and it would be totally possible to just buy it all up and shut
it down.

This approach would have the nice side-effect of removing the economic
motivation for climate changing denial and all the anti-science propaganda
that results.

------
delbel
Wake me up when we start building fast breeder reactors that recycle nuclear
waste [1], and start building large scale thermal depolymerization plants to
turn our trash into oil. [2] I also want to know how he think we should
address this mini-ace age that it appears I'll be spending half my life in.[3]

1\. [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186023-russia-bets-its-
en...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/186023-russia-bets-its-energy-
future-on-waste-free-fast-breeder-nuclear-reactors)

2\. [http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-
oil](http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/anything-oil)

3\. [http://www.livescience.com/51597-maunder-minimum-mini-ice-
ag...](http://www.livescience.com/51597-maunder-minimum-mini-ice-age.html)

~~~
Retric
Wind is cheaper than safe nuclear power, so spending a lot on R&D for a more
expensive version of Nuclear seems pointless. Nuclear can work well for huge
boats and subs, but on land it's extremely expencive and only gained traction
through huge subsides.

~~~
sanxiyn
Wind has low power density, so it requires much more space. This probably is
not a problem for US, but a serious problem for other countries.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
That space can be used for other things too though such as grazing livestock.

Relatedly, Elon Musk claims that if you cover the area used up by a Nuclear
plant with solar panels than you can get equal power production. The actual
reactor is small, but the security etc. means that there's a large boundary
zone. Plus of course no-one wants to live near one.

~~~
ams6110
On sunny days, or on average?

