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Climate Progress

Bill Gates Never Ran an Energy Company: Solar Is More Than Just ‘Cute’, It’s At Grid Parity In 20 States!

By Climate Guest Blogger on Apr 21, 2012 at 12:00 pm

by Jigar Shah, via Huffington Post

Last year, Bill Gates noted in an interview with Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal that technologies like solar photovoltaics and LED lights were “cute” but could never deal with the bigger issue of climate change and powering the developing world.

And, this week, writer Marc Gunther wrote in his post that “Germany, once the world’s leading market for solar power, is pulling back its subsidies. Q Cells, once the world’s largest solar company, just went bankrupt.’ This isn’t happy news.”

So, I am writing to point out three things:

1. The solar industry is growing and is significant, but is not going to solve all the ills of carbon;
2. Mistakes are a blessing; and
3. Theory is theory, not a solution

1. Solar Growth: First, let me make note that I, and others, have just spent the last decade in solar creating the solar services industry which, according to the 2011 National Solar Jobs Census published by the Solar Foundation, grew 6.8 percent between 2010 and 2011.

Plus, the solar industry installed $90 billion of equipment last year. That’s double the amount of equipment that was installed for the new coal industry.

And, GTM research and Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), issued a report that the showed that U.S. installed 1,855 MW (or 1.86 GW) of solar in 2011 and is expected to install a full gigawatt more than that in 2012: 2.8 GW.

GTM Research and SEIA estimate the U.S. solar market’s total value surpassed $8.4 billion in 2011.

So, solar is winning and growing. But, no one is saying it is the only solution — just a compelling piece of the puzzle.

In fact, there is no silver bullet. We must find efficiencies and new solutions in solving the carbon issue in several areas: transport, agriculture, energy, forestry, industry, buildings and waste.

However, when we think about carbon, most of us tend to think of two areas: transportation and electricity. While Bill Gates might label solar and LED lighting as “cute,” the numbers seem to suggest otherwise. Both are billion-dollar industries and together with hundreds of other solutions will help reach the $5+ trillion in new investments necessary to make an impact by 2020.

Remember, we did not get to this point with one major offender, and we will not solve our ills with one major solution.

Gates, however, suggested that we spend more money developing a new generation of energy technologies instead of investing in incremental improvements of today’s energy technologies. He said this at WIRED’s third annual conference, Disruptive by Design.

“Can we, by increasing efficiency [technologies], deal with our climate problem?” Gates asked. “The answer there is basically no, because the climate problem requires more than 90% reduction of CO2 emitted, and no amount of efficiency improvement is enough.”

Again, I disagree with Gates as, in this case, “perfect is the enemy of good.” In solving our CO2 problem, we actually have all of the cost-effective technology need to meet our 2020 goals and more to meet future goals. More R&D is always a good thing, but to suggest the current suite of technologies is not ready is just criminal. Gates certainly didn’t wait for the perfect solutions to Windows before he deployed his beta versions on the world. We are a more productive society because he didn’t wait

[JR:  Related Post -- "Bill Gates still doesn’t know how he got rich."]

2. Mistakes Matter: As noted, Marc Gunther believes that Germany pulling back its subsidies, and Q Cells bankruptcy “isn’t happy news.”

I could not disagree more. While I do not wish for things like the Internet bubble, we now have a robust Internet economy. Did it come at a heavy cost at the end of the 90s and early 2000s? Yes.

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Justice

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Withdraws Support From ALEC

By Faiz Shakir on Apr 9, 2012 at 6:33 pm

Following Kraft, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Intuit, another influential sponsor of ALEC has withdrawn its support from the right-wing corporate front group. Roll Call reports:

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today became the latest backer to withdraw financial support for the American Legislative Exchange Council.

A foundation spokesman told Roll Call that it does not plan to make future grants to the conservative nonprofit, which has come under fire from progressive activists for its support of voter identification laws and other contentious measures.

The Gates Foundation said it supported ALEC on issues regarding “teacher effectiveness and school finance.” Lee Fang reports the funding could potentially have benefited “Microsoft as privatized charters adopt more technology in the classroom.”

Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Color of Change, among others, had targeted the Gates Foundation for giving more than $375,000 to ALEC over the past two years. PCCC garnered more than 28,000 signatures in a matter of hours.

Update

The Gates Foundation tells Ben Smith that it does not plan to withdraw the funding already promised to ALEC for this year. “We have already paid out a significant portion of it,” a spokesman said.

NEWS FLASH

Bill Gates: ‘It’s crazy how little we’re funding energy’ | “It’s crazy how little we’re funding energy,” Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates bemoaned at a conference on the U.S. government’s support for clean-tech research and development. Hobbled by incessant Republican attacks on clean energy, the United States is falling farther and farther behind in the race to build the infrastructure of the 21st century and help civilization survive climate change. Gates was speaking at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit in a discussion moderated by CAP chair John Podesta.

