2023-11-06 05:37:58
During the conversation, two of the issues were discussed, namely climate change and global development, and why they both require urgent action or impatient optimism.
Renowned billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates spoke of the need for impatient optimism regarding climate change and global development in an interview with an international affairs think tank last month:
Q: If you go back ten years, are you more or less optimistic regarding the current situation in terms of climate change?
Bill Gates: I’m certainly more optimistic because in 2015, when the Paris agreement was signed, there were so many emission areas where there was no activity….
Q: About ten years ago, solar and wind were the most expensive sources of energy. Since then, the price of solar energy has fallen by 90% and that of wind energy by 70%, and electric vehicles are now economically viable… I know that innovation excites you. What areas excite you the most when it comes to innovation?
Bill Gates: In this portfolio of 100 companies, it is difficult to choose the one I prefer. Some are quite simple, like a company that makes windows where the temperature doesn’t pass from one side to the other, but which prevents you from being cold in winter or hot in summer, which is very cheap. There is also a company where you leave your house and you pump air, but it has a chemical in it. When he sees cracks, he plugs them. There is no need to find the cracks, just pump out the air. You can reduce heat loss between windows and eliminate cracks. The energy bill can be halved, which means less demand is placed on the overall energy system… Cement and steel buildings are the ones that, in a way, impress me the most, because I wasn’t sure we would find anything in these spaces…
Q: The problem, I guess, with cement is that you’re basically taking limestone and turning it into calcium oxide. But the byproduct of this conversion process is CO2. We must therefore find a way to capture this CO2….
Bill Gates: When you heat limestone, it releases CO2. It’s exactly as you say, it’s an equal number of shows. One of our companies does not use limestone. She looks for another source of calcium, which fortunately turns out to be abundant and cheap. It makes exactly the same cement that we produce today, but without using limestone. I was amazed that we might do this.
Bill Gates also hopes to see nuclear energy in an economically viable form. The nuclear industry failed because its product was too expensive. It wasn’t because of waste or security issues, which we can address, but it was regarding “economics.”
Bill Gates: First of all, you have to have a very different economic proposition. The nuclear reactor I participate in, TerraPower, only produces electricity when renewable sources, whose marginal costs are very low, produce nothing. We produce heat all day long, and only when the price of electricity is high enough do we produce electricity, because otherwise you have all these investment costs that only make half Over time, the supply of solar energy in this market will be very low.
I think that fission should not be abandoned. I am only involved in this endeavor because it might make a significant contribution to the fight once morest climate change… I cannot stress enough that it is much easier to solve the problem if you can mix a certain degree of fission or fusion to fill the periods when renewable energies do not produce. Cold waves or cold fronts that set in are when homes need heating the most. This is the moment that neither wind nor solar produce.
Source : GatesNotes
And you ?
What is your opinion on the subject?
What do you think of Bill Gates’ statements? Do you share his opinion regarding the impatient optimism when it comes to innovations in the field of climate change?
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We won’t be able to solve the climate change equation without global collaboration, says Bill Gates: Here’s how the Microsoft co-founder is funding the fight
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