Bill Gates, philanthropist,
is not impressed with
solar and wind power.
The Microsoft co-founder
said intermittent renewables
are the last thing we should
force on poor countries.
He the objected to
one strategy of
killing fossil fuels
via financial pressure.
Cheap renewables
won’t stop
global warming,
said Bill Gates.
The interview was by
Arun Majumdar,
co-director of
Stanford Energy’s
Precourt Institute
for Energy.
When Arun Majumdar,
a “Google Scholar,”
suggested that people
were “optimistic”
the costs of renewables
and battery storage
were coming down,
Gates got agitated.
“That is so disappointing,”
he said, tearing into the
misplaced optimism.
While he supported nuclear,
Gates said battery technology
was woefully deficient
and renewables needed
“a miracle.”
They certainly weren’t
the solution for India
or Africa right now.
When financial analysts
proposed rating companies
on their CO2 output,
to drive down emissions,
Gates was appalled
by the idea the climate
and energy problem
would be easy to solve.
He asked them:
“Do you guys on Wall Street
have something in your desks
that makes steel ?"
"Where is fertilizer, cement,
plastic going to come from ?"
"Do planes fly through the sky
because of some number
you put in a spreadsheet ?”
“The idea that we
have the current tools ...
is more of a block,
than climate denial,”
Gates said.
“The ‘climate is easy to solve’
group is our biggest problem.”