
Bill Gates-led $1B energy fund expands startup portfolio fighting climate change - edwinksl
https://qz.com/1402301/bill-gatess-1-billion-energy-fund-is-expanding-its-portfolio-of-startups-fighting-climate-change/
======
akshatrathi
I wrote this article, and I'm happy to field any questions

~~~
drited
I'm curious about why you included this sentence: 'The startups announced by
BEV so far are all North American, and most of their leadership is also
largely white and male'

I mean, isn't it enough for BEV to help fund a small sample of companies
tackling some of the most challenging problems on earth? Probability of
success in such an endeavour is already vanishingly small without adding
further constraints. Aren't investments like these best directed at the
companies with most promise, with the investors blind as to gender and race,
with equality problems tackled elsewhere (e.g. in employment regulation etc.)?

~~~
akshatrathi
It's ludicrous to think good ideas only come from North America and white
males. Carmichael Roberts agreed with me. His words were that my question felt
"piercing" because he was not at liberty to tell me about some of the
companies outside the US with diverse leadership, but he said he will soon say
more. Rodi Guidero agreed and said to look at the BEV team. It's very diverse:
[http://www.b-t.energy/ventures/team/](http://www.b-t.energy/ventures/team/)

We've tried being gender and race blind. But it's not helped us much, because
systemic biases can't simply be overcome that way. There are good ideas in all
corners, but if you want to elevate those that don't come from privileged
backgrounds you have to work harder.

~~~
drited
'It's ludicrous to think good ideas only come from North America and white
males'

That's a straw man argument because I did not assert that (and obviously
wouldn't because it would be a stupid thing to think).

Maybe he thought your question was piercing because it implied you suspected
he was racist or sexist or not concerned with gender and race bias.

Fwiw I'm from one of the excluded categories. I think they should just focus
on tackling carbon reduction as they see best fit. If they achieve their
mission it'll benefit every man, woman and child on earth. It's unreasonable
to expect them to be omniscient. They are a small fund with a small sample of
investments. Skew doesn't necessarily mean they have gender or race bias.

Elevating isn't their goal. Reducing carbon is. If we don't do that, there may
be no races left to worry about equalising.

~~~
akshatrathi
I think you can do both. If anybody has the resources to do that, BEV does.

~~~
drited
It would certainly be laudable if they could. The article was fascinating,
thanks for answering questions!

------
perfunctory
> These startups progress slowly and at great expense, earning them the
> moniker “tough tech” because they work on difficult problems that require
> fundamental breakthroughs.

I am genuinely curious if for-profit startups is the right setting for
"fundamental breakthroughs". Could the current nuclear power technology have
been invented by a startup for example?

~~~
DennisP
I guess the answer depends on which country you're talking about. The U.S.
government pioneered nuclear power but has done very little with it over the
past several decades, and has impeded private efforts. Canada has a regulatory
system friendlier to reactor startups than the U.S., and at least one molten
salt reactor company (Terrestrial Energy) is making good progress there. China
has an aggressive government program developing every type of GenIV reactor,
and Terrapower moved there after giving up on the U.S.

This article mainly covers the MIT fusion effort. For years they struggled to
keep their government funding, despite their tokamak having the most powerful
magnetic field of any in the world. They finally lost that battle, and now
private investors are stepping in. It doesn't appear that there was an
alternative.

Government can obviously throw more money but it tends to be more conservative
about what it funds. And private funding can go pretty far; it was interesting
to see that TAE (Tri Alpha Energy, an aneutronic fusion effort) is up to $800
million in funding. They started work in 1999, so long-term fundamental
research does seem to be achievable in a startup setting.

~~~
dmix
Besides, comparing the efficacy or ability of government's in 1940s wartime vs
the modern nation states is a terrible idea and is very weakly related. In
terms of pure scale, administrative top heaviness, legislative/regulatory
oversight has expanded 100x in the past century, the degree of economic
intervention, access to talent in peacetime, etc are all vastly different.

Even NASA in the peacetime 1950-60s which was so famously efficient and
effective was largely the result of talent quickly absorbed from private
industry and academia into one organization. It was a newish organization
which held many of the benefits of non-gov/private organizations, as they were
not yet fully affected by the heavy bureaucratic and political load which hits
every government agency over time.

The type of stuff that scares away the raw talent and creatives and shifts to
a system which values people who play politics and shifts power to
administrative roles over the producers.
[https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html](https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html)

------
Jedd
> ... 500 million metric tons.

Or more simply, 500 million tonnes.

