My climate journey

Later this year, I’ll attend COP28, the big United Nations conference on climate change being held in Dubai. The meeting is an important opportunity to check on the progress the world is making toward goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that countries adopted back in 2015.

Worryingly, the world has not made nearly as much progress as it needs to. The “Global Stock Take” report to be published ahead of COP will likely show we are off track to meet our goals, and worse still, we are continuing to increase, instead of decrease emissions.

As we experience record-breaking temperatures, fires, floods, and other extreme weather events each week, it’s hard not to be disheartened. Climate change is already affecting most people’s lives, and when we think about the impact on our families and future generations, it can feel overwhelming.

Despite the dire predictions, I remain an optimist. I have seen the power of human ingenuity and innovation to tackle great challenges. For example, since 2000, the world has reduced by almost half the number of children who die every year—that is humanity at its best. And it drives my optimism. I firmly believe we can still get to net-zero carbon emissions, avoid a climate disaster, and create a more prosperous future for all.

You may be wondering what does the guy who made software know about climate change? Well, it’s been a journey, and one I wanted to share with you.

It started with a question: “Where are all the lights?” 

For decades, I puzzled over this when traveling with the Gates Foundation throughout cities in sub-Saharan Africa. One trip stood out in particular, it was the early 2000s and I was visiting Nigeria.

I met kids who spent their evenings doing homework by candlelight or under the rare streetlamp, when one was available; and I met women who spent hours every day collecting firewood so they could cook over open flames in their homes.

I learned at the time that roughly a billion people around the world didn’t have reliable electricity; and of those billion, most of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa.

The work at the Gates Foundation is all about trying to reduce poverty and help people lead healthier, more productive lives. But, as I wrote in my book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, it’s hard to stay healthy if your local medical clinic can’t keep vaccines cold because the refrigerators don’t stay on. It’s hard to be productive without lights to read by. And it’s hard to build an economy with jobs for everyone without access to reliable, affordable electricity for offices, factories, and call centers. A society’s progress is directly tied to how much energy it can access. And the cheapest, most reliable sources of that energy have long been fossil fuels.

That’s when it sunk in that to reduce global inequities, it would be critical to ensure energy was affordable and reliable for everyone, everywhere. I had also started to realize that it was more complicated than that. Because I had begun to study climate change.

Getting to Zero 

Like a lot of people back then, I didn’t think much about the impending climate disaster. Greenhouse gases were causing the planet to warm—I knew that much. But I assumed there were cyclical variations or other factors that would help us avoid the worst.

Then I met two climate scientists, Ken Caldeira and David Keith, and what they showed me was astonishing. No matter how you sliced it, the takeaway was the same: as long as humans keep adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, temperatures will continue to rise. And rising temperatures threaten the health of the planet and everything on it.

After that meeting, I couldn’t get climate out of my head. I read the latest studies and reports. I watched video lectures on the earth’s changing climate by renowned physics professor Richard Wolfson. I even bought and read Weather for Dummies (which is a terrific book, by the way).

The Problem of Inequity 

There is a dilemma: the world needs to cut its carbon emissions to zero, but the poorest countries—who have done little to contribute to climate change—desperately need access to more energy. And they need this energy at affordable prices so they can develop and improve people’s lives.

While the world has made some extraordinary progress in bringing down prices in areas like solar power and electric vehicle batteries, for most clean energy solutions, they remain too expensive and out of reach for all but the wealthy few.

When I see a problem—any problem—my first thought is always, “What role can innovation play in solving this?” My career at Microsoft and later with the Gates Foundation have reinforced my belief in innovation—in the way that new perspectives, different approaches, and new technologies can help solve intractable problems. In the case of climate change, I believe that innovation is not just the key to helping power low-income countries, but every country. It will help the entire planet eliminate its emissions.

The Turning Point

I spent the next decade learning as much as I could and making a few big bets. One of those bets is a company called TerraPower, which I founded in 2006. TerraPower is a next-generation nuclear innovation company developing advanced nuclear energy to meet growing electricity needs, mitigate climate change, and lift billions out of poverty. TerraPower is building a demonstration Natrium power plant in Kemmerer, WY, which is due to go online in 2030. Oh, and around the same time I delivered my first TED talk on climate, called “Innovating to Zero!”