By Brad Johnson on Feb 28, 2012 at 12:30 pm

Climate Progress

Bill Gates Warns Climate Change Threatens Food Security, Finds It ‘Ironic’ People Oppose His ‘Solution’: Genetic Modification

By Joe Romm on Jan 26, 2012 at 4:55 pm

Food prices on the rise
Bill Gates is one very confused billionaire philanthropist.

He understands global warming is a big problem — indeed, his 2012 Foundation Letter even frets about the  grave threat it poses to food security.  But he just doesn’t want to do very much now to stop it from happening (see Pro-geoengineering Bill Gates disses efficiency, “cute” solar, deployment — still doesn’t know how he got rich).

He love technofixes like geoengineering and, as we’ll see, genetically modified food.   Rather than investing in cost-effective emissions reduction strategies today or in renewable energy technologies that are rapidly moving down the cost curve, he explains that the reason invests so much in nuclear R&D is “The good news about nuclear is that there has hardly been any innovation.”  Seriously!

His Letter includes the ominous chart at the top, and he warns of the dire consequences of climate change:

Meanwhile, the threat of climate change is becoming clearer. Preliminary studies show that the rise in global temperature alone could reduce the productivity of the main crops by over 25 percent. Climate change will also increase the number of droughts and floods that can wipe out an entire season of crops. More and more people are raising familiar alarms about whether the world will be able to support itself in the future, as the population heads toward a projected 9.3 billion by 2050.

Strong stuff.

And yet, as the AP reported this week, the wealthiest of all Americans gets very prickly if you don’t wholeheartedly endorse his techno-fix adaptation-centric approach  to dealing with this oncoming disaster:

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Security

Bill Gates: Development Assistance Must Continue Despite Global Economic Downturn

By Eli Clifton on Jan 25, 2012 at 1:49 pm

Bill Gates issued an appeal to policymakers to support foreign aid that tackles public health and poverty challenges in the developing world. Gates, writing in the the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s annual letter today, highlighted the importance of foreign aid in global development and raising living standards in the world’s poorest countries.

The letter acknowledged that the global economic and political climate puts foreign aid expenditures under pressure, but warned that a cut in these funds could have severe implications for populations struggling to pull themselves out of poverty:

The world faces a clear choice. If we invest relatively modest amounts, many more poor farmers will be able to feed their families. If we don’t, one in seven people will continue living needlessly on the edge of starvation. My annual letter this year is an argument for making the choice to keep on helping extremely poor people build self-sufficiency.

Gates argues that investment in poor farmers can “increase their productivity so they can feed themselves and their families,” and “contribute to global food security.” The past fifty years has marked dramatic improvements in poverty reduction — global poverty levels have dropped from 40 percent to 15 percent — but Gates is concerned that the historic improvements could slow if funding for irrigation and agricultural research dry up:

We can be more innovative about delivering solutions that already exist to the farmers who need them. Knowledge about managing soil and tools like drip irrigation can help poor farmers grow more food today. We can also discover new approaches and create new tools to fundamentally transform farmers’ lives. But we won’t advance if we don’t continue to fund agricultural innovation, and I am very worried about where those funds will come from in the current economic and political climate.

The Gates Foundation — which has committed more than $25 billion [PDF] in grants since its inception in 1994 — has been an outspoken supporter of government funding of global public health and poverty reduction programs. Gates’s letter emphasized that development assistance programs “has a significant impact on people’s lives” and “modest investments in the poorest make a huge difference.”

Economy

Billionaire Bill Gates Calls For Increasing Taxes On The Rich: ‘That’s Just Justice’

By Tanya Somanader on Jan 25, 2012 at 12:40 pm

Last night in his State of the Union address, President Obama once again urged Congress to pass the Buffett rule, noting that 25 percent of American millionaires pay less in taxes that millions of families in the middle-class. Republicans were quick to dismiss his request as “the politics of envy and division.” However, multi-billionaire Bill Gates called his policy something else entirely: “That’s just justice.”

In an interview with the BBC, Gates noted “taxes are going to have to go up” and thus he’d prefer that they “go up more on the rich than everyone else.” There needs to be “a sense of shared sacrifice,” he said, adding, “right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should”:

GATES: Well the United States has a huge budget deficit, so taxes are going to have to go up. And I certainly agree that they should go up more on the rich than everyone else. That’s just justice.

BBC HOST: Is that a message you think that works with other people as wealthy as yourself, or is it just a small circle of friends — yourself, Warren Buffet, a few others.

GATES: Well, I hope we can solve that deficit problem with a sense of shared sacrifice — where everybody would feel like they’re doing their part. And right now, I don’t feel like people like myself are paying as much as we should.

Watch it:

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has declared that people with Gates’ view are just riddled with “envy.” But considering that Gates’ wealth dwarfs Romney’s millions, it’s highly doubtful that Gates is envious. He, like an increasing number of millionaires, just views paying his fair share as the right thing to do.

Economy

Bill Gates Champions A Financial Transactions Tax: ‘This Money Could Be Well Spent And Make A Difference’

By Tanya Somanader on Nov 3, 2011 at 12:01 pm

While Republicans resist any attempt to address growing income inequality, more and more of America’s wealthy are asking to pay their fair share. Joining billionaire Warren Buffet, Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently issued his support for “millionaires and billionaires” paying more in taxes.

