electricity

Bill Gates: Boost federal funds for energy research to fight climate change

May. 10, 2011
in

By Robert McClure

InvestigateWest

There’s an urgent need – recognized by leaders of such venerable corporate giants as Xerox, GE and Lockheed Martin – for the American government to inject a lot of cash in a big hurry into alternative energy research, Microsoft founder Bill Gates told 1,200 climate activists and business people in Seattle on Tuesday.

To head off climate catastrophe, “the innovation piece is so important,” Gates said at a fundraising breakfast for the Seattle-based non-profit Climate Solutions. “The lip service that has been paid to energy innovation over the last few decades is disappointing.”

Gates and others from the upper echelons of the corporate world banded together as the American Energy Innovation Council and pushed hard for a boost in federal energy research spending from $5 billion to $16 billion annually.

“President Obama did see us. He said nice things, and I think he meant them,” Gates joked during an on-stage interview by Jabe Blumenthal, a former Microsoft executive who is co-president of Climate Solutions.

Nevertheless, the CEOs’ bid ultimately was shot down. Gates said that at a less dire time financially, it’s likely the group would have succeeded, and that the executives must keep trying.

Consumers really can affect global warming -- particularly if they live in the United States

Feb. 8, 2010
in

I've always been just a hair skeptical about all those admonitions to consumers to save the world -- you know, the "Live simply, that others may simply live"-type instructions. They felt a little too much like guilt-tripping to me, with perhaps not enough corresponding actual environmental good being done. It seems like a way for consumers who are feeling guilty about something -- say, those SUVs they drive -- to assuage their guilt by doing something that doesn't really hurt, like turning off the lights when leaving a room. And of course, we've seen how this mindset can backfire:

Carol Smith's picture

Power drain worries Utah officials

Jul. 10, 2009
in

 

The National Security Agency is looking to build a massive $2 billion computer center at the Camp Williams military reservation in Utah, but critics worry it will drain energy needed by current power users, the Salt Lake Tribune's Matthew D. LaPlante reports. The NSA has already maxed out a power grid in Baltimore, and Utah officials are trying to figure out how they would accommodate such a power-hungry customer. The new facility would itself consume the equivalent of the electricity needed to power all the homes in Salt Lake City.

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