How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

by Bill Gates

Besides, making electricity accounts for only 26 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Even if we had a huge breakthrough in batteries, we would still need to get rid of the other 74 percent.

To avoid a climate disaster, we have to get to zero. We need to deploy the tools we already have, like solar and wind, faster and smarter. And we need to create and roll out breakthrough technologies that can take us the rest of the way.

Mission Innovation includes 24 countries and the European Commission and has unlocked $4.6 billion a year in new money for clean energy research, an increase of more than 50 percent in just a handful of years.

Just as we needed new tests, treatments, and vaccines for the novel coronavirus, we need new tools for fighting climate change: zero-carbon ways to produce electricity, make things, grow food, keep our buildings cool and warm, and move people and goods around the world. And we need new seeds and other innovations to help the world’s poorest people—many of whom are smallholder farmers—adapt to a warmer climate.

I think more like an engineer than a political scientist, and I don’t have a solution to the politics of climate change. Instead, what I hope to do is focus the conversation on what getting to zero requires: We need to channel the world’s passion and its scientific IQ into deploying the clean energy solutions we have now, and inventing new ones, so we stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

The world is not exactly lacking in rich men with big ideas about what other people should do, or who think technology can fix any problem. And I own big houses and fly in private planes—in fact, I took one to Paris for the climate conference—so who am I to lecture anyone on the environment? I plead guilty to all three charges. I can’t deny being a rich guy with an opinion. I do believe, though, that it is an informed opinion, and I am always trying to learn more.

I’m also a technophile. Show me a problem, and I’ll look for technology to fix it. When it comes to climate change, I know innovation isn’t the only thing we need. But we cannot keep the earth livable without it. Techno-fixes are not sufficient, but they are necessary.

I’ve been aware of how high my emissions are, but working on this book has made me even more conscious of my responsibility to reduce them. Shrinking my carbon footprint is the least that can be expected of someone in my position who’s worried about climate change and publicly calling for action. In 2020, I started buying sustainable jet fuel and will fully offset my family’s aviation emissions in 2021. For our non-aviation emissions, I’m buying offsets through a company that runs a facility that removes carbon dioxide from the air

So I’m supporting early-stage clean energy research, investing in promising clean energy companies, advocating for policies that will trigger breakthroughs throughout the world, and encouraging other people who have the resources to do the same. Here’s the key point: Although heavy emitters like me should use less energy, the world overall should be using more of the goods and services that energy provides. There is nothing wrong with using more energy as long as it’s carbon-free.

The key to addressing climate change is to make clean energy just as cheap and reliable as what we get from fossil fuels. I’m putting a lot of effort into what I think will get us to that point and make a meaningful difference in going from 52 billion tons a year to zero.