The European Union recently reported the biggest reduction in carbon emissions in decades—an 8 percent drop from 2022 to 2023. That’s the kind of progress that is increasingly possible because of innovation in clean energy. 

I’ve been working on clean energy and climate change since 2008. It’s one of the most urgent and complex problems the world faces, and we need to act quickly to avoid the worst possible outcomes. We need to do two things at once: reduce emissions to net-zero, and help people cope with the effects of climate change that are already happening. 

Addressing these challenges is incredibly difficult, but it’s also an opportunity. When everyone in the world has access to affordable, reliable, and abundant clean energy, the world will be healthier and more prosperous.  

I wish the world had everything we needed to eliminate emissions, but we don’t—not yet. For example, we don’t know how to make clean plastic, steel, or cement at the scale we need. We need to transform the entire physical economy, including how we generate electricity, move around, manufacture things, grow food, and heat and cool buildings. And we need to make all these innovations cheap enough for everyone to afford them. So through Breakthrough Energy, I fund work on innovations that will help us make that transformation.  

I also fund work to help people in the world’s poorest countries thrive in a climate where droughts, floods, and heat waves are becoming more severe and more frequent. That work is driven primarily by the Gates Foundation, whose partners are working on things like new varieties of crops and livestock that can flourish in a warmer world.