From Mr. Gates' GatesNotes blog, March 23:
I’m in Texas this week to talk about the remarkable breakthroughs fueling our zero-emission future.
Greetings from the Lone Star State! I’m in Texas this week for the Breakthrough Energy Ventures Investors Summit. This is one of the best places in the world to see the future of energy, and I can’t wait to see how much progress has been made since my last visit.
There’s a lot on the agenda this week, but I’m especially excited to talk about electricity breakthroughs. By 2050, the world will need nearly three times as much power as we use today—and if we’re going to decarbonize the economy, we’ll have to electrify a lot of things that currently use fossil fuels. That means we need to deliver a huge amount of energy in a clean, reliable, and affordable way.
If you’re an electricity nerd like me, this is an exciting moment. Earlier this month, TerraPower—the next-generation nuclear power company I created in 2008—received federal approval to start building the nuclear reactor at its Kemmerer, Wyoming plant. Wind and solar are reportedly generating more electricity than fossil fuels in the EU for the first time. We’re seeing a clear shift as the world’s electricity system is becoming more diverse, more innovative, and more dynamic than ever before.
Here are three of the coolest technologies people will be talking about this week:
Geothermal. Geothermal power has been around for more than a century, but new approaches are unlocking greater potential for the technology. Most geothermal power plants today are located near the boundary between two tectonic plates, where you don’t have to drill as deep to find usable heat that can be pumped to the surface to turn a turbine and generate electricity.
Fervo wants to make geothermal an option in more places by both digging deeper (up to a mind-blowing 15,000 ft below the surface) and extending their wells horizontally at their deepest point. The results so far are super promising: Their pilot project has been consistently generating electricity since 2023, and their Cape Station plant in Utah will come online this year.
Fusion. Fusion is the reaction that powers the sun and stars, and it has the potential to be a virtually unlimited source of clean, safe electricity. Once the technology is fully commercialized within the next decade, it can be built anywhere, scaled up, and used to make huge amounts of electricity with no carbon emissions and minimal waste.
The question right now is how we get there. It seems likely that the first commercial fusion plants will use magnetic fields to harness the reaction to generate electricity. There are two different approaches to this: the tokamak, a donut-shaped machine that is easier to build but harder to keep stable, and the stellarator, a twist-shaped machine that is harder to build but easier to keep stable. (An unstable reaction can damage the machine but poses no risk to safety.) Commonwealth Fusion Systems is on track to turn on their SPARC tokamak next year, and Type One Energy is making great progress with their Infinity One stellarator. Marathon Fusion, Xcimer, and Zap Energy aren’t quite as far along with their approaches, but I’m optimistic about what they’re doing.
Geologic hydrogen. Hydrogen shows great promise as an energy source, and the discovery of geologic hydrogen is one of the biggest energy surprises of the past decade. Although it’s the earliest stage technology on this list, I’m excited about its potential. Geologic hydrogen is a zero-emission power source that is continuously generated underground by the Earth itself. Bourakébougou, a village in Mali, is powered by the small hydrogen field it sits on top of, and researchers have found deposits in the U.S., France, and other places.
This is an unusual technology to talk about because it’s hard to predict a timeline....
....MUCH MORE including video.
We have dozens, nay, scores of posts on Mr. Gates and energy and Breakthrough Energy Ventures. On Breakthrough and its billionaire backers;
https://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/search?q=breakthrough+energy+ventures
And on Bill and nuclear:
Bill Gates Goes To Wyoming Coal Country, Breaks Ground On A Nuke Plant, Plays Poker With The Locals
On geologic hydrogen:
Want To Be A Hydrogen Tycoon? Maybe Prospect For Ophiolite And Chromite Ore
"There's hydrogen in them thar hills"
Grizzled prospector intently looking for hydrogen.
just kidding, that's Tom Waits in the Coen brothers film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.”
On the tribulations of dealing with stuff vs. dealing with software. May 2019:
Bezos, Andreessen and Gates Looking For Cobalt In Canada
Not them personally, can you imagine? Tramping around northern Saskatchewan?
Jeff: Bill, does this rock look blue to you?No, it's a company they're invested in....
Bill: I can't see it, let me get my glasses.
Marc: Guys, have I told you all the things I've wanted to tweet since I quit Twitter?
Jeff and Bill: Oh Gawd
