[Rebuff] A Challenge to Bill Gates on Energy Research
Andrew C. Revkin | NY Times | Aug 26, 2010
Richard Rosen, a senior fellow at the Tellus Institute in Boston, which charts scenarios for human development in this century, took issue with some of the points made by Bill Gates in the Technology Review interview explored here earlier this week. [cf.: #msg-26776446]
I’ve posted Rosen’s note below, then some questions I sent back to him in response, and his reply. I’m sending this exchange to a number of other people working on the question of how to propel an energy quest that fosters human progress without overheating the planet — from Marty Hoffert to Joe Romm — and will follow up as further reactions come in.
Here’s Rosen:
"I noted with interest your article yesterday about the Bill Gates interview. Unfortunately, you may have given his views too much credibility, though, clearly, he is a very smart guy. But, perhaps, he doesn’t know that much about the physics of energy technology.
"I agree with Gates that too many environmentalists, and others, say that solving the world’s greenhouse gas emissions problems will be “easy,” as he put it. He claims that such a view will lead to a lack of funding for energy technology R&D, and, therefore, to a lack of new technologies that will provide renewable or carbon-free energy cheaply.
"I’m afraid that Gates, and many economists, are far too optimistic that R&D can help the world solve the climate problem cheaply. It is not going to be cheap, and people (and politicians, especially) have got to get used to that idea. For example, you quote Gates as hoping that new clean energy technologies could be invested that would provide electricity at a fraction of the cost of current coal fired electricity. But that is extremely unlikely. Engineers and scientists have been researching new electric generation and storage technologies (such as batteries) for over 125 years now."
Cont.: dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com
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