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Innovation is a key to tackling carbon emissions and, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said, governments should be encouraged to invest more than they have done.Gates, also co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, cited many sources of emissions such as steel and cement factories and the way people grow rice, make fertiliser and raise livestock in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua news agency, saying the world can not skip over any of these to reach zero emissions.
“To solve these problems, innovation is a key,” he said, noting that basic R&D is a vast area of cooperation, especially in the most difficult areas, such as making green hydrogen very cheap to produce green steel or green fertiliser.
“We’re all looking forward to Glasgow in November, and we hope to see a lot more discussion about the innovative tools,” Gates said, adding that even rich countries can’t afford to do so without innovation.
On Tuesday, Gates will release his new book titled “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need” In the book, he suggests certain concrete steps that can be taken to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by individuals, governments and businesses.
“In my book, I’ll share what I’ve learned from more than a decade of studying climate change with experts and investing in the innovations we’ll need to address it,” he said.
Gates expressed the hope that the world could come up with a plan with a lot of innovation, a lot of cooperation between different countries, and a lot of very innovative policies by making a book.
The US billionaire philanthropist said during the interview that electric vehicles will absolutely have a future, although today it is only a modest percentage of car sales, citing the plan of General Motors to stop making gasoline-powered passenger cars by 2035.
He mentioned many lessons learned from the electric vehicle industry, saying that if many of those subsidies are moved into these more challenging areas, better results may be achieved.
Among the new categories of energy, Gates said, he favours nuclear power most, which benefits from transmission benefits and reliability maintenance. It could have a role to play as nuclear plants become safer and cheaper, he added, because it is always available, no matter what the weather.
He said that wind and solar will undoubtedly be a gigantic part of the future generation of electricity, but if there is no miracle of storage, sources such as nuclear power that do not rely on wind or sunlight are needed.
