Tech billionaire Bill Gates has drawn compelling parallels between the current climate technology revolution and his move from Microsoft to global health philanthropy in the early 2000s, calling 2024 a climate change revolution. This is an extremely important year for the development of innovation.
What Happened: Gates, who founded Breakthrough Energy to accelerate solutions to climate change, is concerned about the state of today’s climate-changing technologies and the impact of preventable diseases on millions of children in developing countries. We identified a similar pattern to the global health challenges at the turn of the millennium that were claiming the lives of many people.
“All of this started in 2000 to fight disease, and I believe 2024 will be a similar turning point in the fight against climate change,” Gates wrote in the report’s foreword. are. He points out that, as with the health crisis, many measures to combat climate change already exist, but there are challenges to implementation.
The Microsoft co-founder highlights a major shift in corporate attitudes towards investing in climate change technologies. Big investors such as endowments and sovereign wealth funds are “finally coming off the sidelines” as business leaders increasingly view climate change technology as a business opportunity rather than just an environmental imperative, he said. is watching.
“These innovations are ready for prime time,” Gates emphasizes. “They’re not science projects, they’re scientific products. They’re working. They’re commercially viable.”
Related article: NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission lands off the coast of Florida after more than 200 days at the International Space Station
Why it matters: The report cites several examples of corporate involvement, including American Airlines’ partnership with multiple climate technology ventures and the introduction of Siemens’ innovative vacuum-insulated windows to increase building efficiency. .
Breakthrough Energy, founded by Gates in 2015, has raised more than $3.5 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 110 companies.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures is making investments in climate technology, including a $107 million investment in Swedish hybrid airplane maker Heart Aerospace to push its ES-30 hybrid electric airplane toward commercialization. We are actively doing this.
The company is also working on extracting lithium, a key component in electric vehicle batteries, from Utah’s Great Salt Lake.
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