
Q&A: Bill Gates on investments in energy technologies - miraj
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601242/qa-bill-gates/
======
safeignorance
Going for C=0 is an impressively ambitious goal.

There is one thing I really like about this proposal. Gates believes our
future depends upon scientific advances and resulting technological
innovation, supported by modest and easy-to-justify infrastructure
improvements. This breaks away from demand-side policy-centered approaches,
yes. But more importantly -- to me, at least -- it breaks away from an over-
reliance on old science.

To me, this emphasis on science _AND_ technology -- rather than exclusively
technology -- is perhaps an even more significant idea than primarily-supply-
side thinking.

I think Gates' C=0 goal is probably the locus of this shift in thinking from
"force mass deployment of existing technologies using the levers of policy" to
"science the shit out of this, then innovate like madmen, and only then enlist
public policy when it's truly the only missing piece (see: power grid example
from article)".

~~~
gavinpc
So "demand side" means industrial efficiencies? I always thought of it as, you
know, less end-usage.

Yes it's a small share of the total, and no I don't believe it's a matter of
policy. It's cultural. Whose job do we think it is to "spend within our means"
energy-wise? Everyone's? Or is it industry's job to just "make it work" so
that we can keep black-boxing power, as we do water.

Example: I was at an airport café this morning and I noticed that the menu was
displayed on three big display monitors. They were probably 42-inch screens,
all showing the same static image. There were like 6 menu items, all minor
variants on a cup of coffee. They were all clearly visible from every possible
angle. The same job could have been done undistinguishably well by any single
one of them—not to speak of a printed board.

I know, it's an airport for crying out loud. The energy used by those screens
is too small to measure. What concerns me is that we (Americans at least) live
in a society where someone—I would say thinks this is okay, but really just
doesn't think about it at all.

So I completely agree about where our priorities should be, but I think that
those levers would be easier to pull if we as a culture had a little more
"mechanical sympathy."[0]

[0] [http://www.se-radio.net/2014/02/episode-201-martin-
thompson-...](http://www.se-radio.net/2014/02/episode-201-martin-thompson-on-
mechanical-sympathy/) (Where I first heard of it, anyway.)

------
sevenless
> Gates doesn’t blame the paucity of miracle technologies on the absence of a
> price on carbon

So governments introducing no regulations or taxes around carbon pollution
isn't a problem? Would he have said that about ozone depletion or SOx/NOx
emissions standards?

This reads like a typical free-marketer's apology for Exxon lobbyists and paid
denialists screwing up international cooperation on global warming.

Also nothing in here about using less energy.

~~~
Noseshine

        > Also nothing in here about using less energy.
    

I think we will require a lot more energy than ever before. To produce clean
water - possibly from ocean water (desalination) - and to add more and more
A/C, possibly using different technologies than today (but they'll still
require energy input). Water and heat are becoming more and more of a problem
for vast regions. The Middle East already is next to unlivable, setting new
temperature records (which will probably be broken again and again in the
foreseeable future). We can move hundreds of millions or even billions of
people to more livable climate regions, we can let them die, or we can use
technology - and energy, plenty of it, on a huge scale.

~~~
supercarrot
fracking - 70 to 140 billion gallons anually

animal agriculture - 34 to 76 trillion gallons anually

at least we know what wastes a lot of water, the solution is simple, but is
not as tasty.

as for heating, yes, it's quite a problem.

withouthotair.com is a great resource for the approximate numbers.

~~~
Noseshine
Neither fracking nor animal agriculture are being done in the Gulf region, or
AFAIK (at least not in large scale, and not in regions without sufficient
water) in the Middle East. Regions that _have_ enough water can do whatever
they want, why would I save water e.g. in Germany or Washington State (coastal
region) when there's a shortage in the middle of India, how would that help?
Also, I don't see the US as having a water problem - well it does, but they
have the resources to do something about it _whenever they wish to do so_. I'm
talking about regions that have a "real" problem, not just one of politics.

~~~
supercarrot
I've put fracking numbers to point out the comparison.

Animal agriculture is being done everywhere.

I'm doubting people are eating meat from Brazil, Australia and Denmark in US,
Asia or Africa so much that these are the main dots of world animal
agriculture.

------
geertj
I wonder what Gates thinks about the Gigafactory, whether it will result it
the "magic breakthrough" for energy storage. Without it, Gates asserts we need
large DC grids and a 20% gas based peaker capacity.

------
paul_f
The story is about the new Breakthrough Energy Coalition. But there's no
information on how to contact the coalition with technologies they should
consider.
[http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html](http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html)
In fact, their website says this: "BEC does not accept or consider unsolicited
ideas, suggestions, information, or materials of any nature whatsoever"

~~~
dredmorbius
Odds of some random individual coming up with a hitherto unknown energy system
or source are low. There are other and better ways to discover same.

