News & media

Time for Congress to launch America’s clean industrial revolution

By Bill Gates | October 31, 2021 | LinkedIn Post

Right now, I’m heading to the international climate conference in Glasgow, known as COP26, where delegates will talk about how to cut greenhouse gas emissions from roughly 51 billion tons per year to zero by 2050. On my way out the door, I’m hearing news that makes me even more optimistic that the world can accomplish this extraordinarily difficult task: The U.S. is on the verge of making a historic investment in clean technologies through the Build Back Better Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This package of legislation has many important provisions, from health to education, that we need to make progress on. But because I’m on my way to COP26, I want to write about the climate provisions.

Technological innovation is the only way the world can get to zero. So many of the processes of daily life currently emit carbon—flying on airplanes, building houses, eating hamburgers—so we need to invent new ways of doing them that are green. Then, after we invent them in the lab, we need to “commercialize” them—that is, make them effective, reliable, and cheap enough that people want to and can afford to buy them.

If the Congress passes these bills, the United States will be at the vanguard of powering a clean industrial revolution. To realize this version of the future, we need to do things like update the electric grid so it can carry more clean energy to more places, rethink how we create things like liquid fuels, and accelerate the time from lab to market for early-stage climate technologies. When I say accelerate, I mean by a lot. In the past, energy transitions have taken as long as a century. For the sake of a livable future, we need to do it in a decade or two.

(read complete article)

October 31, 2021 Time for Congress to launch America’s clean industrial revolution | Bill Gates LI - (pdf)

October 5, 2021 Fossil fuels are astonishingly harmful. The Orange County oil spill is just a reminder | LA Times - (pdf)

September 27, 2021 CA Business Leaders Speak Out for Infrastructure Bill - (pdf)

September 2, 2021 LA approves 100% clean energy by 2035 target, a decade ahead of prior goal | Utility Dive - (pdf)

August 10, 2021 Advocates: CA is Ground Zero in Wake of U.N. Climate Report | PNS - (pdf)

July 13, 2021 Offshore Wind Push Gains Momentum in California | Courthouse News Service - (pdf)

June 25, 2021 California just committed itself to “an unprecedented amount” of clean energy | Grist - (article)

June 5, 2021 Longtime Woodland resident honored by City Council | Daily Democrat - (pdf)

May 27, 2021 Record wildfire threats mean California must pick when and where to fight, utilities, analysts, CalFire agree - (pdf)

May 26, 2021 California may build 11.5GW of almost all carbon-free resources to replace its last nuclear plant | Canary Media - (pdf)

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11