The Future of Renewable Energy, Featuring Bill Gates

almost never do. It's a very select group, that's right, but this this maybe the topper. Yeah, what happened last week? Well last week, um, I was in Hawaii and I got a text from you and it said, Buddy, I'm sorry to bother you on vacation, but Bill Gates wants to be on Stuff you Should Know. And you went, you mean old Billy Gates from elementary school, Billy bath Gate, And I said, no, Bill Gates, the entrepreneur, co founder of Microsoft and philanthropist, wants to be on our show.

Because his personal communications person got in touch and said, I know you don't normally do this, but would you consider making an exception for Mr Gates, right, and we were like, we really appreciate that you did the research to know that we don't normally have people on. That actually was very kind because we've had other people that just assume like, well, you'd want to have this person on, right, Well, do you even listen to the show. We don't have

guests normally. So we're like Bill Gates. Bill Gates like played by Anthony Michael Hall once and it made for TV movie on T n T Bill Gates and they said that Bill Gates, that's right. We said, yes, watch, We're going to show up for the interview and it's gonna be Anthony Michael Hall. That would blow my mind. So we're recording this first portion of the podcast on renewal renewable energy, which is a topic very dear to Mr Gates's heart, um and something he knows way more

about than we do. So we're recording this before we go talk to him in New York City next week. Um. But through the magic of editing, it will be as if this is one seamless day, like he's in the studio with us, right. So he wanted to talk about renewable energy. He's pretty jazzed about it, um, And you could say I'm pretty jazzed about renewable energy as well.

It's amazing what's coming down the pike. And there's yes coming down the Pike's very important, right because, um, there's a lot of stuff that's going on right now in the twenty one century and then coming in the next couple of decades that mean that we could really use renewable energy sooner than later. One is that, Um, it's predicted that energy consumption worldwide is going to increase by

over two tho levels thirty years from hits. There's a lot more energy consumption than we're doing right now, and we consume a lot of energy. Yeah, in the world as a whole admitted thirty six billion tons of c O two and that is forty two percent more than we did, forty two percent more than we did in nine and the goal is below nine ls. So that's a hundred and twenty that's what I said. Yeah, you got it right, A hundred swing as in the wrong direction. Yeah,

we need to get to and try and achieve. And this is not just the US, this is this is a world problem exactly. So you've got a two fold. You have two conflicting issues here. You have increasing energy demand, but you also have a desire to reduce CEO two emissions. Right then then if you want to confound things further, and this is where um, Bill Gates's passions lie. Um, You've got a lot of people out there, something like one point three billion people around the world who just

don't have electricity at all. Yeah, of the world's population without electricity at all, sevent of Sub Saharan Africa no electricity. Three million people in India alone with no electricity. And that's not just oh well, you don't have all the mod cons it's you know, you don't have light to read by um and educate yourselves, or to refrigerate your food and not catch food born diseases. I mean, we could name out a hundred reasons why you need electricity

in the exactly. So, you've got a growing energy demand, you have a need to reduce c O two emissions, and then you have a whole segment of the human population that needs access to energy, which means that if you can come up with some good renewable technologies, you can actually make all these things work together. But the key is so if it's renewable, it's automatically basically clean UM. And it has to come soon to offset that energy increase,

energy consumption increase. But because we're factoring the developing low income world into this, it needs to also be cheap and easily accessible and reliable. Yeah. Until and this is something that I'm sure Bill Gates hammers home every time he has a chance. If it's gotta it's gotta be viable, And if it's not cheaper and better then fossil fuel consumption, then no one's ever gonna jump on board in a

big way. Yeah. And if so from this point on, Chuck, because he is coming on as a personal guest to stuff, you should know, I think we can just refer to him as Bill our friend, Bill. Yeah, Bill our pal. Yeah. I can't wait to see a week from now. Uh, let's talk a little bit about UM. Who's contributing to

the problem. China. They're the world's top CEO to admit her UM at least of global emissions, with the US number two at fifteen point five, followed by the EU at nine point I have an Indian at seven point two. But everybody agrees that let's there's a problem and let's try and reverse it. So they had a summit in Paris at the end of this past year where they all got together all these nations said you know what,

