It hinges on the passage of the infrastructure bill in congress. If it’s not passed in the House, Bill Gates will focus on Europe and Asia instead.
Bill Gates announces that if the US government is willing to dedicate billions of dollars to fighting climate change, he’s willing to throw in a billion or two of his own money into a joint project.
With the Senate’s approval of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill earlier in the week, $100 billion is dedicated to tackling climate change. A quarter of which is dedicated to something called “public-private partnerships,” which are basically agreements that the government dedicates how a particular industry does things.
In this case, it’s where Bill Gates comes in to lend a hand. It comes as a new UN report about climate change brought the topic back to the public’s attention.
One of the world’s richest people interviewed with The Wall Street Journal to inform them about his plans. Bill Gates told the outlet he's ready to commit $1.5 billion for "joint projects with the US government" if they enacted a program at developing the relevant technologies to reduce carbon emissions. It'd be a three-year stint made possible through his Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund.
The Microsoft co-founder directly endorsed the commitments to climate technologies outlined in the infrastructure bill currently marinating in Congress.
“Critical for all these climate technologies is to get the costs down and to be able to scale them up to a pretty gigantic level. You’ll never get that scale up unless the government’s coming in with the right policies, and the right policy is exactly what’s in that infrastructure bill.”
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm agrees. “It shows that the private sector is ready to lead the fight to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions” and work towards an emissions-free economy, she said.
The outlet describes Washington’s concerns over the bill’s details as not being zeroed in on disputing climate projects, but worries over spending in general.
Another part of the recent focus in the Biden administration’s energy policy has been about oil. Gas prices are being weighted by economists amid US inflation.
Yesterday when National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan begged OPEC to increase production, it smacked Washington as a double standard. In this case the cancellation of the Keystone pipeline was brought back up by some, to prove the point.
Early last month, Bill Gates attended a billionaire summer camp in Idaho to talk about climate change with other wealthy people. A short time later a partnership between Gates and George Soros to buy a UK COVID test maker company was unveiled.
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