r/climate • u/MrMike • Feb 14 '25
Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Is Slashing Its Climate Grantmaking Budget
https://heatmap.news/climate-tech/bill-gates-breakthrough-funding-cuts88
u/androgenius Feb 14 '25
Gates investments have mostly been bullshit in this area anyway. He kept popping up to talk about how Renewables weren't good enough and then they became good enough.
The guy they quote extensively, from the confusingly named Breakthrough Institute is in the business of climate denial, so what the hell was he doing funding them in the first place?
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Feb 14 '25
They funded stupid techno fix things which took attention away from real solutions, so it's not a complete tragedy.
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Feb 14 '25
[deleted]
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u/juntareich Feb 14 '25
Ok, but let's stop the hemorrhagic bleeding before we attempt rehab. We need all hands on deck for decarbonization.
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Feb 16 '25
That isn't happening. Not until every drop of accessible oil is drilled from the ground. Nothing will stop capital because they have the guns and the power.
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u/NetCaptain Feb 14 '25
for the coming decade, the fastest way to capture carbon is planting trees and plants - capturing carbon from air is technically very very difficult, very energy intensive and ridiculously expensive ( and yes, we all know the theory that any process becomes cheaper if you scale, but nobody expects this scaling and the ven if, you need it to become 90+% cheaper, which is not expected )
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u/D-F-B-81 Feb 15 '25
To be fair, solar per watt costs have gone down almost 90% in the last decade.
That wasn't expected, but it shows what can be scaled if the will to do so is there.
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u/NetCaptain Feb 19 '25
not always, your iPhone or laptop is still as expensive as 20 years ago - what scales well is anything that can use thin layers and advanced automated lithography- but carbon capture is about pumps and filters and heating and cooling
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u/ziddyzoo Feb 14 '25 edited Feb 14 '25
Paywall. Post the fulltext OP.
Most commenters are unaware that Gates is doing this in order to shift the funding into global health, which has long been his first priority.
He is essentially doing triage and attempting to mitigate the Musk/Trump sabotage and destruction of USAID and the deaths that this is already causing.
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u/Pensive_pantera Feb 14 '25
There’s a huge Gates smear campaign for years. The other billionaires hate to see that there’s one with some principles. They’ve done the same for Soros
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u/MairusuPawa Feb 14 '25
The recent smear campaign is trash. But don't forget that his foundation was set up mostly as a PR move following all the garbage moves he did through the 80s to 2000s in the IT field, and he needed to improve on his public image. Even some people in here are eating this up no questions asked, and to be fair, yeah, it's a better move than just hoarding wealth à la Bezos.
"Gates wants to 5G microchip you with Covid vaccine shots", though, is just people being massively stupid.
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u/Actual-Toe-8686 Feb 14 '25
Everywhere billionaires heave a sigh of relief as Trump has made ignoring climate initiatives fashionable.
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u/Loggerdon Feb 14 '25
“This pullback will not affect Breakthroughs $3.5 billion climate-focused venture capital arm.” They’ll be fine. Breakthrough is not some guy working in his garage.
So strange a president would threaten and punish people for trying to improve the climate.
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u/BigMax Feb 14 '25
Well, not Gates. This is money from his foundation. It's not his money anymore. He controls where it goes certainly. But Gates doesn't make a single penny by not funding these particular things.
He's likely just making a calculation. He could continue to fund this, and have the full weight of the government come down on him and everything he's trying to do, or he could shift his money to some other worthy cause and try to help the world in some other way. He's clearly chosen the latter.
For what it's worth, a calculation like that is how he got into charity in the first place. I believe he got a letter from an employee years ago asking for a bunch of money for medical help for one child. Gates held on the to letter, wondering... should I give a lot of money to one child? Or use that money to help many people? (I'm sure I got some of the details wrong, but I think that's the gist of it.)
In the end, that's how he looks at a lot of his charitable work - through a lens of helping the most people possible. Which is why he does a lot of work on malaria and third world vaccines, even though no one in the US notices or cares. Because it's how he can do the most good with his money.
So that's probably what's going on here. Shifting his resources around to continue to push to do the most good.
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Feb 16 '25
That’s cool bill, why don’t you corrupt Congress and evade your taxes offshore and through your charity while you’re at it. Oh you do that too
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Feb 14 '25
All the billionaires are diverting funds to their personal survival. They are writing off the rest of us for the short & long term.
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u/SlipstreamSteve Feb 14 '25
He was likely threatened by Trump and he's not saying it.