Bill Gates has pledged to invest $1.5 billion on joint projects with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to remove planet-warming carbon from the atmosphere, provided that lawmakers approve a program for developing new technologies in this space.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal announcing the pledge, the co-founder of Microsoft said that the money would come from a fund run by his climate-focused organization, Breakthrough Energy. The spending would be spread over a period of three years. The joint projects could include work on emissions-free fuel for planes and innovations for carbon removal by capturing carbon dioxide from the air — technologies in which Gates has already made investments.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Senate approved a $1 trillion infrastructure spending bill that includes billions for climate-related efforts. Among the funding is $25 billion for the DOE to pay for demonstration projects backed by public-private partnerships. The proposed legislation must still pass the House.
Gates told WSJ that he hopes other investors will chip in to raise as much as $15 billion for DOE-supported projects that lessen the atmosphere’s carbon burden.
He has some experience in this area: Gates and other ultra-wealthy individuals have already raised $2 billion as part of Breakthrough Energy Ventures for investing in a slate of carbon-cutting startups.
As lawmakers and billionaires were considering this week how to support climate investments, the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Monday released its most recent scientific study on the causes, effects and impacts of global warming. The grim report cautioned that aggressive, immediate actions to cut carbon emissions are essential if we are to prevent the worst climate outcomes.
Earlier this year, Gates published a book on how to fight the climate crisis in which he made the case for the essential roles that the government and R&D spending will have to play in developing technologies for a carbon-free future.
“The real value of government leadership in R&D is that it can take chances on bold ideas that might fail or might not pay off right away. This is especially true of scientific enterprises that remain too risky for the private sector to pursue,” Gates wrote.
In October, TerraPower, the Gates-backed nuclear power company, won $80 million in funding from the DOE’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program. The money will help cover the costs of building a next-generation nuclear power plant in Wyoming on the site of a retiring coal plant. Gates for many years has lobbied congress to engage in public-private partnerships to fund innovation in nuclear power.