We've for forces and four root entropic flows to tap: solar, geothermal,
nuclear, and tidal.

(Wind, hydro, biomass, and fossil fuels are all solar in origin.)

I'd bet big money there's nothing else will emerge in the next 20 years.

I'd bet on the next 1,000 if I thought I'd live that long.

------
ZeroGravitas
What's he saying about a carbon tax? I found it hard to parse.

My best guess at a translation is "the USA is too politically dysfunctional to
do the obvious thing that a believer in free market capitalism would do, and
so instead we need to rely on pork barrel spending going to energy projects".

------
rmason
I thought Gates was seriously looking into Thorium but I don't see any mention
of it.

[http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bill-gates-is-beginning-
to-...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bill-gates-is-beginning-to-dream-the-
thorium-dream)

------
Tadlos
I like the idea of building stuff out of wood. Then we can have nice buildings
and store carbon

~~~
drewm1980
Problem is, good wood grows extremely slowly. Not sure if that can be
genetically engineered, or if it is intrinsic to the process of growing
cellulose in the right arrangements...

------
nojvek
His piece on China about being the energy hub was interesting. I always get
amazed how much China has progressed being the world's manufacturer. China and
India have similar number of humans and land but China is really moving its
GDP.

------
niels_olson
For carbon, why can't we just find a big hole and start dumping corn in?

~~~
Roritharr
Because the rotting process would create methane which would seep out easily,
its wasteful and ethically questionable (people are still starving, so not
even using corn as fuel is pretty horrible). Storing Carbon cheaply and safely
is to me an unsolved problem. Especially if you want to do it without wasting
tons of minerals (before someone talks about vacuumed dried algae or stuff
like that).

~~~
tim333
I like the idea of building stuff out of wood. Then we can have nice buildings
and store carbon.

~~~
dredmorbius
There's actually a really good idea in there.

After transport, building materials are a large energy consumer. Coming up
with alternatives to concrete, steel, aluminium, and similar materials,
possibly though biologics, whether low-tech like wood, or self-forming
biocrete and biobrick.

Paving, especially.

~~~
tim333
People are working on it eg. [http://woodforgood.com/sustainability/build-
with-carbon](http://woodforgood.com/sustainability/build-with-carbon)

and a TED talk
[https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_why_we_should_build_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_green_why_we_should_build_wooden_skyscrapers?language=en)

~~~
dredmorbius
I'm aware of that (and pointed to a few examples myself).

What I'm pointing out is that energy is a means to some service goal, and in
the case of construction, alternate means to ends may well obviate much the
need for new energy supplies.

Or taking an alternate formulation: rather than tap energy and convert and
store and transform it multiple times to accomplish some goal, employ
biological means to achieve the same end with far fewer (loss-entailing)
energy transforms.

Trees, plants, algae, and/or microbes, operating over a large area, accomplish
a very large net throughput. The questions are whether we can manage that,
what outputs are possible, at what rates, and what subsequent changes in
capabilities result. I suspect _no_ biologic will have, say, the capabilities
of steel. If we're limited to masonry or ceramic-based structures, the age of
the 100-storey supertower is gone, but there are a many 10-20 storey towers
which might be possible, resulting in high urban densities, if that's what we
want.

------
dredmorbius
I see some interesting points raised here, though I also have some fundamental
disagreements.

Putting those first: what we need isn't more time, or an energy miracle. It's
to embrace limits, the fundamental limits of Earth's carrying capacity, and
how many people, of a given material affluence, can be supported. This is a
question I've been looking at for the past several years, or more accurately,
I've spent much of that time trying to figure out what the fundamental
question was, starting from "what are the big problems?" My answer:

 _How do we embrace limits to growth?_

Gates raises a few really excellent points.

