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Bill Gates Climate
Bill Gates Climate
AVOID A
CLIMATE
DISASTER
The Solutions We Have and the
Breakthroughs We Need
BILL GATES
China
2,500 Switzerland
India United
Ethiopia Kenya Kingdom
DR Congo Colombia
250 Haiti Philippines
Niger
South Sudan
25
Income and energy use go hand in hand. David MacKay showed me a chart like this one
plotting energy consumption and income per person. The connection is unmistakable.
(IEA; World Bank)
As all this information sank in, I began to think about how the
world could make energy affordable and reliable for the poor. It
didn’t make sense for our foundation to take on this huge problem—
we needed it to stay focused on its core mission—but I started kick-
ing around ideas with some inventor friends of mine. I read more
deeply on the subject, including several eye-opening books by the
scientist and historian Vaclav Smil, who helped me understand just
how critical energy is to modern civilization.
At the time, I didn’t understand that we needed to get to zero.
The rich countries that are responsible for most emissions were start-
2
ing to pay attention to climate change, and I thought that would
be enough. My contribution, I believed, would be to advocate for
12 H o w to Av o i d A C l i m At e d i s A s t e r
3
why Zero? 21
5°C
High
4°C
Temperature change
3°C
Lower
2°C
Negative
1°C
0°C
Three
Threelines
linesyou
youshould
shouldknow.
know.These lines
These show
lines you you
show howhow
muchmuchthe temperature mightmight
the temperature
go up in the future if emissions grow a lot (that’s the high line), if they grow less (lower),
go up in the future if emissions grow a lot (that’s the high line), if they grow less
and if we start removing more carbon than we emit (negative). (KNMI Climate Explorer)
(lower), and if we start removing more carbon than we emit (negative). (KNMI Climate
Explorer)
40 1.5˚C
30 1.0˚C
Temperature change
Billion tons of CO 2
20 0.5˚C
10 0˚C
0 -0.5˚C
Carbon
Carbondioxide
dioxideemissions
emissionsare onon
are thethe
rise, andand
rise, so is
sothe global
is the temperature.
global On the
temperature. Onleftthe
you
left see
youhow
seeour
howcarbon dioxidedioxide
our carbon emissions from industrial
emissions processesprocesses
from industrial and burning fossil
and fuels
burning
have gone up since 1850. On the right you see how the global average temperature is
fossil fuels have gone up since 1850. On the right you see how the global average
rising along with emissions. (Global Carbon Budget 2019; Berkeley Earth)
temperature is rising along with emissions. (Global Carbon Budget 2019; Berkeley Earth)
Hurricane Maria set Puerto Rico’s power grid and other infrastructure
back some two decades, according to one study.
6
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one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the hell
is water?”*
15 30
China
10 20
Billion tons of CO 2e
Tons of CO 2e
United
United States
States
5 10 China
EU
Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan
EU
Africa
India
0 0 India
Where the emissions are. Emissions from advanced economies like the United States
and Europe have stayed pretty flat or even dropped, but many developing countries are
growing fast. That’s partly because richer countries have outsourced emissions-heavy
manufacturing to poorer ones. (UN Population Division; Rhodium Group)
Many farmers still have to use ancient techniques, which is one of the
reasons they’re trapped in poverty. They deserve modern equipment
and approaches, but right now using those tools means producing more
greenhouse gases.
50%
Coal
40%
Oil
Global energy supply
30%
10%
Modern
renewables
0
0 60 0 60 0 60 0 60
1840–1900 1910–1970 1930–1990 2015
It takes a really long time to adopt new sources of energy. Notice how in 60 years
coal went from 5 percent of the world’s energy supply to nearly 50 percent. But natural
gas reached only 20 percent in the same amount of time. (Vaclav Smil, Energy Transitions)
Power density is the relevant number here. It tells you how much
power you can get from different sources for a given amount of land
(or water, if you’re putting wind turbines in the ocean). It’s measured
in watts per square meter. Below are a few examples:
* The power density of solar could theoretically reach 100 watts per square meter, though
no one has accomplished this yet.
I’m glad I’ve invested all that time learning about electricity. For
one thing, it was a great father-son activity. (Seriously.) Besides,
figuring out how to get all the benefits of cheap, reliable electric-
ity without emitting greenhouse gases is the single most impor-
tant thing we must do to avoid a climate disaster. That’s partly
because producing electricity is a major contributor to climate
change, and also because, if we get zero-carbon electricity, we can
use it to help decarbonize lots of other activities, like how we get
around and how we make things. 13 The energy we give up by not
using coal, natural gas, and oil has to come from somewhere, and
68 H o w to Av o i d A C l i m At e d i s A s t e r
power at home.* And if you don’t have access to any electricity at all,
even a seemingly simple task like recharging your mobile phone is
difficult and expensive. You have to walk to a store and pay 25 cents
or more to plug your phone into an outlet, hundreds of times more
than people pay in developed countries.
