Us at the DOE are freaking out about the questionnaire Trump sent out, hinting at 10% off-the-bat cuts (to all accounts other than 050, aka Defense), ARPA-E dissolution, political retribution to anyone related to climate science, Rick Perry rumors, etc... We've been running in continuing resolutions so long we've effectively been losing funding at the rate of 2%/year (to be fair, this isn't exclusive to us)
Even with all this money from billionaires, most climate research makes extremely heavy use of DOE facilities, namely light sources, and works best with the close development loop.
So far, these circumstances seem specific to the DOE, so that's at least a little bit comforting. NSF is somewhat insulated from the standpoint that NSF directors are appointed every 6 years and the current one will get through most of Trump's term. No clue about the NIH. NASA is similarly not in as dire of a situation from the looks of it.
> NSF is somewhat insulated from the standpoint that NSF directors are appointed every 6 years and the current one will get through most of Trump's term. No clue about the NIH. NASA is similarly not in as dire of a situation from the looks of it.
Potentially, but there has already been a lot of meddling with the budget that the NSF director gets to put to use. Basically every year congress tries to ensure that the NSF stops spending money on climate change and 'social sciences'. There has been broad pressure to cede to congress's demands that the stop funding anything that they disagree with as well as general budget cuts.
NASA will definitely have all of their climate research gutted, and given Trump's relationship with Lamar Smith and Jeff Sessions, I'd expect decent funding toward big projects that favor Alabama and Texas sites.
Remember what DOE was like when we had a Nobel prize winner running it? He did a lot of good, but he still didn't change the culture much. I expect the same inertia will work in our favor with Trump. Passively resist as much as possible, and try to outlast the new idiots at the top.
> Passively resist as much as possible, and try to outlast the new idiots at the top.
This is why the federal bureaucracies are essentially unconstitutional: people within the rule-making structure are unaccountable to voters, but their decisions have lasting influence on the economy and on people's lives. For instance, many federal agencies define new felony-level crimes (that wreck lives) without a new law being passed by the legislature.
Don't get me wrong, plenty of people within government have a good heart and genuine motives. Also don't think I'm supporting Trump here. Just take a step back and look at the sentiment of your comment holistically: you're hopeful that institutional inertia will allow you to continue toward your goals within government in spite of the people's choice of the "idiot at the top."
Well, the whole point of an independent civil service is to provide a check-and-balance on the ability of the elected officials to make bad policies due to a lack of relevant expertise, or a personal ideological frenzy. In an ideal world, much of the civil service would be subject to a completely separate form of democratic accountability than ordinary legislative and executive elections, to ensure that separation between expertise and ideology.
One good thing that could potentially come out of it is a divorce of the Office of Science from the DOE, and closer ties with the NSF and Universities (Department of Research+Office of User Facilities?), but I'm sure UC/Bechtel would oppose this.
I'm personally not likely going to be affected much, outside of wage freeze, unless the government decides it doesn't care about finding earth-ending solar system objects, but it's hard enough trying to do science in the USA and the wage gap between the non-clearance employees in the DOE and industry is increasing. If it gets much harder, brain drain from the Office of Science to europe is probable - more so than a migration to industry I'd imagine.
To be more persuasive, you might want to point out the big successes of the DoE.
The dramatic reduction in PV costs, for example, were caused by the volumes created mostly by European feed-in tariffs, plus the manufacturing determination in China.
Im sure DoE has some big wins, and people who hear about them are more likely to drive support.
The DOE's biggest duties are nuclear defense (2/3 of the budget), and science programs (1/4). Among other things, they're working to "find alternatives to rare earth elements which we now depend on China for" [0]; they also helped fund the Human Genome Project.
The DOE invented "solid state lighting, modern refrigerator compressors and water heaters".
The OP (submission) mentions cuts to ARPA-E, which he probably got from 2 of Trump's questionnaire, but cuts to ARPA-E are very unlikely to be significant, since they fund so many commercializable things, which Trump said he supports during the campaign trail. Here [1] is the Trump questionnaire so everyone can read it without speculating about it. Many of the questions are innocuous, the fuss is centered around question 13.
