Bill Gates The innovations we need to avoid a climate disaster TED Countdown
Transcriber:
Bruno Giussani: Hello.
Bill Gates calls himself
an imperfect messenger on climate
because of his high
carbon footprint and lifestyle.
However, he has just made
a major contribution to our thinking
about confronting
climate change via a book,
a book about decarbonising
our economy and society.
It’s an optimistic “can-do” kind of book
with a strong focus
on technological solutions.
He discusses the things we have,
such as wind and solar power,
the things we need to develop,
such as carbon-free cement
or carbon-free steel,
and long-term energy storage.
And he talks about
the economics of it all,
introducing the concept of green premium.
The gist of the book,
and really I’m simplifying here a lot,
is that fighting climate change
is going to be hard,
but it’s possible, we can do it.
There is a pathway to a clean
and prosperous future for all.
So we want to unpack some of that
with the author of the book.
Bill Gates, welcome back to TED.
Bill Gates: Thank you.
Giussani: Bill, I would like to start
where you start,
from the title of the book.
“How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,”
which, of course, presumes
that we are heading towards
a climate disaster
if we don’t act differently.
So what is the single
most important thing we must do
to avoid a climate disaster?
Gates: Well, the greenhouse gases
we put into the atmosphere,
particularly CO2,
stay there for thousands of years.
And so it’s really the sum
of all those emissions
are forcing the temperature
higher and higher,
which will have disastrous effects.
And so we have to take these emissions,
which are presently
over 51 billion tons per year
and drive those all the way down to zero.
And that’s when the temperature
will stop increasing
and the disastrous weather events
won’t get worse and worse.
So it’s pretty demanding.
It’s not a 50 percent reduction.
It’s all the way down to zero.
Giussani: Now, 51 billion is a big number.
It’s difficult to register, to understand.
Help us visualize the scale
of the problem.
Gates: Well, the key is to understand
all the different sources.
And people are mostly aware
of the production of electricity
with natural gas and coal
as being a big source.
That’s about 27 percent.
And they’re somewhat
aware of transportation,
including passenger cars.
Passenger cars are seven percent
and transportation overall is 16 percent.
They have far less awareness
of the other three segments.
Agriculture, which is 19 percent,
heating and cooling buildings,
including using natural gas,
are seven percent.
And then, sadly, the biggest segment
of all, manufacturing,
including steel and cement.
People are least aware of that one.
And in fact, that one is the most
difficult for us to solve.
The size of all the steel plants,
cement plants, paper, plastic,
the industrial economy is gigantic.
And we’re asking that to be changed over
in this 30-year period
when we don’t even know
how to make that change right now.
Giussani: So your core argument,
and really, here I’m simplifying,
is that basically we need
to clean up all of that, right?
The way we make things, we grow things,
we get around and power our economy.
And so to do that,
we need to get to a point
where green energy
is as cheap as fossil fuels,
and new materials, clean materials,
are as cheap as current materials.
And you call that “eliminating
the green premium.”
So to start, tell us what you mean
by green premium.
Gates: Yeah, so the green premium varies
from emission sources.
It’s the cost to buy that product
where there’s been no emissions
versus the cost we have today.
And so for an electric car,
the green premium is reasonably modest.
You pay a little more upfront,
you save a bit on the maintenance
and gasoline, you give up some range,
you have a longer charging time.
But over the next 15 years,
because the volume is there
and the R and D is being done,
we can expect that the electric car
will be preferable.
It won’t cost more.
It will have a much higher range.
And so that green premium
that today is about 15 percent
is headed to be zero
even without any government subsidies.
And so that’s magic.
That’s exactly what we need to do
for every other category.
Now, an area like cement,
where we haven’t really
gotten started yet,
the green premium today
is almost double the price.
That is, you pay 125 dollars
for a ton of cement today
but it would be almost double that
if you insisted that it be green cement.
And so the way I think of this is in 2050
we’ll be talking to India
and saying to them,
“Please use the green products
as you’re building basic shelter,
you know, simple air conditioning,”
which they’ll need
because of the heat increase
or lighting at night for students.
