Bill GatesPhoto: magnifynetLONG BEACH, Calif. – Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates on Friday strayed from his philanthropic focus on fighting poverty and disease to address another threat to the world’s poor — climate change.
“Energy and climate are extremely important to these people,” Gates on Friday told a TED Conference audience packed with influential figures, including the founders of Google and climate champion Al Gore. “The climate getting worse means many years that crops won’t grow from too much rain or not enough, leading to starvation and certainly unrest.”
He broke down variables in a carbon-dioxide-culprit formula, homing in on a conclusion that the answer to the problem of climate change is a source of energy that produces no carbon.
“The formula is a very straightforward one,” Gates said. “More carbon dioxide equals temperature increase equals negative effects like collapsed ecosystems. We have to get to zero.”
To dramatize his point, Gates pulled out a large jar of fireflies in playful flashback to when he unleashed mosquitoes on a TED audience a year earlier while discussing battling malaria. “They won’t bite,” Gates joked of the fireflies. “As a matter of fact, they might not even leave this jar.”
Gates said he is backing development of TerraPower reactors that could be fueled by nuclear waste from disposal facilities or generated by today’s power plants.
Gates touted TerraPower as more reliable than wind or solar, cleaner than burning coal or natural gas, and safer than current nuclear plants.
“With the right materials approach it could work,” Gates said. “Because you burn 99 percent of the waste, it is kind of like a candle.” Nuclear waste fed into a TerraPower reactor would potentially burn for decades before being exhausted.
“Today we are always refueling the reactor so lots of controls and lots of things that can go wrong,” Gates said. “That is not good. With this, you have a piece of fuel, think of it like a log, that burns for 60 years and it is done.”
Researching and testing TerraPower will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, with the building of a test reactor likely to cost in the billions.
Once the technology is proven, market forces will drive down costs, Gates predicted.
Work on TerraPower has been done in France and Japan, and there has been interest in India, Russia, China, and the United States, according to the famed philanthropist.
Gates said that if he were allowed a single wish in the coming 50 years, it would be a global “zero carbon” culture.
“We need energy miracles. The microprocessor and internet are miracles. This is a case where we have to drive and get the miracle in a short timeline.”
Gates dismissed climate-change skeptics, saying TerraPower would render arguments moot because the energy produced would be cheaper than pollution-spewing methods used today. “The skeptics will accept it because it is cheaper,” Gates said. “They might wish it did put out CO2, but they will take it.”