A poor guy comes here to spill his guts about potentially losing his job and all the serious science that will be stalled, and you thought his desperation was for pointers on how to be more persuasive? Yeah, the HN advice culture has really jumped the shark with this one. This isn't a reality show.
I think it was perfectly relevant considering "We've been running in continuing resolutions so long we've effectively been losing funding at the rate of 2%/year".
Gosh. You're really not getting it. They're not losing funding because of anything specific to their research (yet). Congress passed only a single budget covering the whole government in the last 8 years! They're only keeping the government funded by continuing resolutions that keep all allocations flat-line. The drop in funding he's talking about is from inflation when the budget is flat year-over-year.
> NSF is somewhat insulated from the standpoint that NSF directors are appointed every 6 years and the current one will get through most of Trump's term.
While I support science funding, this is a good time to remind people that politicized science is fat from exclusive to the right[0] (excellent article, don't just skim). A recent example is this paper [1]funded by a $400k NSF grant which tried to "analyze how power, domination, colonialism, and control—undergirded by and coincident with masculinist ideologies—have shaped glacier-related sciences and knowledges over time".
Also, for those reading about the "Trump questionnaire" who might not have heard it elsewhere, here is the NYT story about this[2], which much more comprehensive and slightly more balanced than the parent makes it out to be.
Among other things, it hints towards "significant shifts of the agency [DOE] towards nuclear power", and a "push to commercialize the research of the Energy Department's laboratories, long considered the crown jewels of federal science."
BTW, the downsizing of federal departments has been planned by Trump for a long time, and brought up by him during the campaign, when he said several months ago that he wants to reduce the federal workforce and institute "hiring freeze on all federal employees to reduce the federal workforce through attrition (exempting military, public safety, and public health)". This was in his "Contract With The America Voter", and is nothing to be surprised about.
DOE has been an epic failure in the past 30 years. Only a sliver of the budget going to solar cell and battery research. Not sure how much of that was because of congressional earmarks, but Tesla is putting them to shame.
When one institution costs money to operate, and another makes money by operating, the latter will very quickly outstrip the former.
Granted, not all desired behaviors can be made more profitable than their alternatives. But this is an example of how to encourage this sort of technological progress. We can be promoting electric cars not just because they are green but because they are awesome, or a free-market economy not just because it is more fair but because it works better, or no-till farming not just because it is better for the environment but because it produces higher profits, or space exploration not just because it is educational but because there are huge opportunities.
When profitability is a part of the equation, most other motivators are weak in comparison.
I've seen several opportunities/companies that could do the half a gigaton and meet the other criterion really fast, but raising money is a grind:
* Advanotech.com - makes fully functionalized silicon nanoparticles at a fraction of the current cost. This automatically gives a performance enhancement to batteries that hits double digit percentiles.
I hope that whoever leads up this fund has deep chemistry competency to be able to fund things that will move the needle on gigatons of carbon emissions.
Bill Gates's statements on energy have been far more in line with the realities of minerals, carbon emissions, and lithospheric realities the statements of many other billionaires.
The 20-year life of this fund is very significant.
Every VC fund I know of is a ten year fund, which means they expect to invest the full fund and collect their return within 10 years. Which in practice means they actually want to get an exit in 5-7 years, ruling out much energy technology investment.
A 20 year fund adds 10 years to their time horizon, which will put many more energy technology investments within their "strike zone"
> The BEV fund, which has a 20-year duration, aims to invest in the commercialization of new technologies that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions
Very interesting. I always thought that climate change is a tough problem because it requires cooperation, but that some uber-billionaire might say, "I'll write the 100 billion dollar check to make this happen" (Assuming an expensive technical solution exists without a good short term P&L) It would be the ultimate legacy for them. "I was the one that saved the planet" I worried that it may be too big for one fortune. It looks like several may be required.
It would have some interesting implications, politically. The democratic sense of "The People" rejected the issue and failed to take care of it through democratic and mundane day-to-day decisions. But the uber-wealthy who are often considered absolute enemies of "The People" had to step up and save the entire planet.
Is it possible that solving the great challenges of humanity today (global poverty, climate change, nuclear non-proliferation) stretch the ability of democracies to solve?
