Bill Gates calls for global clean tech ‘Manhattan Project’
Microsoft co-founder will double investment in clean tech to $2bn and urged governments to back R&D
Bill Gates has called on governments to undertake an ambitious global green ‘Manhattan Project’ to boost investment in clean technology research and development to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The co-founder of IT giant Microsoft and the world's richest man said that investment in innovative technologies is needed because deploying current clean technologies to the scale that is required to sufficiently limit GHG emissions will incur “astronomical" costs.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Gates said: “Because there’s so much uncertainty and there are so many different paths, it should be like the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project in the sense that the government should put in a serious amount of R&D,”
"Most of the people you talk to would say that we should double or triple the amount of renewables R&D," Gates said.
The Manhattan Project was the United States’ research programme that led to the creation of nuclear power and the world’s first atomic bombs, employing 130,000 people and costing the equivalent of $23bn.
Gates explained that his focus is on three new technologies that could provide "the magic solution" to climate change - travelling wave reactors, solar chemical power, and high-altitude wind power.
High altitude wind power applications harness wind energy at altitudes of about 20,000 feet using kites, kite-balloon hybrids or flying turbines.
Solar chemical technology has been likened to artificial photosynthesis and could be used to generate hydrogen for fuel.
Gates also revealed his plans to double his investment in clean technologies to $2bn (£1.3bn) by 2020.
The Microsoft co-founder is worth an estimated $80 billion and launched the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with his wife in 2000 to help finance global sustainable development projects.
Microsoft has scaled up its renewable energy investments, including the development of a 675MW wind farm for its Chicago base to help power the company’s data centres.
Gates’ comments are a boost to the recently launched Global Apollo Programme (GAP) designed to deliver a co-ordinated international effort to drive down the cost of solar and wind energy production.
The new international research initiative has been launched by a group of leading experts calling for the equivalent of the Apollo space programme to produce clean energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels within 10 years.
Co-founders of the programme include Lord Nicholas Stern, chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, Gus O’Donnell, the former U.K. cabinet secretary, Martin Rees, former president of the U.K.’s Royal Society, and Adair Turner, senior research fellow at the Institute of New Economic Thinking.
The stated aim of the project is for new-build renewable energy applications to be cheaper than new-build coal power plants in countries with high sunshine exposure by 2020, and worldwide from 2025.
Participants in the GAP initiative would be required to spend an estimated average of 0.02 per cent of gross domestic product from 2016 to 2025 to fund research & development of clean technologies.