And unless we’re willing to subsidize it
or the price is very low,
they’ll say, “No, this is a problem
that the rich countries created,
that India is suffering from
and you need to take care of it.”
So only by bringing that green premium
down very dramatically,
about 95 percent across all categories,
will that conversation go well
so that India can make that shift.
And so the key thing here
is that the US’s responsibility
is not just to zero out its emissions.
That’s a very hard thing,
but we’re only 15 percent.
Unless we, through our power
of innovation,
make it so cheap
for all countries
to switch all categories,
then we simply aren’t going to get there.
And so the US really has to step up
and use all of this innovative capacity
every year for the next 30 years.
Giussani: What what needs to happen
in order for these breakthroughs
to actually occur?
Who are the players
who need to come together?
Gates: Well, innovation usually happens
at a pace of its own.
Here we have this deadline, 2050.
And so we have to do
everything we can to accelerate it.
We need to raise the R and D
budgets in these areas.
In 2015 I organized, along
with President Hollande and Obama,
a side event to the Paris climate talks
where what Prime Minister Modi
had labeled “mission innovation”
was a commitment to double R and D budgets
over a five-year period.
And all the big countries
came in and made that pledge.
Then we need lots of smart people,
who, instead of working on other problems,
are encouraged to work on these problems.
So coming up with funding for them
is very, very important.
I’m doing some of that through what I call
Breakthrough Energy Fellows.
We need high-risk capital
to invest in these companies,
even though the risks are very, very high.
And that’s –
There is now –
Breakthrough Energy Ventures
is one group doing that
and drawing lots of other people in.
But then the most difficult thing is
we actually need markets
for these products
even when they start out
being more expensive.
And that’s what I call Catalyst,
organizing the buying power of consumers
and companies and governments
so that we get on the learning curve,
get the scale going up,
like we did with solar and wind
across all these categories.
So it’s both supply of innovation
and demand for the green products.
That’s the combination
that can start us to make
this change to the infrastructure
of the entire physical economy.
Giussani: In terms of funding all this,
the financial system as a whole right now
is essentially funding
expansion of fossil fuels
consistent with three degrees Celsius
increase in global heating.
What do you say to the Finance Committee,
beyond the venture capital,
about the need to think
and act differently?
Gates: Well, if you look
at the interest rates for a solar field
versus any other type
of investments, it’s not lower.
You know, money is very fungible.
It’s going to, you know,
different projects.
But, there’s no, sort of, special rate
for climate-related projects.
Now, you know, governments can decide
through tax incentives
to improve those things.
But you know, this is not just
about reporting numbers.
It’s good to report numbers.
But the steel industry
is providing a vital service.
Even gasoline, for 98 percent of the cars
being purchased today,
allows people to get to their job.
And so, you know,
just divestment alone
is not going to be the thing
that creates the new alternative
and brings the cost of that down.
So the finance side will be important
because the speed of deployment –
Solar and wind needs to be
accelerated dramatically
beyond anything we’ve done today.
In fact, you know, on average,
we’ll have to deploy three times as much
every year as the peak year so far.
And so those are a key part
of the solution.
They’re not the whole solution.
But you know, people sometimes think
just by putting numbers,
disclosing numbers,
that somehow it all changes
or by divesting that it all changes.
The financial sector is important,
but without the innovation,
there’s nothing they can do.
Giussani: A lot of the current focus is on
cutting emissions by half by 2030
and on the way to reaching
that zero by 2050.
And in the book,
you write that there is danger
in that kind of thinking,
that we should keep
our main focus on 2050.
Can you explain that?
Gates: Well, the only real measure
of how well we’re doing
is the green premium,
because that’s what determines
whether India and other
developing countries
will choose to use
the zero emission approach in 2050.
The idea, you know –
If you’re focusing
on short-term reductions,
then you could say, oh, it’s fantastic,
we just put billions of dollars
into natural-gas plants.
And even ignoring
that there’s a lot of leakage
that doesn’t get properly measured,
you know, give them full credit
and say that’s a 50 percent reduction.
The lifetime of that plant
is greater than 30 years.