I'm an anti-elitist libertarian at heart, but the "let everyone do as they will" mindset may cause problems. (And I understand that elites get it wrong much of the time)
> but the "let everyone do as they will" mindset may cause problems
You can change that "may" to "does". Even in the case of perfect coordination and cooperation, there are fundamental mathematical limitations on the optimization power of distributed algorithms. Introducing independent, competing agents then adds game-theoretic results into the mix and everything goes straight into the toilet.
Libertarianism is not "let everyone do as they will", but to interfere only to maximise liberty. The challenge - and e.g. the primary split between left-libertarianism / libertarian socialism and right-libertarianism - is to define what it means to maximise liberty, and which forms of liberty should be inviolable even if affects the liberty of others.
"Let everyone do as they will" only works if you are prepared to step in when someone's idea of "doing as they will" involves preventing someone else from doing the same, or it won't be "let everyone do as they will" but "let a small portion of people do as they will, and everyone else be damned".
As a left-libertarian, I'd certainly argue that if you pollute and as a result affect the very ability of others to survive or negatively affect their health, you are also affecting their liberty, and society is justified in sanctioning you.
Elites get this wrong because few, if any, elites aim to maximise liberty. Maximising liberty does not (currently, anyway) win you elections.
I think democracy would be in much better shape if there weren’t such massive campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry to a wide range of politicians.
But that's a reflection of "The People" and their will. People want their existing jobs and status quo. They care about next week's pay check. Not a theoretical tidal wave that people they don't know say will happen if they don't stop working on fossil fuels and switch to being a cashier at Wendy's. To separate that reality of will from democracy would make it no longer democratic.
Campaign Contributions are imo clearly not a reflection of the will of the people. They are a reflection of business interests, protecting the status quo and working against balanced arguments on public policy.
A reflection of The People would be simply their democratic vote, informed by balanced and unsubsidized arguments from both sides.
> What if The People's democratic vote is to commit collective long term suicide for short term gains?
I mean, obviously, individually, it's up to each person to choose. But when the majority chooses for everyone (including the minority), is the minority bound to respect that decision?
> But that's a reflection of "The People" and their will.
I don't think so. I need to heat my house or I will die, so I pay the energy company. But, my "will" is that climate change is the most important issue today, and I would greatly like to increase subsidies for alternative energy and funds for climate science. If the energy company lobbies against that, then they are using my money to lobby against my will. It's easy to extrapolate this to the majority of the energy company's subscribers. You can't say that corporate lobbying is a reflection of the country's will.
"A third objection is that Easter Islanders surely wouldn’t have been so foolish as to cut down all their trees, when the consequences would have been so obvious to them. As Catherine Orliac expressed it, “Why destroy a forest that one needs for his [i.e., the Easter Islanders’] material and spiritual survival?” This is indeed a key question, one that has nagged not only Catherine Orliac but also my University of California students, me, and everyone else who has wondered about self-inflicted environmental damage. I have often asked myself, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?” Like modern loggers, did he shout “Jobs, not trees!”? Or: “Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we’ll find a substitute for wood”? Or: “We don’t have proof that there aren’t palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering”? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment."
- Jared Diamond, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"
And whose fault do you think that is... There can be no talk of the will of the people when they are beholden to the coercion of the elites through structured economic insecurity.
Perhaps, although I don't believe another system of government would be better suited to solve it. The problem with not addressing climate change, for example, is greater concern for personal interests over the general welfare. In this case, fossil fuel companies prioritize their profits over the planet's well-being. That prioritization is the source of fossil fuel lobbying and anti-science news that supposedly refutes climate change.
Theoretically, in an informed democracy, the people would recognize the threat and act to stop it by voting in representatives who are committed to curtailing climate change. In the real world, though, our democracy is not that informed. The mainstream media covers stories that are more sexy. I don't believe there were any climate change questions posed at the presidential debates.
The two possible solutions would be to change the system in such a way to foster an informed democracy. The other, as you mentioned, would be an entirely different government system. I think the former solution is more feasible by passing legislation that makes it harder for fossil fuel companies to have so much influence on representatives. I'm not sure how to fix the news. The reason I don't see a different system of government working is because I don't think any system solves the "individual interest > general welfare" problem. Democracy is pretty much as good as it gets when it comes to the general welfare, other than a smart benevolent dictator... but how long has that ever lasted?