Total
860 million
860 million people don’t have reliable access to electricity. Fewer than half the
people in sub-Saharan Africa are on the grid. (IEA)
Oil Other
3% 1%
Renewables
11%
Coal
Nuclear 36%
10%
Hydropower
16%
Natural gas
23%
Getting all the world’s electricity from clean sources won’t be easy. Today, fossil fuels
account for two-thirds of all electricity generated worldwide. (bp Statistical Review of
World Energy 2020)
The United States isn’t alone. Most countries take various steps
to keep fossil fuels cheap—the International Energy Agency (IEA)
estimates that government subsidies for the consumption of fos-
sil fuels amounted to $400 billion in 2018—which helps explain
why they’re such a steady part of our electricity supply. The share
of global power that comes from burning coal (roughly 40 percent)
hasn’t changed in 30 years. Oil and natural gas together have been
hovering around 26 percent for three decades. All told, fossil fuels
16
20 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants; France has the
highest share in the world, getting 70 percent of its electricity from
nuclear. Remember that by comparison solar and wind together
provide about 7 percent worldwide.
And it’s hard to foresee a future where we decarbonize our
power grid affordably without using more nuclear power. In 2018,
researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyzed
nearly 1,000 scenarios for getting to zero in the United States; all
the cheapest paths involved using a power source that’s clean and
always available—that is, one like nuclear power. Without a source
like that, getting to zero-carbon electricity would cost a lot more.
Nuclear plants are also number one when it comes to efficiently
using materials like cement, steel, and glass. This chart shows you
how much material it takes to generate a unit of electricity from
various sources:
15
Thousand tons per TWh
10
How much stuff does it take to build and run a power plant? That depends on
the type of plant. Nuclear is the most efficient, using much less material per unit of
electricity generated than other sources do. (U.S. Department of Energy)
See how small the nuclear stack is? That means you’re getting far
more energy for each pound of material that goes into building and
running the power plant. It’s a major consideration, given all the
greenhouse gases that are emitted when we produce those materials.
17
How we Plug in 87
30
24.6
20
18.4
Deaths per TWh
10
4.6
2.8
0.07
0
Is nuclear power dangerous? Not if you’re counting the number of deaths caused per
unit of electricity, as this chart shows. The numbers here cover the entire process of
generating energy, from extracting fuels to turning them into electricity, as well as the
environmental problems they cause, such as air pollution. (Our World in Data)
This is the 520 bridge in Seattle, which I cross whenever I drive from
home to the Gates Foundation’s headquarters. It’s a marvel of modern
engineering.
of the lake, and is sturdy enough to support the bridge and all the
cars speeding across it. Or, more likely, inching across it, during one
of our daily traffic jams.
You don’t have to look very hard to find concrete performing
other miracles around you. It’s rust-resistant, rot-proof, and non-
flammable, which is why it’s part of most modern buildings. If
you’re a fan of hydropower, you should appreciate concrete for mak-
ing dams possible. The next time19you see the Statue of Liberty, take
a look at the pedestal she’s standing on. It’s made of 27,000 tons of
100 H o w to Av o i d A C l i m At e d i s A s t e r
China makes a lot of cement. The country has already produced more in the 21st
century than the United States did in the entire 20th century. (U.S. Geological Survey)
These two photos capture what growth looks like—for better and for
worse. Shanghai in 1987 (left) and 2013 (right).
21
have to either use nuclear power or burn fossil fuels and grab the
emissions with carbon-capture devices. Unfortunately, carbon cap-
ture doesn’t come for free. It adds to the manufacturer’s cost and gets
passed on to the consumer.
Finally, the third stage: What can we do about the processes that
inherently produce greenhouse gas emissions? Remember that mak-
ing steel and cement emits carbon dioxide—not just from burning
fossil fuels, but as a result of the chemical reactions that are essential
to their creation.
Right now, the answer is clear: Short of simply shutting down
these parts of the manufacturing sector, we can do nothing today to
avoid these emissions. If we wanted to go all in on eliminating them
using whatever technologies we have available today, our options
would be as limited as they were in the second stage. We’d have to
use fossil fuels and carbon capture—which, again, adds to the cost.
With those three stages in mind, let’s look at the range of Green
Premiums for using carbon capture to make clean plastics, steel, and
cement:
Aside from cement, these premiums may not seem like much.