You financed it,
assuming you’re getting value out of it
over a longer period of time.
So to say, “Hey, hallelujah,
we switched from coal to natural gas,”
that has nothing to do with reaching zero.
It sets you back because of the capital
spending involved there.
And so it’s not a path to zero
if you’re just working
on the easy parts of the emission.
That’s not a path.
The path is to take
every source of emission
and say, “Oh, my goodness,
how am I going to get
that green premium down?
How am I going to get
that green premium down?”
Otherwise, getting to 50 percent
does not stop the problems.
This is very tough
because the nature is zero.
It’s not just, you know, a small decrease.
Giussani: So getting
the green premium down,
so you mentioned India.
To make sure that the transition,
the clean transition,
is also an Indian story
and an African story
and not only a Western story,
should rich countries adopt
the expensive clean alternatives now,
to kind of buy down the green premium
and make technology, therefore,
more accessible to low-income countries?
Gates: Absolutely.
You have to pick which product paths
with scale will become
low green-premium products.
And so you don’t want to just randomly
pick things that are low-emission.
You have to pick things
that will come down.
So like, you know, so far,
hydrogen fuel cells have not done that.
Now they might in the future.
Solar, wind and lithium-ion,
we’ve seen these incredible
cost reductions.
And so we have to duplicate that
for other areas,
things like offshore wind, heat pump,
new ways of doing transmission.
You know, we have to keep
the electricity grid reliable,
even in very bad weather conditions.
And so that’s where storage
or nuclear and transmission
will have to be scaled up
in a very significant way,
which we now have this open-source
model to look at that.
And so the buying of green products
that demand signal,
what I call Catalyst,
we’re going to have
to orchestrate a lot of money,
many tens of billions of dollars for that,
that is one of the most expensive pieces
so that the improvements come
in these other areas
and some of them we haven’t
even gotten started on.
Giussani: Many people believe actually
that the climate question is mostly
a question of consuming less
and particularly consuming less energy.
And in the book,
you actually write several times
that we need to consume more energy.
Why?
Gates: Well, the basic living conditions
that we take for granted
should be made available to all humans.
And the human population is growing.
And so you’re going –
as you provide shelter,
heating and air conditioning,
which anywhere near the equator
will be more in demand
since you’ll have many days
where you can’t go outdoors at all.
So we’re not going to stop making shelter.
We’re not going to stop making food.
And so we need to be able to multiply
those processes by zero.
That is, you make shelter,
but there’s no emissions.
You make food, but there’s no emissions.
That’s how you get
all the way down to zero.
Now, it’s made somewhat easier
if rich countries are consuming less,
but how far will that go?
Giussani: So if I summarize
in my head your book,
you are basically suggesting
that if we eliminate the green premium,
the transition somehow can occur,
the cost and technology,
green premium and breakthroughs
are the key drivers.
But, you know, you think of climate
and climate is kind of a wicked problem.
It has implications that are social,
political, behavioral.
It requires significant
citizen involvement.
Are you focusing too much on tech
and not enough on those other variables?
Gates: Well, we need all these things.
If you don’t have a deep engagement,
particularly by the younger generation
making this a top priority every year
for the next 30 years
across all the developed countries,
we will not succeed.
And I’m not the one who knows
how to activate all those people.
I’m super glad that the people
who are smart about that are thinking.
It’s a necessary element.
Likewise, the piece
that I do have experience in,
innovation ecosystems,
that’s a necessary element.
You will not get there just by saying,
“Please stop using steel.”
You know, it won’t happen.
And so the innovation piece
has to come along
and particularly encouraging consumers
to buy electric cars
or artificial meat or electric heat pumps,
they’re part of driving that demand,
what I call the catalytic demand.
That alone won’t do it,
because some of these big projects,
like green hydrogen or green aviation fuel
require billions in capital expense.
But the demand signal from enlightened
consumers is very important.
Their political voice is very important.
Their pushing the companies
they work at is very important.
And so I absolutely agree that the broad
community who cares about this,
particularly if they understand
how hard it is and don’t say,
“Oh, we can do it in 10 years,”
they are super important.