Or that modern democracies are simply too inept to deal with them. I think we could design a democratic state that is far more effective than any that exists today.
Well, sure, we could design one - but could we design one that would survive itself?
For example, consider the problem of gerrymandering. When one political party takes control over another, they may look at their gerrymandered districts and cry out "Unfair! We need to fix this!" But how do you incentivize them so that they don't just redraw the boundaries in their favor this time?
IMO, we should abolish elections entirely and select legislators by lottery out of pools of people who pass qualification exams. Random selection has a lot of benefits. There have been a number of studies on its use in promoting workers in the private sector. Sortition has a long history of use in government, from ancient Greece, to the Irish constitutional convention of 2012.
Elections inherently favor those who desire power over other, demagogues, and narcissists. They also result in the creation of an insular political class, which often trends towards oligarchy.
How could they do otherwise with the messages they are getting from extremely partisan media and representatives?
The people are compelled to recycle, change their lightbulbs and so on but their representatives OK a fracking scheme or gas plant that cancels out all savings. There's no insulation, combined heat and power or even removal of fossil subsidies or sense of urgency coming from the representatives.
The few "people" who are scientifically aware seem very keen to see this change, but unfortunately are still a minority.
I think that's why projects like Elon's Solar Roof have so much potential from a grass roots perspective, blending energy consumption awareness with self-concern (and coolness). If it was a daily concern for most of us, and not something to just get bummed out about a couple times a week, people would be hyped about it.
Sometimes it just seems like every solution is on some global scale that barely involves us. There's a handful of graduates who will get some old MS money (and good for them). And I'll keep living exactly the same. I know there's probably lower hanging fruit around the world, but I hope for effective solutions we can put into practice that change the conversation (as Don Draper would put it).
The problem is again the tendency to generalize. A small number of the "wealthy" stepping up to address climate change does not mean that the "wealthy" are stepping up. You made a similar mistake in generalizing the "people".
The only thing which matters when considering "The People" is their aggregate "generalization" -- contrasted with these uber wealthy where a handful of them can make an actual positive impact on climate change where the people failed. Sure, plenty of people are gung ho about making a difference, but if their sum doesn't add up to actual change then that's the aggregate reality.
i would not say that "the people" have rejected it, rather some of our representatives fail to come to terms with the science. Either by choice or by foolishness.
But yes quite interesting that the uber-rich in this circumstance step up to the bat, perhaps they have vested interest, just as those who claim its a "hoax//inconclusive"
But it isn't the role of the representatives to come to terms with science, it's their role to come to terms with the will of "The People" (the tangled mess of what that means). I think it could be argued that the will of "The People" isn't to enact strong action to fight climate change. It's more to retain jobs in old energy industries and procrastinate until something absolutely dramatic and visceral impacts their day-to-day.
I'd suppose the Achille's heel of "The People" is their short-sight. You need big minds with big wallets to see and act on the long game.
It may actually be easier for Gates to pledge $1B to fix the earth than for a single mom to vote "Yes, make my gas $12/gallon" to do the same.
It may not be "big minds" or "short sight" but the fact that the majority of the populace is expending so much thought and effort to just get by that they don't really have the extra cycles to worry about future calamities. We kind of used up all of our populaces' reserves for that sort of thing on income inequality. The people at the top are the only ones with any "propellant" left to maneuver.
There are big minds without power/wealth and also far sighted people without. You pretty much need both in order to do something significant which doesn't align with the overall will of the general public.
oh absolutely the representatives should be held accountable for their opinions. I would like to see in the upcoming senate, how climate change is going to be taken, and how the votes are run.
As far as the will of the public, i don't think that "saving the environment" will force a shift of peoples votes, i think that natural disaster / destruction will gather peoples attention enough to make a push.
It's extremely difficult to look at long term, esp when you're living paycheck to mouth... I wonder if the majority of people in these old industry are within that space.