let's set some goals here. Uh. In the US for their part, said you know what, let's try and cut national emissions by up to by the year from two five levels. Right. Um. And this is this is this whole Paris Accord, basically the Paris Climate Talks that came in November. Um, two hundred countries signed on to reduce their emissions and um uh it was lauded as a huge breakthrough. You got all these people together and all these different countries and they hammered out a document that's

legally binding. But there's also criticism of the document and that the emissions reductions are just totally voluntary. There's no teeth in the document to say, well, here's the bad things that happened to you if you don't meet your

reductions goals. But as criticized as the document the Paris Climate Talks were, there's also like a real sunny side to the whole thing, and that came in some kind of um between the lines, uh message that came out of it, and that was developed industrialized nations are ready to put down some serious coin into renewable energy technology. Yeah, to the tune um of total one billion euros per year UM to low income economies to try and build them up and give them robust economies which would help

the world as a whole. Right, So, um, this basically is this hundred billion euros a year. It's a sizeable chunk and it's it's it represents kind of a funnel through developing nations, from developed nations to developing nations. Two renewable tech companies. So it's a it's a roundabout investment in renewable tech um. And there's a lot of stuff that's being it that that just went from pine in the sky to oh now you're throwing some real money at this. We can make this happen now because some

stuff brand new, some stuff altering existing technologies. But it's all super exciting. Um. Should we talk about some of these What the first one I have to say? I love if you remember in the State of the Union address in January, President Obama said something about turning sunlight

into liquid fuel. I thought he was having an acid flashback up and away in my beautiful But no, what he's talking about is a super promising UH process called artificial photosynthesis, and it's basically, well, it's exactly what it sounds. It's it's building machines that take CEO two emissions and that contribute the climate change and using that actually in the sunlight to make fuel. Right, So you're using CEO

two emissions as a raw material for fuel. Unbelievable. So basically, UM, there's been a lot of UM stumbling blocks so far as far as the artificial photosynthesis industry is concerned. But they've also had some really good breakthroughs recently. One was it came out of the Department of Energy is Berkeley Lab where basically they took nano wire arrays they made what they call a synthetic forest of nano wires, right, and these nano wires collect solar energy and they transfer

it to bacteria. And there's bacteria mixed in with carbon dioxide and water break down the CEO two, so they catalyze it into other components. Right. Then another bacteria takes those components and build them up into a usable fuel like methanol. And all this happened in basically Uh. A artificial photosynthetic fuel cell is what is what it is using sunlight to break c O two emissions down into

usable fuel. Amazing, amazing it is. Uh. Something else I got going is actually taking water c O two and splitting this stuff up into its individual elements and then essentially recombining them to form c H three oh h, which is methanol a k A wood spirits. Uh, but you don't want to drink a k A what you would get it's like the simplest form of alcohol, and what you would get when you would burn would well,

it's the simplest usable form. Well, yeah, I guess the simplest form would be golden grain, right, although you could probably put that in an engine. I wonder what would appen. Think it would work probably So if you're out of fuel in the hills of Georgia, it'll work. It'll do

the trick. So methanol is the simplest that you can you in an engine, and it's already being used on China is blending it into gasoline for regular cars at about or less right there at the pumps, and their taxis and busses are running on up to blend of methanol on gasoline. Right, So it's a real thing. It definitely is a real thing. And one of the big problems with artificial photosynthesis has been that UM, the the catalyst to break the CEO two down into constituent components,

has required something like platinum. Platinum is a very efficient catalyst for that process, right, Platinum also cost an ounce and if you're coming up with tech that you can sell cheap to the developing world, platinum can't be a major component of the whole thing, Which is why that Berkeley Labs breakthrough using bacteria to catalyze and synthesize this stuff is huge because one of the one of the bacteria they're using, the synthetic bacteria synthesizing bacteria is E. Coli.

You can find that anywhere man skill, grab a bunch of cilantro, throw it in there. You've got your your your synthesizing bacteria. Another big goal is to UM well, and this is this is a goal for anyone making any sort of renewable energy machinery is to make them last super long, because then you can amoritize that cost over many many years, thus driving the overall costs down.