Giussani: You mentioned artificial meat
and I know you love burgers.
Have you tried an artificial burger,
and how did you find it?
Gates: Yes, I’m an investor in all these
Impossible, Beyond and various people.
And I have to say,
the progress in that sector
is greater than I expected.
Five years ago,
I would have said that is as hard
as manufacturing.
Now it’s very hard,
but not as hard as manufacturing.
There is no Impossible Foods
of green steel
and the quality is going
to keep improving.
It’s quite good today.
You know, there’s other companies
coming in to that space
covering different types of food.
And as the volume goes up,
the price will go down.
And so I think it’s quite promising.
I have to admit, 100 percent
of my burgers aren’t artificial yet,
it’s about 50 percent, but I’ll get there.
Giussani: It’s a start.
You’re already on 2030
on that on that front.
So you mentioned
your expertise in innovation.
You have a couple of lines of –
how to say it? –
of exquisite modesty in the book
where you say you think like an engineer,
you don’t know much about politics,
but actually you talk to top politicians
more than any of us.
What do you ask them
and what do you hear in return?
Gates: Well, they’re mostly responding
to voters interest.
Most of the countries
we’re talking about are democracies.
And you know,
there are resources
that will need to be put in
like tax credits that encourage
buying green products
or government purchasing of green products
at slightly higher prices.
Those are real trade-offs.
And, you know, making sure
that the areas where there’s lots of jobs
in, say, coal mining,
or things where the demand will go down,
having that political sensitivity
and thinking through,
can we put the new jobs in that area
and what are the departments
that handle that.
This is a tough political problem.
And, you know, my admonition to people
is not only to get educated themselves,
but help educate other people.
And often, like in the US,
if it’s people of both parties,
that’s even better.
The level of interest is high,
but it needs to get even higher,
almost like a moral mission
of all young people
to go beyond their individual success,
that they believe that getting to zero
by 2050 is critical.
Giussani: Thank you.
Now, before we continue the interview,
I would like to take
a short detour for one minute
because my colleagues at TED-Ed
have produced a series
of seven animated videos
inspired by your book.
They introduce the concept
of net zero emissions,
they discuss other questions
and challenges
that we are facing relating to climate.
So I would like to share one short clip
from one of those animations.
(Video) You flip a switch,
coal burns in a furnace
which turns water into steam.
That steam spins a turbine
which activates a generator
which pushes electrons through the wire.
This current propagates through hundreds
of miles of electric cables
and arrives at your home.
All around the world,
countless people
are doing this every second:
flipping a switch, plugging in,
pressing an “on” button.
So how much electricity
does humanity need?
Giussani: The answer to that and to many
other climate questions, of course,
is in the seven animations
available on the TED-Ed site,
and the TED-Ed YouTube channel.
Bill, you mentioned
the younger generation before.
How does the younger generation’s role
in solving this problem inspire you?
Gates: Well, they …
can make sure this is a priority.
And if we have, you know,
it’s a priority for four years,
then it’s not for four years,
you can’t ask the trillions
of investment in the new approach
to take place.
It’s got to be pretty clear
that even though political parties
may disagree on the tactics,
the same way they agree
there should be a strong defense
that they agree this zero by 2050
is a shared goal,
and then discuss, OK,
where does government come in,
where does the private sector come in,
which area deserves priority?
That will be a huge milestone
where it’s a discussion
about how to get there
versus whether to get there.
And the US is the most fraught
in terms of it being politicized,
even in terms of,
is this a huge problem or not.
So, you know, young people,
they’re going to be around
to see the good news
if we’re able to achieve this.
You know, I won’t be around.
But, they speak with moral authority
and they have particular people
who are stepping up on this.
But I hope that’s just the beginning.
And that’s why this year,
I think, is so important.
All this recovery money being programed,
people thinking about, do governments
protect us the way they should,
do governments work together?
You know, the pandemic
has teed this up, it’s OK,
what’s the next big problem
we need to collaborate around?
And I’m hoping that climate appears there
because of these activists.
Giussani: Yeah, we ought to come back
to the pandemic question.
But I want to talk a moment about some
specific technology breakthroughs
that you mention in the book.