> some uber-billionaire might say, "I'll write the 100 billion dollar check to make this happen" (Assuming an expensive technical solution exists without a good short term P&L)
Good but expensive technical solutions do exist, namely carbon capture and storage, together with more renewables, nuclear and fusion power, perhaps some hydrogen production etc. But the financial requirements are unfortunately more towards OPEX than CAPEX. This means even if some uber-billionaire pays for the CAPEX, us regular people will shoulder the largest cost.
A proper solution would be a functioning carbon tax that negates the currently externalised cost of emissions. But in simple terms that means "making everything more expensive", on the order of $0.5 more per gallon of gasoline overnight, large increases in taxes on new cars, everything made from plastic 50% more expensive, cement and steel prices increasing by at least 20% so new houses are 30-50% more expensive to build, etc. In short, political suicide for anyone who enacts it.
Solar, wind, hydro and grid scale battery storage are all heavily skewed towards CAPEX, not sure where you got the idea that climate change solutions have high OPEX.
A carbon tax doesnt make everything more expensive if you give the money straight back to the citizens which is what we did in Australia before it was overthrown by our current government. Everybody earning under $80k and using an average amount of energy was financially better off under the carbon tax.
Maybe. There are two viable routes that I can imagine. The first, the article doesn't touch on too much -- environmental engineering.
There have been a handful of ideas to reduce or reverse the effects of global warming using engineered solutions. Examples include such ideas as taking Sulphur Dioxide and putting it into the upper atmosphere (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/511016/a-cheap-and-easy-p...). Another idea, that was invented by Bill Gates' friend Paul Allen, includes building ultra tall chimneys in order to vent opaque soot into the upper atmosphere.
The other side of this is that there is a belief we can come up with technologies that are significantly greener without a significant downside in price or performance.
It's possible to create fuel by filtering CO2 from the air, but the filtering process requires energy, and so does converting the CO2 into fuel. We'd need to use an abundant carbon-free energy source, like solar or advanced nuclear.
I still think it's a great idea, as a backup plan for carbon-neutral transportation in case electric vehicles don't take over the world in the near future.
In a similar vein, one idea that has often crossed my mind (and offered free to any taker): In most tropical coastal areas, there is an abundance of both humidity and sunlight. So why not use large banks of solar powered dehumidifiers to extract moisture from the air as water?
I wish they'd set up an ETF of some sort. I'd happily put in a share of my retirement savings in order to assist in that. I'm sure a sizeable portion of the coasts would too. Sure $1B from Gates will have an impact, but I could imagine a climate change fund growing pretty large.
I think it's a almost impossible to launch an ETF for this kind of effort. An ETF has to track publicly trackable entities such as commodities, currencies or public stocks. Even the Private Equity ETFs track publicly listed Private Equity companies, not their holdings. From what I understand this fund will primarily invest in very early stage private entities.
It's a pity that charity is the best way (currently) to find solutions to these issues. Market mechanisms could create an incentive if only we put an appropriate price on carbon. Then industries would be falling over themselves to develop clean energy.
Putting a price on carbon isn't much of a market mechanism. I'm not saying I'm opposed to the idea but it seems like you're putting lipstick on what many see as a pig.
Why not? Ensuring that the true cost of a product is factored in its price will make people reconsider their purchasing options, and it may potentially show that alternatives are competitively priced.
That does not matter unfortunately as realistically a carbon tax would be below the lower bound estimate of the 'true' cost due to political considerations.
But, even ignoring politics, people have estimated the effects of climate change so it's possible; but there's going to a spectrum of answers.
Cardboard markets are never as good and inventive as the real thing. The companies involved will find a way to not change and compete with the alternatives.
For instance via hard lobbying or even illegal means.
Taxation is not a market-based mechanism. You'd also have to implement prohibitive duties to avoid importing the problem.
Taxation is one way to deal with a shortcoming in markets, namely externalities [1]. The free market is not a panacea. If left to its own designs it leads to all kinds of negative outcomes (such as externalities and monopolies).
This very thorough analysis of the potential for wind energy in the US concludes that the great plains have massive potential for fantastically cheap wind power generation, with some sites having potential capacity factors well over 65%.