He dismisses the problem of not having a price on carbon. I'd return that not
only is that a problem, but we've a much larger issue of not fully accounting
for the creation or replacement price of the fossil fuels we've been consuming
at a breakneck rate -- some 5 million years of petroleum accumulation are
consumed every year. That itself is an accident and error of early economic
theory (one which was very nearly corrected in the late 19th century), and of
early theories, and derived law, of mineral rights law (look up the "rule of
capture" for a few hours of entertainment).

His mini-biographies on Parsons and Deisel, collectively the two people who
now power much of the world, was a telling rebuttal to the claim that
capitalism rewards innovation. Neither man made much from their inventions,
Deisel, as Gates says, committed suicide in the face of bankruptcy.

On the storage front, there is one possiblity that's open to us: liquid
hydrocarbons. They're not a net energy gain, but if we're looking for a
storage solution that's high-density, highly flexible, and has very long-term
proven storage life (100 million years and counting), electrically-generated
synfuels offer a plausible pathway. Specifically seawater-based Fischer-
Tropsch fuel synthesis, studied for over 50 years by Brookhaven National Labs,
M.I.T., and the US Naval Research Lab. There are undoubtedly complications,
but it's an underconsidered option.

Also on the storage front, the Dr. Sadoway mentioned is one of the recent
superstars in battery storage technology. His molten salt battery isn't
something you'd want to put in a car, but with extremely abundant (cheap!)
substrates, could form the basis of city-scale electrical storage. Not for
hundreds of millions of years, but days to weeks, evening out supply
inconsistancies for a grid dependent on intermittent renewables. The fact that
this technology is facing obstacles is disheartening. It's also why I advocate
both considering sustainable, carbon-neutral paths to liquid hydrocarbon
fuels, and embracing limits.

~~~
drewm1980
I think you missed his point. The earth's carrying capacity for atmospheric
co2 has already been exceeded to the point where we have to achieve zero net
carbon emissions. Under that assumption, a carbon tax that is not effectively
an outright ban is pointless. Also, he does advocate in the article for carbon
neutral liquid hydrocarbon fuel production as one possibility although his
point is more general.

~~~
dredmorbius
No, I agree regarding CO2. I think it's _also_ only one of multiple global
binding constraints we're encountering, though possibly the greatest.

My point is that _in achieving the goal of zero or negative net carbon
emissions_ , changing the economic price structure which allows carbon
emissions may prove to be an effective tool. It's not that the market solves
all problems (something with which I strongly disagree), or that an
_unregulated_ market is the only option (a view I reject absolutely as
absolutely false, blatantly ahistorical, and a complete misrepresentation of
market theory). But markets are _powerful_.

 _At a sufficiently high level_ , and in the case of a carbon tax, that's
likely to be _exceedingly_ painful, the option to emit simply doesn't exist.

Bake that price structure, through both depletion amortisation (a much
stronger update to Hotelling's Rule, which was based on multiple false
premises), and an at-the-source sequestered carbon introduction tax, at all
levels of international banking, finance, and trade, and you make it a money-
losing proposition to mine coal, pump petroleum, or drill natural gas,
_anywhere_.

When I say that the taxes would be painful, I mean increasing costs not by a
few percent, but by orders of magnitude. That's going to be heavily traumatic
-- it's a large part of what's exploded social unrest across the Middle East
in the past five years, and is in the process of tearing Venezuela to shreds.
Saudi Arabia and Russia are likely next on the block even if only present
trends continue.

So yes: the carbon tax _would_ be an outright ban, though it might take some
time (~10-20 years) to fully reach that stage. I'd prefer faster. Hell, I'd
prefer we'd taken this approach in 1960 when the consequences were first
becoming apparent.

Infrastructure and capital take time to replace. We're looking at rebuilding
an airplane in flight. I'm not at all sanguine that we'll succeed.

And: if we _do_ address the CO2 problem, there remain numerous others, most
reducing to total population and absolute average wealth (which is to say,
resource consumption). Which are likely to destroy what we call modern
civilisation even if we do manage the carbon crisis.

~~~
drewm1980
Got it. What do you see as our next existential threat? AI and asteroids don't
really fit this discussion...

~~~
dredmorbius
Us.