UM and so long lasting is a big key. Uh. And then you know it's not just about building the machine that will actually not in the case of the bacteria, that will actually split up in these elements. Um, you also need other machines around it. You can't just do that and say I throw it in the gas. Um. It has to be recombined into something usable. Well yeah, and not only that, but it's got to be I mean, there's all kinds of ancillary equipment that need to be

used to make this whole thing work. Right, So I think the point is that you can't have a huge just this huge thing if you're going to try to sell to the consumer. Right, No, it has to be in the pumped gas. But you could create a huge thing if you're going to basically create a fuel refinery and artificial photosynthesis fuel refinery, and then you can just

sell it to gas stations. That would work to Another problem here that you point out is they figured out how to split uh, water and CEO two in separate processes, but not in one unit. Right. That's where that Berkeley breakthrough is such a big deal. So I would say, just bolt those two machines together and you got one machine. Right exactly. But they use two different kinds of bacteria to do two different jobs in the same in the

same machine. It's it's it's amazing. And one of the researchers points out that funding for this stuff is kind of a problem because funding doesn't um you don't get the same amount of money every quarter. Uh. Sometimes it's high, sometimes it's low, And that's really tough and it's a big challenge when you're trying to figure out these things. But because you might get a great idea one year where you need that dough and you don't have it um, So it's just a lot harder to manage when that

the ebb and flow of funding comes and goes. But I think that's where this huge, the big that's where this big thing that came out of the Paris Climate Talks comes in. That Like, it's not like money is a thing in the past, But if you're creating something that really has legs as far as creating renewable energy is concerned, you're gonna be able to find a capital. Yeah. Right now, the U. S Energy Department is renewing a seventy five million dollar five year grant to cal techs

UH Center for artificial photosynthesis. So that's not pocket change. I'm sure it'll take more than that, but some you can you can do some research with that. So thumbs up to artificial photosynthesis. Thumbs up. We're both a little excited, so as is our custom, I think we should take a break, agreed, So chuck, Um, there's a there's this kind of this big issue right where we have wind power and we have solar power, and some places are sunnier than others in the United States, California or else

in the world. Um, and some places are windier than others. Okay, So like Kansas can get all the wind it needs from wind farms if they wanted to, Probably California. Actually I looked up Reno, Nevada in Honolulu about the same amount of sunlight every year, did you know that? But very different places, very different. But um, so either one

of them could subsist on solar energy technically, right. But you've got a place like Seattle it's not going to do very well for solar solar energy, or London not gonna do really well with solar energy. But if you're talking about out like say a national grid, and say the United States, if you step back and look at it rather than like Kansas is one region, in California is another, and say, actually, in Kansas in California are

parts of this larger grid. We just have to figure out how to get the wind power that's constantly in Kansas over to Seattle, or the solar power that's you know, in Reno over to Boston. How do you do that? And they figured out all they have to do is use existing technology, which is just basically stepped up type

of power line. Yeah, I think this is amazing. There was a guy named Alex Alex McDonald from the n O A A from Noah, that's right, and he kind of realized one day, Hey, the wind is always blowing somewhere, like we've got the wind, um, we got all these power lines. Why don't we do this. Let's think of things in a different way, and let's think of the US as one big, all encompassing, interconnected grid, which it is is, but we kind of don't think of it

that way. No, he did exactly. He said, it's all connected, so why don't we do this, Let's switch over these power lines to direct current lines, which Edison apparently was right. So they suffer a lot less loss. Um. I looked up supposedly from power station to customer, there's about an eight to loss using current a C using what we have going now, and I believe if you switch over to the d c UH it would cut that in

about half, not too bad. And beyond that, that means that you could transport electricity farther than you can now, which means you can look at a regional national grid. Is is something whole right, Um, But you also can take if you can connect these things better. If you can connect these regional grids into a comprehensive national grid, you can shuffle um wind power from one region of the country to another, solar power from one region of

the country to another. Yeah. So what they did was they made this really cool computer model, and they said, let's figure this out. Let's divide the United States up into a hundred and fifty two thousand squares. All of these will are connected already, and let's input wind data from a couple of years two thousand six to two

thousand eight nationally just to see where we're at. Let's see where the wind's blowing, Let's see where these grids are, and let's figure out demand where you need it most, less windy places obviously, uh, less sunny places maybe, and let's figure out what's the smartest way to lay this out and where the best places to invest in building these massive wind farms. Right. And they also were extremely

cautious in um their inputs into this model. Right. They excluded national parks and mountain slopes where you can't put UM windmills or solar arras UM. They included uh, anticipated electrical demands in the future UM. And they basically used