The point at which energy storage becomes an issue is a long way off if you connect the country with HVDC lines. Building such lines would be a great achievement for this fund.
However, I guess the political question will get hit at that point: will the government be as keen to let private investors build new power infrastructure as it is for them to build new oil pipelines?
It's still brilliantly more efficient and elegant. Plenty of other goods and services are taxed that face this same problem.
Cap and Trade has provided subsidies and rewarded some of the biggest polluters.
There's a very strong, fair and efficient case to be made for it. It would do a lot to reduce GHG emissions and raise tax revenue in a more socially just way (better than taxing jobs).
Government wants companies not to get off carbon for the $$$; but companies want to get off carbon (to some extent) as they would not have to pay carbon taxes.
It's just like any other tax. Companies are good at tax avoidance (note: this is legal unlike evasion).
Yes, and the party doing the taxing is also the party controlling things like import duties on solar panels.
> It's just like any other tax
Exactly. And once you introduce it, others like it will be sure to follow. Except they will be levied on the alternative energy sources which are cannibalizing carbon, because the state coffers demand it.
Well, the government can issue bonds (hope I'm using the right word) against that carbon tax to get a steady stream irrespective of the carbon emitted (other people would bear that risk of how much carbon tax would be collected).
Actually, companies producing more carbon due to government is not really a severe problem because the carbon tax compensates for the carbon produced (at least in theory).
Governments that provide comprehensive healthcare funding have an incentive to want people to stop smoking. Whether some governments actually want that is an exercise in guesswork.
Edit: This is consistent with real-world observation. Anti-smoking policy is the greatest in the US where the plutocracy benefits from increased healthcare spending, and relatively lower in social welfare states in Europe.
They have Mukesh Ambani on board. He has a special interest in not letting renewable resources flourish as he is the chairman of Reliance Petroleum. A little good PR doesn't hurt though, so why not.
Mukesh / Reliance have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in algae-based biofuels and other clean-energy technologies in the past decade. I happened to work for one of said companies.. We had regular visits from some of Reliance's most senior engineers, two of whom were on our Board of Directors. For a "PR Move", they sure spent a shitload of time, money, and energy trying to make our technology work.
I think it makes complete sense to have someone from the oil industry to be involved here, they'll offer useful perspective. This isn't your typical international governmental smoke and mirrors show, this is extremely successful men setting out to solve one of the world's biggest problems using their own money.
It's nice to see that private individuals are stepping in to make a difference. The Obama administration was terrible at picking winners to back; I think tech types will do a much better job, especially considering it's their money.
I'm suspicious of vague "feel good" investments. Investing in particular approaches or technologies that look profitable, yes, putting a billion dollars into a vague "feel good" pot isn't a recipe for success.
I'm not convinced that statement applies to this particular fund's goals. The first greentech "boom" you mentioned in another reply, to me was very much like the dot-com boom. Everybody wanted in on the gold rush, and very few of them actually knew their (engineering) stuff. Even those that did, many got taken out with the fall. Classic hype cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle My point is, given that most of the tech is now economically competitive (or about to be), these guys are betting that we're entering the "slope of enlightenment." And given some of the names on that board, I'm inclined to believe they know what they're doing.
Good point I think, the timing does look about right. This would be a bit similar to smart phones, as well as VR where we're now on try #2 and I think the technology is good enough this time to get a large number of early adopters on board.
All of the algae companies as well.. Like I mentioned elsewhere, I was a part of a biofuels company in the Bay Area that eventually went belly up.
KiOR cost Vinod Khosla tens of millions and was extremely embarrassing as the company was sued by the SEC for fraud, the total loss was something like $650M. Craig Ventor doesn't even mention Synthetic Genomics any more, total loss there was close to $100M. Solazyme IPOed a few years back, has since lost 90% of their stock's value and have an accumulated deficit approaching $700M. Aurora Algae lost $150M and went out of business. Algenol has spent about the same without any revenues of note. Sapphire raised something like $350M, including $100M from the DOE for biofuels but have slowed operations significantly and are now focusing on fish oil. LS9 raised $81M and was eventually sold for $40M. Amyris went public awhile back as well and has since lost over 95% of their market cap. Their accumulated deficits are well over a billion dollars now.
