Bill Gates backs climate technologies

REVOLUTIONARY Microsoft founder Bill Gates (left) and Britain’s Prince William attend the Breakthrough Energy Summit in London on June 27, 2024. Gates on June 27 said cutting-edge climate technology will drive a ‘green industrial revolution’ and usher in a new wave of prosperity. AFP PHOTO 

He is the single largest investor in a fund he established in 2015 that has plowed around $2.2 billion into early stage technologies like low-carbon cement, zero-emissions aviation and sustainable building materials.

But in the quest to deploy these technologies more quickly at scale, Gates is seeking to widen the investor base from venture capitalists to pension and sovereign wealth funds.

Many of the innovations he has bankrolled are still at the lab level and not making a dent on the heat-trapping gases that drive global warming, let alone a return on investment.

Critics say climate technology is a costly distraction when deep reductions in emissions are needed today, as well as money to help the developing world cope with climate change.

Gates acknowledged that innovation alone would not solve the problem, but said there were several reasons to be optimistic.

Some of these companies are already rolling out innovations, he said, while others are showing great progress in a short time.

“I think the clock is moving forward because of human ingenuity,” he told reporters at the close of his Breakthrough Energy summit at a 19th-century dockyard in London.

“I do think we can provide all services that mankind wants with zero emissions without making the cost of those services higher… I don’t think I am crazy to be optimistic.”

‘Green industrial revolution’

Less than a decade ago, Gates said there was very little investor interest in climate technologies.

He raised an initial $1 billion with other ultra-wealthy investors including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Alibaba’s Jack Ma, and their first summit in 2022 attracted a few hundred attendees.

But investors beyond deep-pocketed philanthropists are starting to pay attention to climate startups long deemed too risky a bet, industry figures show.

At the London event, Gates brought together around 1,500 executives from banks, state-backed investment funds and major businesses.

In one pavilion, potential investors inspected hydrogen-electric aircraft engines designed by ZeroAvia, hunks of low-carbon steel manufactured by Boston Metal and an enormous magnet used by Commonwealth Fusion Systems to test fusion power.

Source, a company that uses a “hydropanel” to harvest water from vapor in the atmosphere, quenched thirsts on a hot summer’s night.

The fast rise in investor interest was obvious and understandable, said Tim Heidel, chief executive officer at Veir, a company backed by Gates that is exploring high-temperature conduction to improve electricity transmission.

“They have an opportunity to build some of the largest companies on the planet,” Heidel told Agence France-Presse (AFP) at a reception night, where attendees drank cocktails with names such as “electricity elixir” and listened to a string quartet.

Gates told investors that “if you’re helping to solve climate, the chance of building very large, very profitable companies” would follow.

“I think it’s fair to say that what you’re seeing… [with] those companies is the foundation for this green industrial revolution,” he said in an opening pitch after walking on stage to the sound of “Revolution” by the Beatles.