all of the low end figures they could find. And even with those low end figures, Chuck using these uh these DC power lines and putting new windmill and solar array outfits around the country in the right places, they came up with the idea that we could cut c O two emissions from power plants in the United States by of those by that's insane, which is the goal that we want less. And again they point out, we

were really cautious in our projections here. So this is the low end, this is the least we could do by doing this, and this is using technology that's all available right now. Yeah, you point out the one big caveat is that if electric cars really take off, like, um, a lot of people hope they will. That um, they're gonna have to ramp up production because that they'll just

be using a lot more power. Yeah, and they also said they in the United States, it's not necessarily a problem with um even finances or certainly not technology that It usually just political will, like say, one part of the country doesn't want to depend on another for its power for some weird reason. I could totally see some Georgia senator being like, we're not going to depend on Kansas for our wind our prest I could see that too.

I could totally see it. But if you're taking this this concept of the high voltage grid right, uh, and in creating it from scratch in an area in the developing world that doesn't have a grid to speak of, yeah, they could really benefit exactly. Just build it, build it there, and that's just the way it is. Yeah, it's super I'm hyped about that one. That that one is. Which

one is your favorite so far? Well, that one so far, This next one is neat, but it's uh, I just can't even wrap my brain around you know what photo voltae paint. Yeah, basically instead of a solar panel. How about solar paint, Jack, how about painting the painting your roof your roof with paint or with shingles that are made from this stuff, which they already have, but they're

clumsy and cumbersome. This stuff. If you're using photovoltaic paint, you're using paint that's mixed with um colloidial quantum dots or some sort of nanoparticle, and there there are different types of nanoparticles that create an electrical charge when exposed to sunlight. Right, Well, if you have paint that's got a bunch of these mixed in with it, and you have a way to jack your house's power lines into said paint, you can generate electricity just from painting your house.

And it's super flexible, it's easily transported, which is a big deal. And if they can get costs down, which it looks like they're starting to do um and get efficiency up. I think the record right now is somewhere around eight percent efficiency. So eight percent of the solar power that that hits these things is converted into electricity. Yeah, still not enough, but it's it's substantial and it's growing.

But if you can get these things up. This could be extremely helpful for not just people in developing countries, people in remote areas. Like, if you want to live off the grid, just paint your house with this stuff. Yeah, the whole side of your home, the roof of your home. You could you could paint your cell phone in theory, you can paint your car, paint your dog. How are your dog? Don't paint your dog? I probably shouldn't paint.

This one is a bit mind blowing and it seems slightly more far fetched as far as making it the realistic way to go. Well, that's the thing. They found that it works. But can you make it like big and widespread and mass produced, right? I think I think so? And um so using colloial quantum dots. I'm not quite sure how handy those are, how easy to find those are.

There's another group UM that's working on making plastic ones not a bad idea plastic solar cells, but like nanoparticles made out of plastic that are that react to solar energy and create electricity. Um and as we know, we love to mass produce things as plastic and we can do it cheaply, so that could definitely have a huge impact on it. Once you start making something out of plastic, that automatically means it's available for cheap. Good point, we're

masters of plastic. That's I think the world needs a T shirt that says that masters a plastic. It's a good band name opening up for cloydal Quantum Dots nice, not bad. You got anything else on that? Uh? No, I guess yeah. I think the high voltage power lines are my favorite so far. Yeah, I'm still going with that. UM And here's one thing that I know. We're going to talk with Bill about our friend Bill because his people that we were talking to said Bill gets really

excited about batteries and the future of batteries. UM, And I think everyone in Renewable Inner G's excited about batteries because batteries are awesome and they can they can do a lot of things. They could potentially solve one of the big problems that if we don't get those power lines hooked up, you could at least generate a bunch of wind and store them in a huge battery array for future use. UM or a solar field and store

that in batteries. Right, So theoretically you could do all this now, but the problem is that the costs are so monumental in creating batteries that can that are big enough to back up a power grid that you are actually um in some cases, doubling or tripling the cost of electricity. UM. And Bill Gates actually wrote, like this guy's no shlub. He wrote a paper on energy bills. He's no slove. I don't know if you know this or not, but he wrote a paper on energy innovation.