But you also just mentioned
the organization you set up,
Breakthrough Energy,
to invest in clean tech start-up
and advocate for policies.
And I assume somehow
your book is kind of a blueprint
for what Breakthrough Energy
is going to do.
There is a branch in that organization,
called Catalyst,
that’s prioritizing several technologies,
including green hydrogen
direct carbon-capture,
aviation biofuels.
I don’t want to ask you
about specific investments,
but I would like to ask you
to describe why those priorities,
maybe starting with green hydrogen.
Gates: If we can get green hydrogen
that’s very cheap,
and we don’t know that we can,
that becomes a magic ingredient
to a lot of processes
that lets you make fertilizer
without using natural gas,
it lets you reduce iron ore
for steel production
without using any form of coal.
And so there’s two ways to make it.
You can take water and split it
into hydrogen and oxygen.
You can take natural gas
and pull out the hydrogen.
And so it’s kind of a holy grail,
you know, and so we need to get going.
We need to get all the components
to be very, very cheap.
And only by actually doing projects,
significant scale projects,
do you get on to that learning curve.
And so Catalyst will fund
the early pilot projects
along with governments
to go make green hydrogen,
get the electrolyzers to get up in volume
and get a lot cheaper,
because that would be a huge advance.
Lot of manufacturing, not all of it,
but a lot of it would be solved with that.
Giussani: So just for those
who don’t know,
green hydrogen is produced
with clean energy sources,
wind, solar and so,
nitrogen produced from natural gas
or fossil gas is called gray hydrogen.
The second priority that you have set
is direct carbon capture,
pulling carbon from the atmosphere.
And at least in theory,
we can find a way to do that
at large scale.
Together with other technologies
the problem could be solved,
but it’s a very early-stage,
unproven technology.
You describe it yourself in the book
as a thought experiment at this stage.
But you are one of the main investors
in this sector in the world.
So what’s the real potential
for direct carbon capture?
Gates: So there’s a company
today, Climeworks,
that for a bit over 600 dollars
a ton will do capture.
Now it’s at fairly small scale.
I’m a customer of theirs
as part of my program
where I eliminate all
of my carbon emissions
in a gold standard way.
There are other people
who are trying to do larger-scale plants
like Carbon Engineering.
Breakthrough Energy is investing
in a number of these
carbon-capture entities.
In a way, the carbon capture
is for the part
that you can’t solve any other way.
It’s kind of the brute-force piece,
and no one knows what that price will be.
If it’s 100 dollars a ton,
then the cost against current emissions
would be five trillion a year.
Can we get below 100 dollars a ton?
It’s not clear that we can,
but it would be fantastic
to take the final 10,
15 percent of emissions,
and instead of making the change
at the place where
the emission takes place,
just do this, direct air capture.
To be clear, direct air capture
means you’re just filtering the air,
and you’re pulling out the 410 million
current parts per million
and putting that into
a pressurized form of CO2
that then you sequester in someplace
that you know it’ll stay
for millions of years.
And so this industry is just
at the very, very beginning.
But it’s a necessary piece
for the tail of emissions.
Giussani: And a third priority
is aviation biofuels.
Now flying over the last several years
has become a symbol
of a polluting lifestyle, let’s say.
Why aviation biofuels as a priority?
Gates: Well, the great thing
about passenger cars
is that even though batteries
don’t store energy
as well as gasoline does,
there’s dramatic difference,
you can afford to have the extra size
and weight of those batteries.
On a plane that is a large plane
going a long distance,
there’s no chance that batteries
will ever have that energy density.
I mean, there’s some crazy people
who are working on it,
and I’ll be glad to fund them,
but you wouldn’t want to count on that.
And so you either have to use
hydrogen as a plane fuel,
that has certain challenges,
or you just want to make today’s
aviation fuel with green processes,
like using plants as the source
of how you make those.
And so I’m the biggest individual customer
of a group that makes green aviation fuel.
So that’s what I’m using now,
costs over twice as much
as the normal aviation fuel.