But the more I learned, the more I realized innovation was still on the sidelines of climate investments, policy, and action. The year was 2015 and the French government was due to host COP21 in Paris. As politicians around the world prepared for what was being hailed as a landmark event, I watched as thousands of students and activists around the world held rallies, demanding their leaders do more to prevent a climate disaster. Their passion inspired me.

I felt like I needed to do more. Not only did I have significant resources that could be put to work, I also had the ability to use my voice in a way that could help draw more attention and money to solutions that had been missed in the climate conversations so far. I set out to get innovation on the agenda at COP21 and encourage world leaders and private investors to spend more money on at least one part of the puzzle: early stage energy research.

It wasn’t easy—public sector R&D spending was low, and so was private investment in cleantech—but world leaders and investors came through. By the time the Paris conference kicked off, French President François Hollande, with the help of U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, convinced twenty heads of state to commit to doubling their budgets for energy research and development as part of an initiative that was created called Mission Innovation. Separately, more than two dozen investors committed funding to promising climate tech startups, the beginnings of what would become Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV), a venture capital fund that invests in climate companies to help them develop and grow their businesses.

BEV has since funded more than 100 companies in their start-up phase, addressing every area of emissions (each company has to prove they can reduce emissions by ½ a gigaton to be considered for funding).

Eight Years Later – Discover, Develop, Deploy 

Given the magnitude of the challenge of reaching net zero, it became clear there was far more support needed in the area of climate innovation. This was not a problem venture capital alone could fix.

We saw there were maybe thousands of scientists and innovators who might be on the cusp of discovering the next big climate innovation but didn’t have sufficient resources to support their research or their move from discovering an idea in a lab to becoming an entrepreneur running a business. We also began to understand the complex challenges facing companies trying to deploy their technologies. We wanted to provide more support to help overcome these barriers. And for the innovation ecosystem to flourish, governments would need to increase their commitment to climate research, and build policies that support a marketplace for these new technologies.

To deliver on this more ambitious agenda, we built Breakthrough Energy —an organization with a global network of partners from the private, public, and philanthropic sectors who share ideas, learn from one another, and fund many promising people and projects. As part of Breakthrough Energy, we have now established the Fellows program which supports emerging climate innovators as they build out their new ideas and climate solutions. We have created a project finance initiative, Catalyst, which funds large-scale, first-of-a-kind projects in their deployment phase so that critical climate solutions can reach global scale more rapidly. And around the world the Breakthrough Energy policy teams advocate for government actions that will accelerate our journey to net-zero.

Adapting to the current climate reality

Mitigating climate change is only part of the story. We also must face the reality that the effects of climate change are already here. We read about rising temperatures, floods, fires, and extreme weather events almost every day. These events often hit vulnerable communities that have contributed the least to climate change the hardest. Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are already experiencing floods and drought, shorter growing seasons, and even famine. Climate change disproportionately affects women and children, impacting access to healthcare, maternal, and neonatal outcomes. Extreme temperatures also impact migration, which puts stress on heathcare facilities that cannot predict or easily respond to fluctuations in the population. These are just a few of the emerging issues.

It is now clear that meaningful climate action requires that we address its effects that are jeopardizing lives already. The Gates Foundation has responded to these environmental pressures by focusing global health and development programs on climate adaptation. For example, agricultural innovation is crucial for helping communities maintain food security despite climate change. And the burden of infectious diseases like malaria continues to shift as well, and requires more interventions. These are some of the areas where the Foundation continues to dedicate significant resources.

Looking Ahead 

I was recently back in Nigeria—18 years after my first trip—meeting with young innovators in energy, health care, and other sectors. One of them was Femi Adeyemo, the founder and CEO of Arnergy, one of the companies BEV supports and one of the fastest growing renewable energy companies in Nigeria, providing affordable, reliable, and clean energy systems throughout the region—powering schools, hospitals, and small businesses. With time, I hope that Arnegy will become one of many such companies advancing meaningful climate solutions in Nigeria, and around the world.

People like Femi keep me optimistic that we can overcome climate change. It may be the hardest challenge humanity has ever faced and will require unprecedented levels of ingenuity, collaboration, and funding, but I firmly believe it is possible if we act now.