And he points out that so if if batteries double or triple the cost of electricity, if you somehow figured out a way to generate electricity for free, it would still cost two to three times what it does now if you're backing up the grid with the battery, which to him, into a lot of other observers says, we need a better battery. And again, one alternative to that is to get around the idea of batteries at all by creating that high voltage power grids that can spread

wind and solar energy throughout an entire nation. But just like the consumer level, UM, I know that Mr Elon Musk and other really smart people are trying to develop these batteries that can just do a better job for your home solar setup, uh, because that there's so long

way to go even you know now. But yeah, but if you can create a battery that that can store wind power solar power, then you don't have to have a fossil fuel UM plant to back up the solar wind power for cloudy days or at night or days when the wind just won't blow exactly no matter how hard you wish the days. Uh. So I believe musks is, uh, we're not really covering that. But weren't his uh lithium ion base the big announcement, Yeah, recently. Yeah, what's it

called the Tesla Wall, the power wall, Tesla power Wall. So, yeah, they're lithium ion batteries that like you can um charge while you're hooked up to the grid or whatever, or if you you got solar whatever you're backing up your homes electricity. And I think each each battery lasts for eight hours. The point is they're huge, and they're expensive, and if you're extrapolating batteries onto helping the developing economies of the world, um, you need to have cheap and

small and portable, right, um. And there's a lot of this. The idea of coming up with a better battery is essentially the holy grail as far as renewable energy goesblems. It underpins almost every renewable energy project. And that you, wind and solar are ephemeral. They don't happen all the time, so you need to find a way to store the excess m ounce that come to you when it is sunny and when the wind is blowing. So batteries are extremely important and there's a lot of people working on

them right now. Yeah, the one that is super promising um that we're covering here. It's called the flow battery. And forget what you thought about your mom and dad's and your grandpa's batteries. Just throw them, throw them in the in the trash. Well, don't do that, I think, throw in the fire. No, no, no, I definitely don't do that, shoot it into space. But the flow battery, my friend, is where it's at I think as far as the future is concerned. So well, there's many different

versions of flow batteries. There's actually one that UM I saw as brand new that uses lithium ion technology along with the flow system, which we're gonna talk about in a second. The one that's the lithium ion can actually store that. The combo can actually store ten times what a regular flow battery can, which is great. The downside is, there's always a downside, UH is it's power delivery is ten thousand times slower than conventional flow battery. That takes

a while. The charge of phones. It's like, we got lots of power stored. They're like, uh, what's the bad news. Um, it's ten thousand times slower than what you're used to. But UM, once you break down that the standard UH flow battery, it's pretty ingenious. So UM, with a with a flow battery, you have UM. You have two receiving tanks and two holding tanks, right, and as this uh, the liquid inside, the fluid inside is an electrolyte fluid, right,

So basically gatorade, it's UM. It's it's a fluid that contains an electrical charge, and as it flows from receiving tank to holding tank, it actually creates a charge where it transmits this charge and UM charges itself, right or powers whatever you want. The cool thing about flow batteries are well, one of the we should say one of the drawbacks is that they're big. They need to be big. I think about the smallest you could you could um come up with if this, say, the size of an aquarium. Yeah.

Well it's also an advantage because they can be as big as you want. That is an advantage. Create one literally the size of a football stadium if you want, if you yeah, if you have enough gatorade, that could store all the energy of an entire solar field. So so, And the great thing about a flow battery is it will store this charge indefinitely like this the electro light is the fluid is never gonna lose its charge permanently. It can always be recharged by moving it from receiving

tank to holding tank. Yeah. And I think the biggest advantages it's instantly recharged when you replace that fluid. There's I don't think there's even any lag time. It's just boom, it's going again, So Chuck, what we've been talking about so far as as far as batteries are concerned, is a way to store electricity. But there's actually other stuff

you can store to to generate electricity from. And heats a big one, yeah, because we've talked again and again about how sort of archaic and weird it is that we still create heat to spend a turbine to create steam to spin a turbine, just like we did in the Industrial Revolution. As fancy as you want to get using nuclear clear rod, you're still generating steam to spin a turbine. That's the whole point, that's the end result, right.

I love it. And if you're if that floats your boat, if that made your eyes just pop out of your head, go listen to our electricity episode, which is one of my all time favorites. Yeah, we did one on nuclear power to right, we did after Fukushima, So, uh, you can actually store that heat, correct in the future. Now, even there's condensing solar um power plants, then they take the heat from the sun, so they're not storing the energy.