~~~
chottocharaii
A metric ton is substantially different to a ton in the old English

~~~
Jedd
Hence the nice people behind metric came up with the tonne.

It avoids any ambiguity -- the 5% of the planet still struggling with imperial
measurements can continue to confound each other with ton, while the rest of
us can confidently talk amongst ourselves about thousand-kg units (tonnes).

~~~
aplummer
Look I love the metric system as much as anyone, but it’s an American website
and a lot more than 5% of the readers are likely American...

~~~
Jedd
> ... but it’s an American website ...

I'm really never quite sure what that kind of claim actually means -- it's
hosted in the US (it isn't - most of the assets come from proximal CDN for
me), it's written exclusively by Americans (it isn't - they are proud of the
fact their team covers 115 countries and they have 19 languages between them),
it's targeted exclusively to Americans (it isn't - they've launched Quartz
India and Quartz Africa), or it's read mostly by Americans (it isn't - I
believe their US audience is something less than 50%), or it's owned by
Americans (it isn't - Quartz is owned by a Japanese based company), or the
person reading it is in North America and wants to believe that most other
people are too(I can't really comment on that one).

Perhaps it's just the TLD -- but even that's a pretty flimsy claim. I've got
my own .org, and I'm very much not in/owned/near/have/were American.

Anyway, there's this word tonne (which means 1000kg) and it's entirely not at
odds with ton (which doesn't).

Unlike gallon, gill, mile, nautical mile, survey foot, quart, pint, fluid
ounce, bushel -- which all vary depending which side of the pond you call home
-- the tonne is delightfully agnostic of all that madness, and should be
embraced and encouraged by sensible journals (for example Quartz) even if it
means some North Americans get a bit sensitive about their archaic measurement
systems.

------
stcredzero
_Zero Mass Water: A startup selling specialized panels that use solar power
and batteries to pull water from the air. The goal is to reduce the amount of
energy needed to access clean drinking water without geographical
limitations._

There is a lot of energy involved in the phase change of water. We've also had
dehumidifiers for over 100 years. The takeaway from that is, dehumidifiers
produce don't produce water well in arid environments.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg)

This makes me wonder if the Gates Foundation is properly utilizing scientific
expertise.

~~~
akshatrathi
So the tech inside Zero Mass Water is not the same as dehumidifier. Instead,
they use a sophisticated absorbent to selectively capture water, heat it to
release the water, then sterilize and add minerals.

But you're right. It's the company that I was most surprised to see in the
list. The economics don't yet make sense to me.

I pushed Carmichael Roberts (BEV's head of investing) to explain. He said he
has studied water startups for years, and he really likes the tech. But more
importantly, he is very impressed by Cody's skill to sell this unit and far
wide. It's already in 16 countries.

~~~
stcredzero
_Instead, they use a sophisticated absorbent to selectively capture water,
heat it to release the water, then sterilize and add minerals._

So it's using a dessicant? Heating a saturated dessicant in an enclosed
environment can produce a hot, high humidity environment where
dehumidification is easy. That said, it will still produce the most water
someplace like San Francisco, where the humidity is high. There are places
where humidity is high and the rainfall is very low.

Apparently, Zero Mass Water is using some good engineering to get something
like a 4X efficiency increase for water extraction over existing commercial
dessicant dehumidifiers. It's possible that removing the requirement to
process large volumes of air could produce such an efficiency increase.

~~~
debatem1
Stupid question, is this targeted at producing water or is it targeted at
producing clean water where contaminated water is available?

~~~
stcredzero
It's targeted at producing water by extracting it from the air.

------
throwaway5752
Start familiarizing yourself with the term "deep adaptation".