If I had to guess, I'd say in the biofuels space, about $3-$4 billion has been set on fire in the past decade.
But you can't fault them for trying, and it sounds to me like this fund isn't investing necessarily with a high likelihood of making money, hence the 20 year time frame.
Despite what Elon Musk says, fuel cells aren't dead in the slightest. Yes there has been some stagnation in innovation from the major players, buy there has also been some significant and ground breaking improvements in fuel cell efficiency in the past few years.
At least one company that I know of, Loop Energy, has proven (independently verified) fuel cell tech that will soon make cargo trucks 0-emissions. (Note: My brother was the lead engineer and basically developed this)
New head of the EPA doesn't believe in climate change. Maybe gates can convince him that climate change is real? A billion dollars or even 10 isn't going to be able to change much if the government doesn't get some what involved.
Just recently I had discussion with my wife about climate change, why billionaires won't just solve the problem and what we can do to help? What is the best nonprofit to donate?
The conclusion of our discussion was that the problem is much bigger than what billionaires can solve with direct money, governments could do something, but politics is in the way, so the only hope is that technology will help. Hence the best way is not to donate to nonprofits, but invest in tech companies that might help with climate change. And get rich while doing that.
Politics can amplify or inhibit success in the market by setting policy, and I think it will be very hard to innovate around this problem.
I'd expect these investors to pick places to invest where government policies will not work against their objectives, which probably is China and EU, not US.
As long as Bill Gates understands atomic energy as "clean energy", and even wants to build small micro-size atomic reactors for home owners he should just retired, and does what he understands best - as this is clearly way over his head. They should start to use his properties as long term dump site for his micro-sized atomic reactors. Maybe he should visit the ground atomic disaster ground zero zones in Ukraine and Japan for a week.
Just thinking out-loud and wanting opinions: contrast this with the public funding model, how sustainable or effective is this model of private funding of research?
They're not mutually exclusive. For example, I've done consulting work for a private geothermal energy LLC (AltaRock) that does a fair amount of R&D funded by the DOE (and maybe NSF?) and other public sources, though I believe that the company is also venture-backed.
A lot of the hard part of the development in geothermal is fighting with problems that aren't very solved scientifically, particularly understanding the dynamics of stress and temperature in the upper several km of the earth's crust near active volcanoes. I was working with AltaRock on these issues, which are chewy enough that NSF doesn't consider the baseline levels of knowledge good enough to fund research in, as NSF wants science to be at a point where some sort of obvious scientific outcome is highly probable before they will fund it.
I assume that this is pretty widespread in cutting-edge R&D: Those involved find themselves working at the ragged edge of the known universe, even if both academic scientists and the general public think of the topic as pretty mundane.
So I view a fund like this one as quite complimentary to public funding: At some level, venture-type funding that has a high risk tolerance can help get projects off the ground to the point where they can get funding from both more conservative government funds and more typical institutional investors.
(Full disclosure: I also own a private geoscience research company that solicits a lot of public funding as well as doing consulting and non-fundable research, but it's really just a shell for me to try to get paid to do cool science, rather than a nascent company focused on growth.)
>One thesis driving the fund is that only governments have the resources
to invest in fundamental [clean energy] research, through government labs and
funding for university research, at a scale that is needed for breakthrough advances.
Government funding in areas such as battery technology and materials used
for solar power, for example, has seeded the growth of those areas, with
their commercialization subsequently funded by private investors.
Let's restrict ourselves to ultra-long term funding, i.e. that with 20+ years horizons.
In this view, there are more dollars in the public coffers. But they are more politically entangled. If your project is a political darling, e.g. a clean-energy company with a need for lots of factories in lots of districts and a cap table of retired Senators, this is close to frictionless capital.
If you live in reality, however, there are costs and political risk attached to this capital. The private pot is smaller, but faster-moving and less unpredictably politicized.
A balance between the two would be good, if only to encourage the public coffers to become more efficient.