And it’s true that in some cases, consumers might not feel any pinch
at all. For example, a $30,000 car might contain one ton of steel;
whether this steel costs $750 or $950 hardly makes any difference
in the overall price of the car. Even for that $2 bottled Coke you
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116 H o w to Av o i d A C l i m At e d i s A s t e r
100
China
75
Million tons of meat
50
United States
European Union
25
Brazil
0 Mexico
Most countries
Most countriesaren’t
aren’tconsuming
consumingmore
moremeat
meatthan they
than to. China,
usedused
they though,
to. China, is a is a
though,
big exception.
big exception. (OECD-FAO
(OECD-FAOAgricultural
AgriculturalOutlook
Outlook2020)
2020)
12
United States
9
Thousand kg/ha of corn
Africa
3
Billion tons of CO 2
2
United
States
1 China
EU
India
COVID-19
COVID-19 isis slowing—but
slowing—butnot not stopping—the
stopping—the growth
growth of transportation
of transportation emissions.
emissions.
Although emissions
Although emissionswill
willshrink in many
shrink places,
in many they will
places, theygrow
will so much
grow soinmuch
low- and
in low- and
middle-income countries
middle-income countriesthat
thatthe
theoverall
overalleffect
effectwill bebe
will anan
increase
increasein greenhouse
in greenhousegases.
gases.
(IEA World
(IEA World Energy
Energy Outlook
Outlook2020;
2020;Rhodium
Rhodium Group)
Group)
This pie chart shows you the percentage of emissions that comes
from cars, trucks, planes, ships, and so on. Our goal is to get every
one of them to net zero.
Notice that passenger vehicles (cars, SUVs, motorcycles, and
such) are responsible for almost half the emissions. Medium-
and heavy-duty vehicles—everything from garbage trucks to
18-wheelers—account for another 30 percent. Airplanes add in a
Other
Airplanes 3%
10%
Cargo and
cruise ships
10%
Cars, SUVs,
and motorcycles
47%
Cars aren’t the only culprit. Passenger vehicles are responsible for nearly half of all
transportation-related emissions. (International Council on Clean Transportation)
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Malibu Bolt EV
Starting at $22,095 Starting at $36,620
Chevyversus
Chevy versus Chevy. The gas-powered
Chevy. The gas-poweredMalibu
Malibuand
andthe
theall-electric Bolt
all-electric EV.EV.
Bolt (Chevrolet)
(Chevrolet)
NOTE: Retail prices in this and subsequent charts are the average in the United States
from 2015 to 2018. Zero-carbon options reflect current estimated prices.
Biofuels get their energy from plants, but that’s not the only way
to create alternative fuels. We can also use zero-carbon electricity to
combine the hydrogen in water with the carbon in carbon dioxide,
resulting in hydrocarbon fuels. Because you use electricity in the
process, these fuels are sometimes called electrofuels, and they have
a lot of advantages. They’re drop-in fuels, and because they’re made
using carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere, burning them
doesn’t add to overall emissions.
But electrofuels also have a downside: They’re very expensive. You
need hydrogen to make them, and as I mentioned in chapter 4, it
costs a lot to make hydrogen without emitting carbon. In addition,
you need to make them using clean electricity—otherwise, there’s no
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140 H o w to Av o i d A C l i m At e d i s A s t e r
What does that mean for the average family? In the United States,
a typical household spends around $2,000 a year on gasoline. So if
the price doubles, that’s an extra $2,000 premium, and if it triples,
that’s an extra $4,000 for every conventional passenger car on the
road in America.
Garbage trucks, buses, and 18-wheelers. Unfortunately, batter-
ies are a less practical option when it comes to long-distance buses
and trucks. The bigger the vehicle you want to move, and the farther
you want to drive it without recharging, the harder it’ll be to use
electricity to power your engine. That’s because batteries are heavy,
they can store only a limited amount of energy, and they can deliver
only a certain amount of that energy to the engine at one time. (It
takes a more powerful engine—one with more batteries—to run a
heavy truck than a light hatchback.)
Medium-duty vehicles, like garbage trucks and city buses, are
generally lightweight enough that30electricity is a viable option for
them. They also have the advantage of running relatively short
H o w we G e t A r o u n d 141
buses will reach zero within a decade, which means that most cities
in the world will be able to shift their fleets.
It would need so many batteries that it could hardly carry any cargo
at all.
Keep in mind that a typical truck running on diesel can go
more than 1,000 miles without refueling. So to electrify America’s
fleet of trucks, freight companies would have to shift to vehicles
that carry less cargo, stop to recharge far more often, spend hours
of time recharging, and somehow travel long stretches of highway
where there are no recharging stations. It’s just not going to happen
anytime soon. Although electricity is a good option when you need
to cover short distances, it’s not a practical solution for heavy, long-
haul trucks.