But as the demand scales up,
that’s one of those green premiums
that we hope to bring down
so that at some point
lots of consumers will say,
“Yes, I’ll pay a little extra
on my plane ticket,”
probably through Catalyst
or through the airline
to make sure that we’re
building up that industry
and trying to get the costs,
that green premium down quite a bit.
So this is a super important area
that, you know,
I was amazed when I went to buy
that I was by far the biggest
individual customer.
Giussani: It’s also, of course,
a very symbolic area, right?
People think of cars
and think of airplanes
when they think of pollution
and emissions.
There is a fourth technology
that I want to bring up
because you are an advocate of
and an investor in nuclear power,
which is also not universally accepted
as clean energy because of the risks,
because of radioactive waste.
Can you make the case, briefly,
but can you make your case for nuclear?
Gates: Well, one thing
that needs to be appreciated
is that energy has to come from somewhere.
And so as you stop using
natural gas to heat homes
and gasoline to power cars,
the electric grid
will have to grow dramatically.
And even in the case of the US,
where electricity demand has been flat
the last few decades,
will need to be almost
three times as large.
As you do that with
weather-dependent sources,
the reliability of the electricity
generation goes away,
that as you get big cold fronts
that for 10 days can stop
most of the wind and solar,
say, in the Midwest.
So the question is, how do you use
massive amounts of transmission
and storage and non weather-dependent
sources which at scale nuclear
as the only choice there,
to maintain that reliability
and not have people, say,
freeze to death.
And nuclear –
People will be pretty impressed
with how valuable it is
to create that reliability.
Now, 80 percent, at least in the US,
will be wind and solar.
So we have to build that faster than ever.
But what is that piece that’s always
available is where nuclear would fit in.
Giussani: Now, you talk a lot about
scaling up technologies in the book.
I want to ask you a question
about scaling down,
because one thing
that’s absent from your book
is a discussion about scaling down
fossil fuel production,
maybe starting with at least
not expanding it anymore,
with adopting a sort of fossil fuel
nonproliferation approach,
because right now we are talking
about a green transition,
but at the same time we are building out
further fossil fuel infrastructure.
What’s your view on that?
Gates: Well, it’s all
about the demand for fossil fuels
and the fact that the green
premium is very high.
If you want to restrict supply,
then you’ll just drive the price up.
People still want to drive to their job.
If you know, say you made
fossil fuels illegal.
You know, try that for a few weeks.
My view is you have to create a substitute
because the services provided
by the fossil fuel
are actually quite valuable.
Electricity is valuable.
Transportation is valuable.
And are you willing to drop demand
for those things to zero?
So the capitalistic
economy will respond.
If it’s clear, you know,
how you’re going to do
your tax policies and your credit,
you’re going to drive innovation,
then the infrastructure investments
in those things will go down.
We see that with coal already today.
But …
Just speaking against something
when you haven’t created an alternative
isn’t going to get you to zero.
Giussani: OK, I want to shift topics.
You mentioned before the pandemic,
and your main focus since you set up
the Gates Foundation
has been on global health.
I actually read the letter,
the annual letter you wrote
with your wife, Melinda, in January 2021,
which was very much
about the COVID-19 pandemic.
And I found myself marveling
at how what you write resonates
with the climate challenge.
What lessons from the pandemic
can be actually applied to climate?
Gates: Well I think the biggest lesson
is that governments got to, on our behalf,
avoid disastrous future outcomes.
And individual citizens aren’t equipped
to either do those evaluations
or think through that R and D
and deployment plan
that’s necessary here.
And so we have to make it an imperative
that governments, hopefully of any party,
join in to this.
The pandemic, we did eventually
get global cooperation.
The US didn’t play its normal role there,
but the private sector innovation
created the vaccine.
Now, sadly, with climate,
the pain it’s causing
gets worse over time.
So with the pandemic,
we had all these deaths,
and people were like, “Wow, OK,
we should do something.”
With climate you can’t wait.
You know, the coral reefs
will have died off,
the species will be gone.
And so if you say, “OK, well,
let’s, when it gets bad,
we’ll invent something like a vaccine.”
