Bill Gates plans to double his investment in ‘green energy’ to $2 billion, focusing on technology and research to combat climate change, but he has rejected calls to divest from the fossil-fuel companies that are burning carbon at a rate that ignores international agreements to limit global warming.
He said that he would double his current investments in renewables over the next five years in a bid to “bend the curve” on tackling climate change.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the world’s largest charitable organisation. According to its most recent tax filings (2013), it has $1.4 billion invested in fossil-fuel companies, including BP (which was responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico).
In March, The Guardian launched a campaign calling on the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust to divest from coal, oil and gas companies. More than 223,000 people have since signed up to the campaign.
Mr Gates dismissed the calls of the fossil-fuel divestment movement, which has already persuaded more than 220 institutions world-wide to divest, on the basis that it would have little impact.
Instead, he said there was an urgent need for “high-risk” investments in breakthrough technologies. He said that a “miracle” on the level of the invention of the automobile was necessary to avoid a climate catastrophe and that current renewable-energy technologies are not close to being able to meet projected energy needs by 2030.
He also said the only way current technology could reduce global emissions is at a cost “beyond astronomical” and that innovation is the only way to reach a positive scenario.