Because we can’t electrify our cargo trucks, the only solutions
available today are electrofuels and advanced biofuels. Unfortu-
nately, they have dramatic Green Premiums too. Let’s add them to
the chart:
Green Premiums to replace diesel with zero-carbon alternatives
Ships and planes. Not long ago, my friend Warren Buffett and I
were talking about how the world might decarbonize airplanes. War-
ren asked, “Why can’t we run a jumbo jet on batteries?” He already
knew that when a jet takes off, the fuel it’s carrying accounts for 20
to 40 percent of its weight. So when I told him this startling fact—
that you’d need 35 times more batteries by weight to get the same
energy as jet fuel—he understood immediately. The more power you
need, the heavier your plane gets. At some point, it’s so heavy that it
can’t get off the ground. Warren smiled, nodded, and just said, “Ah.”
When you’re trying to power something as heavy as a container
ship or jetliner, the rule of thumb I mentioned earlier—the bigger
32
The same goes for cargo ships. The best conventional container
ships can carry 200 times more cargo than either of the two electric
ships now in operation, and they can run routes that are 400 times
* Air speed is usually measured in knots, but most people (including me) don’t
know how much a knot is. In any case, knots are pretty close to miles per hour.
33
Given how important container ships have become in the global
economy, I don’t think it will ever be financially viable to try to
run them on anything other than liquid fuels. Making the switch
to alternatives would do us a lot of good; because shipping alone
accounts for 3 percent of all emissions, using clean fuels would give
us a meaningful reduction. Unfortunately, the fuel that container
ships run on—it’s called bunker fuel—is dirt cheap, because it’s
made from the dregs of the oil-refining process. Since their current
fuel is so inexpensive, the Green Premium for ships is very high:
Green Premiums to replace bunker fuel with zero-carbon alternatives
To sum up, here are all the Green Premiums from this chapter:
Green Premiums to replace current fuels with zero-carbon alternatives
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Japan
United States
South Korea
Saudi Arabia
China
Mexico
Brazil
Indonesia
South Africa
India
A/C is on the way. In some countries, most houses have air-conditioning, but in others
it is much less common. In the coming decades, the countries at the bottom of this chart
will be getting both hotter and richer, which means they’ll be buying and running more
A/C units. (IEA)
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154 H o w to Av o i d A C l i m At e d i s A s t e r
your home (this is possible in all but the very coldest climates); in
the summer, you do the opposite, pumping heat from inside your
house to the outdoors.
This isn’t as mysterious as it may sound. You already have a heat
pump in your home, and it’s probably operating right now. It’s
called a refrigerator. The warm air that you feel blowing from the
bottom of your fridge is what carries the heat away from your food
and keeps it cool.
How much money can a heat pump save you? It varies from city
to city, depending on how harsh the winter is, how much electricity
and natural gas cost, and other factors. Here are a few examples of
the savings on new construction in cities around the United States,
including the cost of installing a heat pump and operating it for 15
years:
Green Premium for installing an air-sourced heat pump in selected U.S. cities
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without modification, and that don’t add more carbon to the atmo-
sphere. But right now, both options carry a hefty Green Premium:
NOTE: Retail price per gallon is the average in the United States from 2015 to 2018.
Zero-carbon is current estimated price.
Let’s look at what these premiums would mean for a typical U.S.
family. If they heat their home with fuel oil, they’re going to pay
$1,300 more if they want to use advanced biofuels, and more than
$3,200 extra if they choose electrofuels. If their home is heated with
natural gas, switching to advanced biofuels would add $840 to their
bill each winter. Switching to electrofuels would add nearly $2,600
each winter.
Clearly we need to drive down the price of these alternative fuels,
as I argued in chapter 7. And there are other steps we can take to
decarbonize our heating systems:
expand the market and drive down their cost. We can make a lot of
buildings more energy efficient, even if they can’t all be as efficient
as the Bullitt Center.
We’ve now covered all five major sources of greenhouse gas emis-
sions: how we plug in, make things, grow things, get around, and
keep cool and warm. I hope three things are clear by now:
I got to visit Miriam and Laban Talam on their farm in Kabiyet, Kenya,
in 2009. They have an amazing story of success, but climate change
could undo all the progress they’ve made.
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Here’s a field planted with scuba rice, which can withstand flooding for
two weeks at a time, an advantage that will be even more important as
floods become more frequent.
40
* The commission is guided by 34 commissioners, including leaders from govern-
ment, business, nonprofits, and the scientific community; and 19 convening coun-
A d a p t i n g t o a wa r m e r w o r l d 173
This police officer had to use a flare to direct traffic during the Great
Smog of London in 1952.
Denmark helped lead the way on making wind power more affordable.
These turbines are on the island of Samsø.
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Technologies needed