There's no way they're not storing the energy. I looked and and it seemed like everybody was just talking about the heat. But they also have to store the solar energy as well. What a waste, right, So at the very least they store the heat, and they usually store it as molten salt. But they found out that if you use a super critical fluid, which is a fluid that's heated to a point where it basically no longer recognizes the distinction between liquid or gaseous form, and it

can do all sorts of crazy stuff. Um, if you take a supercritical fluid, you can take the heat, the thermal heat from the sun and store that heat in there and then use it later on by releasing that heat to heat water and generate steam to spin a turbine. Also another great band name, spin a turbine. No supercritical fluid. I agree. I think if you want to name your band, just look into renewable energy, as they're like cool names all over the place, or just call your band Bill Gates,

our pal Bill. Not bad. Uh, you got anything else for now? No? I mean I could sit here and talk about this stuff forever, but let's talk to Bill Gates about it instead. Great idea, and Chuck, we will do that right for this break. Okay, everyone, we are back. We are in a hotel room in New York City with Mr Bill Gates, which is a little unusual for us, to say the least. It's an unusual Monday, for sure.

It is. His folks reached out and asked if we would make an exception about having a guest on the show, and we thought about it for about point one seconds in staid of course, we'd love to have Bill Gates on the show, So thank you, sir for being here. And we already recorded the first part of the show on renewable energy UM, specifically a few different technologies UM in the future that are pretty exciting, and so I think Josh wanted to go ahead and kick it off

with a relevant question. So we got kind of, you know, into the nuts and bolts of some of the tech. But one of the things we didn't cover and we wanted to hear from use what are some of the obstacles that this renewable tech that's just right there on the horizon. What's keeping them from being deployed now, especially in the developing world. Well, when we think about energy, uh, one of the key things is reliability. If you just have energy when the wind blows, when the sunshine, that's

not very helpful. You know, if somebody's freezing in their apartment on a winter night, they need energy. If you're gonna build a factory, say to build cars that, because of your huge capital cost, needs to run twenty four hours a day, and so it's got to have reliable energy. And so the market isn't just for energy. The market

is for totally reliable energy. Unfortunately, a lot of the breakthroughs we've had UH wind and sun, we don't have those directly generate electricity, and storing electricity is very, very hard. All the batteries in the world today would not store every laptop, every car, everything, would not store an hour's worth of global energy use. And batteries haven't improved much in the last hundred years. They're less than three times better than the battery that Edison, if he were revived,

would recognize, which is a lead chemistry battery. It's really the lithium ion is has given us an improvement. But in order to really work for the grid, you need a factor of ten, which UH. Anyway, it's very tough to make that work. And so if we we need to pursue breakthrough paths that don't assume a storage miracle, UH like if you could take the sun directly and make liquid fuels just say gasoline, but any hydrocarbon UH

that's liquid that's easy to store. You put it in a big metal tank, you put it in a pipe, UH. And the whole infrastructure is geared towards liquid. The transport UH infrastructure is geared towards liquid hydrocarbons, and so if you could possibly do that, it would have a big advantage. And we we talked about artificial photosynthesis technology and it

doesn't quite promising. Yeah, and well, actually that brings up something that We've done quite a few podcasts on different technologies in the future for renewable energy, and I feel like every time we cover one, we both end up thinking why this is this is the one, This is fantastic. And I guess my question is, while different going down different paths is great for innovation, when should people start focusing on all? Right, now, this is the one that

we should put our efforts into. Well, the capitalism is very good at this. UH. At the start of the auto industry, if you'd really handy hap things and looked at the steam cars, UH, the electric car and the internal combustion engine, you probably have guessed set the internal combustion would not succeed. The mechanics of all that explosion and those metal parts fatiguing, and it just seems so dangerous and so hard to get right. And the thing that made it win is the energy density of gasoline.

