11–20 of 49 posts
The story is about the new Breakthrough Energy Coalition. But there's no information on how to contact the coalition with technologies they should consider. http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html In fact, their website says this: "BEC does not accept or consider unsolicited ideas, suggestions, information, or materials of any nature whatsoever"
The story is about the new Breakthrough Energy Coalition. But there's no information on how to contact the coalition with technologies they should consider. http://www.breakthroughenergycoalition.com/en/index.html In fact, their website says this: "BEC does not accept or consider unsolicited ideas, suggestions, information, or materials of any nature whatsoever"
Most grant-giving organizations don't accept unsolicited requests for money, but then regularly put out completely public solicitations for proposals on specific topics.
From the article, it sounds like 1) they already have a lot of pretty specific ideas about where to invest; and 2) they're waiting until they coalesce matching funding from other foundations to start making solicitations/rewarding grants/investing in companies.
There is one thing I really like about this proposal. Gates believes our future depends upon scientific advances and resulting technological innovation, supported by modest and easy-to-justify infrastructure improvements. This breaks away from demand-side policy-centered approaches, yes. But more importantly -- to me, at least -- it breaks away from an over-reliance on old science.
To me, this emphasis on science AND technology -- rather than exclusively technology -- is perhaps an even more significant idea than primarily-supply-side thinking.
I think Gates' C=0 goal is probably the locus of this shift in thinking from "force mass deployment of existing technologies using the levers of policy" to "science the shit out of this, then innovate like madmen, and only then enlist public policy when it's truly the only missing piece (see: power grid example from article)".
For carbon, why can't we just find a big hole and start dumping corn in?
Because the rotting process would create methane which would seep out easily, its wasteful and ethically questionable (people are still starving, so not even using corn as fuel is pretty horrible). Storing Carbon cheaply and safely is to me an unsolved problem. Especially if you want to do it without wasting tons of minerals (before someone talks about vacuumed dried algae or stuff like that).
Going for C=0 is an impressively ambitious goal. There is one thing I really like about this proposal. Gates believes our future depends upon scientific advances and resulting technological innovation, supported by modest and easy-to-justify infrastructure improvements. This breaks away from demand-side policy-centered approaches, yes. But more importantly -- to me, at least -- it breaks away from an over-reliance on…
Yes it's a small share of the total, and no I don't believe it's a matter of policy. It's cultural. Whose job do we think it is to "spend within our means" energy-wise? Everyone's? Or is it industry's job to just "make it work" so that we can keep black-boxing power, as we do water.
Example: I was at an airport café this morning and I noticed that the menu was displayed on three big display monitors. They were probably 42-inch screens, all showing the same static image. There were like 6 menu items, all minor variants on a cup of coffee. They were all clearly visible from every possible angle. The same job could have been done undistinguishably well by any single one of them—not to speak of a printed board.
I know, it's an airport for crying out loud. The energy used by those screens is too small to measure. What concerns me is that we (Americans at least) live in a society where someone—I would say thinks this is okay, but really just doesn't think about it at all.
So I completely agree about where our priorities should be, but I think that those levers would be easier to pull if we as a culture had a little more "mechanical sympathy."[0]
[0] http://www.se-radio.net/2014/02/episode-201-martin-thompson-... (Where I first heard of it, anyway.)
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bill-gates-is-beginning-to-...
For carbon, why can't we just find a big hole and start dumping corn in?
It's a far better idea to dump the carbon in after it has been used for it's energy and is bound up in a more stable configuration, ie biochar (a.k.a. terra preta or low temp charcoal). Biochar is stable in the soil for thousands of years, and provides a matrix on which soil organisms can thrive. There are also some indications that the biochar induces greater plant growth because the residual bio-oils and aromatic h…
So governments introducing no regulations or taxes around carbon pollution isn't a problem? Would he have said that about ozone depletion or SOx/NOx emissions standards?
This reads like a typical free-marketer's apology for Exxon lobbyists and paid denialists screwing up international cooperation on global warming.
Also nothing in here about using less energy.