That doesn’t work,
because to stop the emissions,
you have to change every
steel plant, cement plant, car,
things that have massive lead times
and literally trillions
of dollars of investment.
And so with the pandemic, we messed up.
We didn’t pay attention.
You know, people like myself
said it was a problem.
But, now we’re getting
our way out of it through innovation.
But climate’s harder, much harder problem.
And so the political will to get it right
needs to be unprecedented
compared to the pandemic
or almost any other political cause.
Giussani: I want to correct you
about private-sector innovation,
because, of course, a lot of public money
went into funding research
and guaranteed purchases.
And so for the vaccines.
But that’s a separate interview.
Gates: Well, the Pfizer vaccine
used no government money.
Giussani: That’s absolutely true.
Bill, still related to our reaction
to these big challenges,
over half of the total
greenhouse gas emissions since 2017,
50 or 51 have gone up in the atmosphere
in the last 30 years.
And we have known for more than 30 years
that they have pernicious effects,
to say the least.
So if we could mobilize
such enormous resources and policies
and collaborations and global
collaborations against COVID-19,
what’s the lever we can use to mobilize
the same against climate?
Gates: Well, until 2015, nobody pushed
for the R and D budgets to go up.
So, you know, there are times when I think
“Wow, are we serious, are we not?”
You know, that R and D question
just wasn’t discussed.
And you could read
every paper on green steel
and there were hardly any.
And so we are just starting
to get serious about climate.
And you know, we’ve wasted a lot of time
that we should have used to work
on the hard parts of climates,
just having short-term goals
and not focusing on the R and D piece,
you know, the last 20 years,
we don’t have much to show
for the hard categories.
Now, there’s still time to get there.
We will have to fund
adaptation a great deal
because the 2050 goal
is not because that’s a goal
that gives you zero damage.
It’s simply the goal
that is the most ambitious
that has a chance of being achieved.
And we are causing problems
for subsistence farmers
and sea-level rise and wildfires
and natural ecosystems.
And so the adaptation side
is even more underfunded
than the mitigation side.
For example, helping poor farmers
with seeds that can deal with the droughts
and high temperatures
is funded at less than a billion a year,
which is deeply tragic.
Giussani: Bill, we’re getting towards
the end.
I mentioned at the beginning,
in the book you describe yourself
as an imperfect messenger on climate.
What changes have you made
in your personal and family life
to reduce your footprint?
Gates: Well, I’m certainly
driving an electric car,
you know, putting solar panels
on the houses where that makes sense.
Using this green aviation fuel,
I still can’t say
that I’ve stopped eating meat
or that I never fly.
And so it’s mostly by funding
at over seven million a year
the products that although their green
premiums are very high today,
like the carbon capture
or like the aviation fuel,
by funding those, you actually
get those on to the learning curve
to get those prices down
very dramatically.
One area that I do
is I fund putting in electric heat-pumps
into low-cost housing.
And so instead of using natural gas,
they get a lower bill
because it’s done with electricity.
And I paid that extra
capital cost as an offset.
So, you know, accelerating
those demand things.
I’ve tried to get out in front of that.
Giussani: You also talk in the book
about paying more than market value
or the current market price for offsets,
and you hinted to them before,
talking about the golden standard.
Tell us about what kind of –
offsets can be kind of confusing
and controversial.
What are the right offsets?
Gates: Well, first of all, it’s great
that we’re finally talking about offsets,
and any company that actually
looks at their emissions
and pays for offsets
is way better than a company that either
doesn’t look at their emissions
or looks at them
and doesn’t pay for offsets.
And so the leading companies
are now buying offsets,
some of them spending
hundreds of millions to buy offsets.
That is a very, very good thing.
The ability to see which offsets
actually have long-term benefit
that really keep the carbon out
for the over thousands
of years that count.
There are now organizations
that I and others are funding
to label offsets as either gold standard
or different levels of impact.
And the price of offsets range
from 15 dollars a ton
to 600 dollars a ton.
Some of the low-cost ones
may be really legitimate,
like reducing natural gas leakage.
That is pretty dramatic in some cases
in terms of the dollars
per tons avoided there.