Gasoline UH, one of my favorite books and this is called physics for future presidents. That has some basic things that that should be probably known. Gasoline is ten times as energy dens as are best batteries are, so you're you know, when you switch from a gasoline car to an electric car, that's why your range goes down a lot. And yet the weight of those batteries is way more than your cat seleme tank was before. So Uh, Henry

Ford happened to bat on internal combustion. A few other people that on those others, and they had companies that were pricing their products and talking about the maintainability of their products. And over time, Uh, the interim commussion went out so dramatically that uh, it's hard to even remember that those things were there. All you go to the right newseum, those are still there. This energy thing will be the same way. I mean, you know, high wind

sounds like the jet stream. You know, it sounds like a crazy idea. The solar fuels are what uh you're calling, um synthetic photosynthesis. If it doesn't want people say, well, of course that was silly. And if it does where people say, well, of course that was that was brilliant. When nuclear energy came along, Uh. There was a quote from the head of the Atomic Energy Commission that electricity

will be too cheap to meet now. Unfortunately he underestimated the complexities of radiation containment, all of the safety things, which in my view means that we need a whole new generation of reactors whose safety characteristics are dramatically better and different than what we make today. Is called third generation. We need this fourth generation that that will be like that. So I think we need to go down about a

dozen different paths. Uh. And even one that um uh it's still worth exploring, is called carbon capture and sequestration. So we're still during the hydrocarbon but uh, with a little bit of extra chemistry, you take that fluid gas which is about twelve c O two and you converted to liquids, and then of course you have to have to find some long term storage and you use that as a feedstock for artificial photosynthesis. I believe you can, or they're working on it now right. Greenhouses Uh have

enhanced c O two, so plants love c O two. Uh. In fact, plants had a hard time CEO two got down to about a hundred and seventy parts per million, and plants you even saw plant chemistry change and uh, because that's very tough. That's when a photo senter the C four chemistry uh evolved, which may's corn happens to use. Right now, Now we're up at four ppm, but if you in a greenhouse, if you run it up to two two thousand ppm, then the plants, actually some plants

actually go quite a bit faster. Um. We've we've done some episodes before. We did one specifically on how the automobile became the dominant form of transportation in the US, right, And from what I remember, it seemed like the answer was there was a lot of lobbying behind it, and government gotten evolved in now we all drive cars, right, gasoline powered cars. What's the role of government today? And

getting renewables out there, especially in developing countries. Yeah, New York City actually couldn't figure out how they were going to deal with horse manure, and so, you know, cars had to compete with horses, but horses did have some serious drawbacks. You know, later we figured out that the uh, nitrous ox sides and things coming out of the tailpipe of the car, we're a problem. But at the time it was a dramatic improvement of what came out of

the previous tailpipe renewable energy. When you get to say India, which is paradigmatic because they still are not giving their citizens even a tenth of the electricity per person that we provide. So the idea of lights at night, or refrigerating food or cooking with a skull that doesn't pollute your lungs, most of Indians don't have that, so on behalf of their citizens. They want to move to have

what we have, which is an energy intense lifestyle. And if all Indians got everything we have, they want to admitted as much as many much greenhouse gas per person as we have until well after the end of this century. So in a certain just a sense that their electrifying their society will save lives and it's not a bad thing. And yet the world UH wants them to do it in a with a constraint that we didn't have, which

is to not admit the greenhouse gases. So if we can do the invention, we can fund the R and D and maybe even the first few pilot plants to get the economies of scale and learning cur benefits. UH. Then if we can offer to them a form of electrification that's nonpollut rooting. Then you get the best of both worlds. If you can't do that, Uh, then they have a dilemma, which is the imperative of getting their citizens what we already have versus this this global problem.

And so that's why we didn't have innovation. I wouldn't be very optimistic that the climate change problem would get solved. In fact, some people think it's easy to solve. Uh, and that you know that could hold his back from making these long term investments. Uh. One thing we often hear from listeners when we podcasts and stuff like this is, uh, what can I do just in my home? And I know that Uh, you made a point about just the the see the lightbulbs that people are using now, and

little differences like that can help. But in a bigger picture, where does your average Joe fit in? Well, the United States uses twice as much energy per person as other rich countries do, so Europe and Japan would be less than half of US. Canada's a lot like US, uh, And it's partly the way we built up our infrastructure. We live further away from our work. Generally, we have

more lighting around our house, more air conditioning. My favorite energy author, um who lives up in Canada, Boss lots Meal. When he shows a picture of what how doses look like in the fifties where there were many lights on at night, and what they look like now. You know, he looks at how big American cars are, so he would say, Hey, the US, for a lot of reasons, UH, should be more reasonable about resource usage. That alone is

not going to solve climate change. Uh. You know, the idea of using as little as you can, it's it's smart, it's good discipline, it's good for the world. It allows those same resources to be used by other people. And remember, energy is still causing local pollution coal plants. The understanding of what particulate does to health and how that's about

