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Bill Gates Announces A New $1 Billion Clean Energy Fund (fortune.com)
And "he's got several billionaire pals on board." An anonymous reader quotes Fortune:
Nearly two dozen of the world's most successful business leaders, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists will invest up to $1 billion in a fund led by Microsoft-co-founder Bill Gates that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to almost zero by financing emerging clean energy technology. The Breakthrough Energy Ventures Fund includes John Doerr, chairman of venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Alibaba founder Jack Ma, Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla, former energy hedge fund manager John Arnold, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, and SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner...
The new fund, which will have a 20-year lifespan, is designed to be both broad and scientific -- two seemingly contradictory focuses -- in its investment approach. The fund will not be confined to a specific segment of the investment pipeline, which means it will put money into startups at the earliest of stages all the way to companies that have reached commercialization.
Gates said Sunday that "Our goal is to build companies that will help deliver the next generation of reliable, affordable, and emissions-free energy to the world."
The new fund, which will have a 20-year lifespan, is designed to be both broad and scientific -- two seemingly contradictory focuses -- in its investment approach. The fund will not be confined to a specific segment of the investment pipeline, which means it will put money into startups at the earliest of stages all the way to companies that have reached commercialization.
Gates said Sunday that "Our goal is to build companies that will help deliver the next generation of reliable, affordable, and emissions-free energy to the world."
And "he's got several billionaire pals on board."
Just like the President elect.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Clean Coal, Clean Oil and Clean Fraking?
By the year 2050 we will still be running coal, natural gas, and oil fired power plants. Fossil fuel generation will still be greater than 50% of all electric generation.
We may be forced into electric cars, or hybrids, but they won't be replacing power generation with zero emissions technology that quickly.
"committed to developing the nest-generation of energy technologies"
So basically it's for the birds?
Nest... isn't that a thing already?
etc. etc.
Nucular from the '50's' works as good today and tomorrow as it always have. Trust me. I know. I am a nucular enginer in charged of safeney.
... with google: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... ?
>a significant amount of total emissions.
can you show us the data?
We will never reach zero CO2 emissions.
Maybe we can reach zero net emissions through sequestration, but as long as we build with reasonable structural materials, we will not have zero emissions. I'm still not sure zero net emissions is quite the same thing as zero emissions either.
Also, it does take a whopping amount of energy to sequester emissions, so it's an interesting economic exercise to consider the energy investment of sequestration versus the cost of dealing with climate change. It's one of those things where people see the concentrated costs of war or relocation or whatever, but not the diffuse costs of say a 5% increase in cost of all steel and concrete everywhere. (Some ballpark numbers: 2016 world steel market was about 1500 million tons, at a price of something like $300 a ton. So a 5% increase would be about $22.5 billion a year.(And that's assuming it only costs 5% to sequester the carbon emitted from making steel.)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
Bill Gates, et. al, have the approach to the problem that's more likely to succeed.
Carbon credits have the workable idea of making it profitable to lessen production of green-house gases, but it attempts this by creating artificial incentives to control the actions of businesses. Such heavy-handed interference is almost always short-term and rife with the usual faults politically mandated solutions bring to the table.
On the other hand, if using clean energy can be made to actually be significantly cheaper and more convenient, then the solution to "dirty" energy will be quickly enacted all on its own. No government intervention needed.
People living under "green energy" recoil in horror as energy prices go through the roof due to FiT programs. Progressives continue to wonder why all those people don't vote for them and, tell their friends that they know what's best for everyone.
Om, nomnomnom...
I'd love to see this go to any or all of the dozen or so dark-horse fusion efforts: polywell, general fusion, tri-alpha, lockheed-martin, etc.
as i did in 1986.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with private investors trying to develop clean energy sources. Why so many of the posts object is beyond me.
Climate change is a lie per Donald Trump. Therefore clean energy is a waste of money. Trump is all seeing and all knowing. This is pointless. Gyna has a huuuuuge lead over us in energy. I love the poorly educated!!!!
This is a great initiative and I applaud Bill Gates and the rest for spearheading this, but I can't help but feel like this is giving government and industry and an easy way out of doing what they should have been doing themselves already.
You can have energy sources that are:
1. Reliable
2. Affordable
3. Environmentally friendly...
Just like you can choose hardware that is:
1. Reliable
2. Affordable
3. High Performance
The problem here is that you can only pick two out of three...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I hope they throw some money towards developing LFTRs. If you have a couple of hours this Thorium Remix 2016 documentary is AMAZING.
The greatest green house gas is water vapor.
The greatest green house gas is water vapor.
And yet water vapour is in short-term dynamic equilibrium in the atmosphere - excess is removed via precipitation, and shortage is made up via evaporation from the ground or the oceans. Thus relative humidity is self-regulating to be essentially constant. But with rising temperatures (due to e.g. increased CO2) the absolute humidity and hence the greenhouse effect is increasing. Water vapour is one of the best-known positive climate feedbacks, but, unlike long-living greenhouse gases like CO2, it is not a climate forcing.
Stephan
Yeah? So what? It is not the most intense, just the largest volume. And as global temps increase, we will see more water in.the air.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
At least they did the easy work of identifying who is against the US.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Three cheers for Mr. Gates and some others for taking some action, but it seems like marketing and self-protection. Quoting http://www.b-t.energy/unsolici... [www.b-t.energy]
"Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) and Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) do not accept or consider unsolicited ideas, suggestions, information, or materials of any nature whatsoever (“submissions”) and we request that you don’t provide submissions to us. The purpose of this policy is to avoid misunderstandings and disputes when BEC’s and/or BEV’s products, services, technologies or business are similar or even identical to your submissions."
The lack of opportunity for the general public to work on environmental initiatives is disappointing. It would be great to see such leadership include a public engagement plan to make real projects happen first at small scale then up. The ideas, enthusiasm and effort must come from and benefit the average person.
To be fair to BEC/BEV, at least their club is doing something. It seems the public is disorganized and government is dysfunctional, preferring instead to argue over building big walls and making war.
What a great story we have here, do go on.
Driving a Leaf for a year has provided me with some data. Comparing monthly bills to the previous year, I am paying roughly $35 per month for the same mileage that my SUV used to cost $240 ($60 per week). Even with the price dropping by 50%, filling up the SUV would still cost $120 ($30 per week).
With this in mind, I went out and purchased an 80V cordless snow blower two days ago. I have cleared my driveway, sidewalks, and the dump from the city plows twice now. I didn't need to prime it, pull the handle to start it, or fill it up. Just pop out the battery and charge it for 30 minutes. My old Craftsman snow blower is now sitting at a local school as a donation.
Soviets Chump, I mean Trump.
"Broad and Scientific" are not contradictory poses.
Broad - accept any solution that might be out there.
Scientific - thoroughly research said solutions for suitability with regards to many factors.
Perhaps Forbes was thinking of "Broad and Specific", which would indeed be somewhat contradictory.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Where is the "-1 Crank" option?
Just to be clear - this is his investment as a business.
With all the tax breaks he gets from the so called charities he runs - he definitely can afford to invest a lot in any business!!!
Even when all these altruistic billionaires claim to be donating 90% - 95% of their assets to charities how come their persoanl net worth doesnt decrease at all? Bill Gates is still worth over $80b even since he started donating 90% of his worth when it was at $40b?
And cheap too: have fewer people.