Tech billionaire Bill Gates has drawn compelling parallels between the current climate technology revolution and his transition from Microsoft Corp. to global health philanthropy in the early 2000s, marking 2024 as a pivotal year for climate innovation deployment.
What Happened: Gates, who founded Breakthrough Energy to accelerate climate solutions, identifies similar patterns between today’s climate tech landscape and the global health challenges of the millennium’s turn, when preventable diseases were claiming millions of children’s lives in developing nations.
“All this began in 2000 for the fight against disease, and I believe 2024 is a similar inflection point in the fight against climate change,” Gates writes in the report’s foreword. He notes that like the health crisis, many climate solutions already exist but face deployment challenges.
The Microsoft co-founder highlights a significant shift in corporate attitudes toward climate technology investment. Major investors, including endowments and sovereign wealth funds, are “finally getting off the sidelines,” he observes, as business leaders increasingly view climate tech as a business opportunity rather than just an environmental obligation.
“These innovations are ready for prime time,” Gates emphasizes. “They’re not science projects—they’re science products. They work. They’re commercially viable.”
Why It Matters: The report cites several examples of corporate engagement, including American Airlines‘ partnerships with multiple climate tech ventures and Siemens’ implementation of innovative vacuum-insulated windows for building efficiency.
Breakthrough Energy, which was established by Gates in 2015, has raised over $3.5 billion in committed capital, investing in more than 110 companies.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures has been actively investing in climate tech, including a $107 million investment in Heart Aerospace, a Swedish hybrid airplane manufacturer, to advance its ES-30 hybrid-electric airplane toward commercial viability.
The firm has also been involved in initiatives to extract lithium from the Great Salt Lake in Utah, a crucial component in electric vehicle batteries.
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This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Kaustubh Bagalkote
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