for our health that continues to increase. And so cutting down on energy usage is not just a good thing for globe warm and cutting down on water usage and it makes that water available for the ecosystem, for farming and lots of things. So being smart about hey, how much energy do we use? H? And why do we

use so much? And did we pay attention to that funny label that Thank goodness, the government now requires uh, that appliances have energy usage labeling because people were uh wasting a lot of money buying a cheap refrigerator who would increase their electricity build dramatically over time. We still have that in terms of how we build houses that it would be worth putting more into the original building to have less heat leak eats in the in the

winter or cooling benefits in the summer. Uh, we really should put more into that capital expense, which is easiest when you do the initial build instead of the retrofit. But even the retrofit is sometimes we're doing. So there is still a role for the average person in you know, fighting climate change, I guess, or being responsible with energy users beyond forming like a human chain blocking off a fossil fuel power plan or something. Well we're all complicit

in using fossil fuels today. Um and so you know you it. If there was a choice of going cold Turkey, I don't think most people would choose that. The way people can contribute, they can set examples through their own use their voice about hey, we care about this issue and we want these long term investments to be made. That is super important. And if they can go to

Africa and see what it's like to live without energy. Uh. Once you visit, that will become part of your value system to think how can we treat those lives as having equal value, whether that's health or energy or all the things that that that we take for granted. So, um, we got one last question. Yeah, just on a personal note.

I was kind of wondering. I was. I was thinking the other day, I'm in my mid forties now and have my first baby, and I think that's the point, um, at least in my life where I start sort of looking at where I am and as I speed toward the grave, and what have I done with my life? And I was wondering, what was there a defining moment in your life where you kind of stopped and said, I'm Bill Gates, I've accomplished quite a bit and now I'm going to focus on the future of the world.

And did having kids have something to do with that or what? Well, it's what was that for you? Well, I've been super lucky and that my early exposure to computers and lots of great people uh around that. So the building microsoft to mean fanatical about that, Uh, you know, kept me busy and very happy. My twenties thirties. Then in my forties, UH, I had gotten married at thirty eight,

my first child was born. When I was forty one, I started to gain more balance UH, and I knew that somebody younger than me UH should eventually take over Microsoft, So I started broadening my learning. I've always liked science, but during the Microsoft days, I couldn't keep track of the latest in math or biology because I was a fanatic about software. And I didn't believe in vacations. And that's why I even waited to UH start a family, because I knew I wouldn't UH have have enough time

for it. So my forties I broadened my horizons a bit. UH. And then UH, when I was UH forty five was when Malinda and I UH started putting money in the foundation and saying, Okay, that would be the next career. And in the same way that I'd had two wonderful partners in Microsoft, Paul Allen in the early days and then Steve Bomber's we built it to be a large company, Melinda would be UH an even more equal partner. And this third UH partnership, which was making the foundation go.

And so that's been a learning journey. Every year we get smarter about Okay, what should the foundation do bringing in great people to help us there? Uh. But it it was traveling to Africa. It was learning that, um, you know, all these resources really should go back to society in some way. Meeting Melinda, Uh, some of the things Warren Buffett talked about, we're leaving lots of money

to your kids. It's not a good thing. Uh. I'd particularly highlight Melinda and the time we spent in Africa sort of opening my eyes that hey, there were things that could have a dramatic effect. Uh if we were smart about getting back the money the right way. Well, Bill Gates, thank you very much for being on stuff you should know much appreciated and honor. Thank you for talking with us. Hey, I'm honored to be your first guest. Thanks you. Um can we get a picture? Wow, that's

gonna be tough to time. Holy cow. Yeah what a guy. Yeah, I was. I was nervous. Are you were fine? Do you think you liked me? I think he loved you. Do you think would you let you sit on his lap and stroke your beard? That's a clear sign that he was fond of Well. I thought he might get mad when I told him he had spinach and his teeth, but he seemed to take that well, he took it in stride. That was all off, Mike. That's behind the

SCENESECT coming soon. No, that was that was amazing And thanks to them for reaching out and yeah, big thanks, Yeah, best of luck obviously that his efforts in the future. Yeah, go renewable energy. Rah. If you want to get in touch with us, we'd love to hear from you. You can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff

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