Now, Gates is taking it a step further and traveling to the G-20 meeting in Cannes, France today to champion the “Robin Hood tax” — a small financial transaction tax on each stock and bond trade — in order to help financially strapped developed nations meet their global aid pledges to the poor. Aware that countries like the U.S. are not currently receptive to this or any taxes, Gates told the Guardian that hopes his “credibility” lends credence to the idea that such taxes work:

Speaking to the Guardian on the eve of the summit, Gates said: “It is very plausible that certain kinds of FTTs could work. I am lending some credibility to that. This money could be well spent and make a difference. An FTT is more possible now than it was a year ago, but it won’t be at rates that magically raise gigantic sums of money.” [...]

[His] report identifies an FTT as one of three ways of raising money. Gates will tell the G20 that it could garner almost $11bn for health aid projects if all members levied tobacco excise taxes of at least 70% of the pack price and earmarked a slice of the revenue for development. Small taxes on shipping and aviation fuel could raise $37bn and $27bn respectively, the report says.

Gates is not alone in his effort. Yesterday, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) introduced legislation that proposes a 0.03 percent tax on financial transactions that could raise $150 billion to “invest in our future, our infrastructure and our middle class.” As TP Economy editor Pat Garofalo notes, the tax — which has been embraced by the Occupy Wall Street protests, the governments of France and Germany, and even the Archbishop of Canterbury — could raise serious revenue while slowing down some of the high frequency trading that “mega-banks like Goldman Sachs employ to churn up quick profits.”

DeFazio told ThinkProgress that while Gates’ stated purpose for the tax may be different, he welcomes Gates’ support for an idea already proven to work. He noted that the United Kingdom already imposes a 0.25 percent transaction tax on the sale or purchase of stocks which, as Center For Economic Policy and Research notes, “has very little impact on people who buy stock with the intent of holding it for a long period of time” but will deter those who high frequency trades that exacerbate or lead to market crashes. The policy helps return Wall Street to its days as a place “where people with good ideas go to raise capital” for production rather than a place for “gambling” schemes, said DeFazio.

NEWS FLASH

Bill Gates: ‘I’m Generally In Favor’ Of The Rich Paying More In Taxes | The majority of millionaires (“job creators” in the GOP’s parlance) support higher taxes on the wealthy. Today on ABC’s This Week, Microsoft founder Bill Gates added his voice to the chorus, scoffing at the idea that the rich would riot over a marginal tax increase. “I just can’t imagine these millionaires and billionaires going down and barricading the streets because they are going to have to pay 4 or 5 percent more in taxes. I mean, it’s going to be rough for them,” he quipped. “There’s certainly a case to be made that taxes should be more progressive,” he added. When asked whether he agrees with the Buffett rule, he noted that the revenues needed cannot be raised completely off the top income bracket but he said, “I’m generally in favor of the idea that the rich should pay somewhat more.” Watch it:

By Tanya Somanader on Oct 30, 2011 at 12:47 pm

Climate Progress

Denier Cash Machine Swells: Pollutocrat Koch Brothers Now Worth $50 Billion, Poised to Become Richest Men in America

By Joe Romm on Sep 22, 2011 at 6:01 pm

The two brothers who bankroll climate denial and the Tea Party extremists keep getting richer.  Forbes estimates that pollutocrats Charles and David Koch have a fortune of $25 billion each, making them the fourth (and fifth) richest Americans.

As TP Green notes:

Buoyed by aggressive speculative trading on volatile energy markets, the Koch brothers accumulated $15 billion in wealth since March 2010, a 43 percent increase.

Like many folks who run oil companies, the Kochs love high oil prices.  And the Kochs essentially invented oil derivatives — and led the way to deregulate the market — so they could profit even more.

The only three richer Americans are:

3. Larry Ellison (Oracle) – $33 billion

2. Warren Buffett – $39 billion

1. Bill Gates – $59 billion

Gates and Buffett are an interesting contrast to the Kochs.  Gates and Buffett devote more and more of their money to helping the developing world deal with ever-worsening impacts of climate change (though Buffett profits from pollution, too).  The Kochs work tirelessly to enrich themselves while destroying the climate.  Guess which pair is going to win?

Let’s look closer at why the Kochs are poised to become the richest Americans.

Read more

NEWS FLASH

Bill Gates Calls For Boost In Federal Investment In Clean-Energy Research And Development | During a Hill briefing earlier this week, Microsoft founder Bill Gates highlighted the importance of energy innovation, stating, “There is a need for government to be involved in funding research. We have seen this in the medical sector and the IT sector. The benefits to society of research are broad enough that if you just count on the private sector alone, you have very dramatic underinvestment.” The briefing, hosted by the American Energy Innovation Council, featured other private-sector titans, and the release of a new report that makes the case for expanding funding of programs such as the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPAE) to help increase U.S. economic competitiveness, security and more.

By Brad Johnson on Sep 16, 2011 at 11:00 am

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