Can Bill Gates’ ‘Breakthrough Energy Coalition’ Become Truly Useful? - by Joe Romm

I (and others) have been critical of Gates in the past for his focus on the need for new breakthrough technologies to solve the climate problem, what he calls “Energy Miracles.”  Gates has generally downplayed the amazing advances we’ve had in the keystone clean technologies — and been investing in new nuclear power, geo-engineering technologies, and off-the-wall stuff.

And the Breakthrough Energy Coalition continues to tout Gates’ debunked claims about the need for “Energy Miracles,”

So while a boost in cleantech R&D funding is always welcome, what is most needed now is money for accelerated deployment and project financing of technologies that are now market-ready.  Low or zero-interest loans and loan guarantees can leverage money 50-to-1 (since default rates are 2 percent or less).  With $2 billion, you could create a $100 billion revolving fund for backing clean tech projects — which is getting to the scale of investment we need.

I am sure that experts in cleantech financing could come up with even a more highly leveraged way to use whatever funds the world’s billionaires put on the table.

“In terms of dollars, the real cost is deployment.  Globally, deployment costs will be in the trillions of dollars, while R&D costs might be in the tens of billions,” climate expert Ken Caldeira told me back in 2011.  “We are talking about the elephant and the mouse.”

The International Energy Agency warned back in 2009, “The world will have to spend an extra $500 billion to cut carbon emissions for each year it delays implementing a major assault on global warming.”  In 2011 the IEA did the calculation a different way, concluding, “Delaying action is a false economy: for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.”

That’s why the world’s top priority is to deploy the low-carbon technologies we already have commercialized as fast as possible at a trillion-dollar scale.  Unsurprisingly, deployment, rather than R&D, is a major focal point for the Paris talks.  “A key sticking point in the negotiations during the next two weeks will be finance — specifically, whether developing countries trying to green their economies will get enough of it to make the clean energy transition worth it when coal remains cheaper,” explained Greenwire in its piece on the Gates fund:

Pascal Canfin of the World Resources Institute, formerly France’s minister of development, said while the spending deal might not move specific parts of the negotiations, it helps the broader ‘Paris package’ for dealing with climate change.

To be clear, the new fund has value, especially if it focuses more on improving existing cleantech and less on breakthrough technologies and energy miracles.  We will need a steady pipeline of next-generation carbon-free technologies that perform better and cost less — so countries can continue down the path towards zero emissions post-2030.

But such funding isn’t what is most needed now.  It won’t be of much if any help to the Paris negotiators or to the folks in India who have to make a decision today between coal plants and renewables.

Let’s hope the billionaires are open to consulting with the leading experts on cleantech financing and tweaking their fund so it does the most good now.

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