A lot of the forestry things will probably
not end up looking that good,
as you really look
at the lifetime of the tree
or what would have happened otherwise.
But, you know, at least
we’re talking about offsets now.
And now we’re going to do it
in a thoughtful way.
Giussani: So some of the people
listening to this interview
may already be very involved with climate,
others may be looking for ways to step up.
And at the end of your book,
you have a chapter
about individual action.
Give us maybe, say, two examples,
two practical examples of things
that individual citizens in the US,
but also elsewhere,
can do to play a meaningful role
in tackling climate change.
Gates: I think everybody should start
by learning more, you know.
How much steel do we make
and where are those steel plants?
The industrial economy
is kind of a miracle,
although sadly, it’s a source
of so many emissions.
Once you really educate yourself,
then you’re in a position
to educate others,
hopefully, of diverse political beliefs
about why this is so important.
And yet it’s also very, very hard to do.
You have all your buying behavior,
electric cars, artificial meat, you know,
and you’ll see for all
the different products
various things that indicate
how green that product is.
And your demand doesn’t just
save those emissions,
it also encourages the improvement
of the green product.
Political voice,
I’d still put it number one.
Making sure your company
is measuring its emissions
and is starting to fund offsets
and is willing to be a customer
for breakthrough storage solutions
or green aviation fuel.
That is catalytic.
And a lot of those funds hopefully
will go through this vehicle
that’s really identifying
which projects globally
are technologies that won’t stay expensive
but can do like what solar and wind did
and come down in price.
So individuals are what drive this thing.
The democracies are where most
of the innovation power is
and they have to get activated
and set the example.
Giussani: I would like to end
on the outcome.
Maybe we should have started
with the outcome,
but let’s imagine a world
where we will actually have done all
of what you describe in the book
and everything else that’s necessary.
What would that future
everyday life look like?
Gates: Well, I think everybody
will be really proud
that humanity came together
on a global basis
to make this radical change
and there’s no precedent for it.
Even world wars,
where we orchestrated lots of resources,
it was, like, four or five year duration.
And here we’re talking
about three decades of hard work
dealing with an enemy
that the super bad stuff
is out in the future.
And so you’re benefiting young people
and future generations.
In some ways, you know,
life will look a lot like it does today.
You’ll still have buildings,
you’ll have air conditioning,
you’ll have lights at night.
But all of those you’ll multiply by zero
in terms of what the emissions
that come out of those activities are.
During the same time frame
we’ll have advances in medicine
of curing cancer
and finishing polio and malaria
and all sorts of things.
And so by taking away
this one super negative thing,
then all the progress
we make in other areas
won’t get reduced by this awful thing
that, if it goes unchecked,
the migration out
of the equatorial regions,
the number of deaths,
it’ll make the pandemic look like nothing.
I think so from a moral point of view
and letting the other improvements
not be offset by this.
It’ll be a source of great pride
that, hey, we came together.
Giussani: OK, let’s hope
that we actually do.
Bill Gates, thank you
for sharing your knowledge,
thank you for this very,
very important book.
And thank you for coming back to TED.
I want to close by showing
another short clip
from the TED-Ed animation series
inspired by Bill’s book.
This one is about material
that’s all around us,
has a big carbon footprint
and how to reinvent it.
Now, the series includes seven videos.
You can watch them all for free at
ed.ted.com/planforzero.
That’s planforzero, one single word.
And on the TED-Ed YouTube channel.
Thank you. Goodbye.
(Video) Look around your home.
Refrigeration, along with other
heating and cooling,
makes up about six percent
of total emissions.
Agriculture, which produces our food,
accounts for 18 percent.
Electricity is responsible for 27 percent.
Walk outside and the cars
zipping past, planes overhead,
trains ferrying commuters to work.
Transportation, including shipping,
contributes 16 percent
of greenhouse gas emissions.
Even before we use any of these things,
making them produces emissions,
a lot of emissions.
Making materials, concrete,
steel, plastic, glass,
aluminum and everything else
accounts for 31 percent
of greenhouse gas emissions.
[Watch the full animated series
at ed.ted.com/planforzero
and youtube.com/ted-ed]