It's nice to see a group of people with the resources to potentially make something happen take an approach to this issue that doesn't involve politics, fines, incessant regulations, or taxpayer money. This initial $1 billion will likely burn up fast, so I'd also like to see them open the fund up to everyone and see how many of the people that made climate change such an enormous political issue during the Presidential election actually put their money where their mouth is and try to get something done instead of just complaining. As an added bonus, if the fund eventually produces a clean energy company that can achieve price parity with conventional sources, they'll get an enormous return on their money.
> the people that made climate change such an enormous political issue during the Presidential election
Climate change was discussed during the presidential debates for precisely 82 seconds. If climate change can be considered an issue of this election, then the "people that made climate change such an enormous political issue" are the people who made the following ridiculous, attention-getting statements about climate change:
Trump's position on climate change was discussed at length in the liberal news media and was cited by liberals as a reason to vote for their candidate. It was also reported that in the wake of their loss, a Hillary Clinton campaign staffer yelled at his co-workers during a post-election meeting that he was going to "die of climate change" [1] because of Trump's election, and this sentiment seems to be a widely held belief among liberals. So yes, it was made into a major campaign issue by the media despite an apparent lack of discussion about it during the debates.
Anyway my point was that opening a fund like this up for public participation would give those that so loudly claim to care deeply about this issue an opprtunity to actually do something other than protest or complain online about it.
I was just having a conversation with my wife yesterday. I was positing that global warming could probably be fixed by technology if Gates, Zuckerberg and others clubbed together and made it happen.
It's so strange to see that exact news on the front page of HN the day after.
Whether or not this comment was sarcastic, its net effect would clearly be pro-inflammatory, which is not great for HN. We're after civil and substantive discussion here.
Yeah, it was in poor taste and I apologize for saying it. I was in a goofy mood and knew it would get a reaction. (It is a Trump tweet from 2012)
I think Trump will be more reasonable about the issue during his campaign and he said it at a time when there was less data and less certainty, so it's also not fair to take it out of context.
Speculation: China's power needs are growing more rapidly, so there's more additional power coming online in China. While, in the US, power consumption growth is slower. A larger percentage of overall power sources need to be replaced, where there's less pressure to do so.
China's power consumption has plateaued and it currently has massive over-capacity - so much so that it's halted the construction of some new coal plants.
They aren't doing that to stop 'climate change'; the are doing it to stop actual pollution -- as in particulate pollution that has made places like Beijing uninhabitable. The Chinese would gladly let the Earth get a half degree warmer because that would mean less need for coal for heating, thus reducing their particulate pollution even more. They aren't scared of the CO2 boogeyman, but of actual, cancer causing particulate pollution. They aren't in to the "global warming" thing because they aren't looking for a means to control the means of production or income distribution -- they already do. They have a desire for reducing pollution and achieving energy independence -- they don't buy into to the sky-is-falling hysteria promoted by Western anti-capitalists. Rather ironic one might think.
for those who don't know he's quoting Trump. the man who, if becomes President, will arguably have the single greatest impact, as an individual, on whether humanity does enough, fast enough, to forestall/minimize climate disaster.
It will be OK. I shouldn't have posted that. I think Trump will be more reasonable about it during his campaign and he said it at a time when there was less data and less certainty about the issue, so it's not fair to take it out of context.
They offer now knowing they won't get government cooperation at least in the U.S. had Hillary won they would have been looking to the tax payer. I am all for them doing this the timing seems suspicious.
Did you read the article? They've been working towards this for a while, and likely would have started regardless:
"Gates had last year announced his intention to personally invest an additional $1 billion in clean energy technology. He was also among the 28 wealthy individuals and families signed on to the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group broadly committed to investing in this area. The new fund, which includes many of them, is a next, concrete step toward actually deploying their capital."
You say this as if their cause is disproportionately in their interests and not in the public interest. Taxpayers should be looking to themselves if they believe in the cause.
Even with all this money from billionaires, most climate research makes extremely heavy use of DOE facilities, namely light sources, and works best with the close development loop.
So far, these circumstances seem specific to the DOE, so that's at least a little bit comforting. NSF is somewhat insulated from the standpoint that NSF directors are appointed every 6 years and the current one will get through most of Trump's term. No clue about the NIH. NASA is similarly not in as dire of a situation from the looks of it.