(2700 words or 15k characters summary) my other summaries are here
Ambitious accelerator of technogenic progress + doing it planetary scale, “vaccine chipping people” Bill Gates released his book about global warming and zeroing CO2 emissions in Feb 2022. Super structured and top down + visual figures (scale/prices/terms) + says he is tired of reading disparate info and decided to generalize everything. Interdisciplinary killing book
Big idea
⁃ We need to zero out greenhouse gas emissions for decades, and then learn how to remove them from the atmosphere, manage the planetary ecosystem. Requires new discoveries + worldwide distribution. I believe in humanity
⁃ Everything emits CO2: heating / air conditioning, mining, manufacturing, transport, construction, agricultural technology
⁃ This gigantic goal is important for mankind, and faster than before on a comparable scale, breakthroughs in science and engineering are needed, public consensus is needed (it does not exist yet), stimulating state policy is needed to push the transition to zero CO2 emission
Why is warming bad?
⁃ The warming is definitely anthropogenic, see graphs of the 20th century, the question of models is only in rates – in 30 years or in 50 years it will be much warmer
⁃ Leads to droughts and rains, the poor (0.6-1 billion people) around the world dependent on agriculture and livestock will be forced to relocate so as not to die of hunger. Food for the world will also rise in price. Even if warming does not become an existential catastrophe in the next generation, it will increase inequality
How to act?
⁃ I came across in 2005 in Africa doing charity work, that there are problems with simply cheap energy, I didn’t pay attention further, then I realized
⁃ In 2015, Breakthrough Enregy made an interstate coalition, and private 40 rich people (Jack Ma, Khosla, Dalio, Klarman, Bezos, etc.). Invested several $ billion in 50 start-ups and advocacy initiatives
⁃ Rich countries should lead the transition to green energy. Now 40% of CO2 emissions come from 16% of the world’s population (rich countries).
⁃ Energy consumption will increase by 50% by 2050 = it’s like adding one New York every month, but 40 years in a row, as the standard of living rises
CO2 emissions come from:
⁃ Manufacturing (steel, cement, plastic) 31%
⁃ Electricity 27%
⁃ Agro (including livestock) 19%
⁃ Vehicles and aircraft/trucks/boats 16% (half of that = 8% are cars). (Victor: So Elon is working towards 8% emissions, but there is still 12 times more volume left?)
⁃ Air conditioners, refrigerators, heating 7%
Energy scale
⁃ Energy is a VERY long flywheel in civilization: coal from 1840 to 1900 grew from a share of 5% to 50% of all energy, oil 60 years from 1910 to 40%, gas 60 years from 1930 to 20% of all energy
⁃ Processors have become 1 million times faster since the 70s, but this is outlier, and all other technologies do not improve so radically. There is no way to make a car 1 million times more energy efficient in 50 years. Solar panels 50 years ago efficiency 15% of sunlight, now 25%. etc
⁃ Energy: turnover is $5 trillion a year, and totally regulated (other than, say, the Internet). In software, everything is fast, in, say, biotech – years.
⁃ And all this regulation is outdated, a new one is needed. 97% of scientists agree that the climate is changing because of people, and in society and government there is no agreement that it is time to act
How to think about the proposed solutions?
I read different things for a long time and everywhere there was a torn supply of information, there was no integrity. And I’m top down. Now I’m using this framework:
1. What % of the total emissions of 51 billion tons will be affected by this technology? (if successful) (their VC fund Breakthrough Energy only puts if potential impact is greater than 1%)
2. Solutions are needed in all 5 segments of CO2: electricity, manufacturing, agriculture, transport, air conditioning / heating
3. kW= 1 house. gw = average city. Hundreds of GW = big rich country
4. How many sq.m. Will land be needed for this technology?
5. Green Premium = What is the green premium compared to today’s fossil fuel lifestyle? And can middle-income countries afford it?
Electricity
⁃ Now electricity is 27% of the total CO2 emissions, but if it is salted, then it will be possible to change the industry to a new way of life, and transport. In other words, the share of green energy in total CO2 will increase
⁃ Traveled with son at a power plant, “I’m in awe of our physical infrastructure” (“but I’m nerd”)
⁃ In equatorial Africa, less than 50% of people have reliable electricity. You need to stomp to the store, charge the phone ($0.25 at a time, a hundred (!) Times more expensive than in developed countries)
⁃ It turns out that flooding the land for hydroelectric power plants releases methane from the soil and it takes 50-100 years of operation of the hydroelectric power plant to pay off this unexpected effect
⁃ Electricity has fallen in price by 200 times from 1900 to 2000, only 2% of US GDP now. This is due to the stimulus in the 20th century, and now government subsidies for fossil fuels reach $400 billion / year (according to the IEA). In 2019 alone, coal-fired power plants were built at 250 GW (this is like 60 Chernobyl nuclear power plants)
⁃ In the US, a family spends 29 kW/day. Overpayment for green electricity in the USA can be 15% = +$18 months = lifting. Except the poorest who spend 10% of their income on electricity. In the EU +20% too
⁃ A small premium in the USA is possible, maybe in the south of the solar panels, in the Midwest the wind, and in the north of the hydroelectric power station
⁃ Asia and Africa is difficult. China pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by cutting the price of coal-fired power plants by 4 times. And now they want India / Indonesia / etc. / Africa. How will these countries choose?
⁃ Renewables are also unevenly distributed around the world, it’s cloudy somewhere and there is no wind = you need to transfer from afar (and energy transfer already costs 1/3 of its final price. But the key thing there is power reserves for continuity during peak loads)
⁃ The greater the percentage of green e-va, the more difficult it is with its ability to cover peaks. I don’t believe in batteries – it’s prohibitively expensive (now = $100/kW) for such a scale: adjusted for the number of charges of Li-Ion batteries, the price of light at night will be 3 times more expensive than during the day + absolute scale: for 3 days, Tokyo’s energy requires $400 billion batteries (now the world produces so much in 10 years). It is better to temporarily turn on gas power plants. Well, wait for 5x progress in batteries …
⁃ But seasonality in renewables is the worst. In Ecuador the sun is even, in Seattle where I live – 2x difference per year, in Canada and Russia – up to 12x. Nuclear power plants and gas stations to help us.
⁃ Germany implements ambitious plan to reach 60% of electricity from renewable sources by 2050
⁃ If we transfer metallurgy, etc. to electricity, by 2050 the volume of electricity generation should be 2-3x from today. This is +75 GW/year for 30 years in a row (now commissioning is 22 GW/year)
⁃ From 2010 to 2020 solar panels fell in price by 10x
⁃ For renewables, it is necessary to build high-voltage mains across the country (from the middle where the wind is and from the south where the sun is – to the coast, where the cities are). I am funding a study where they model a power transmission network for the entire USA, taking into account renewables + we need such models around the world
⁃ Power supply to each house will need to be at least doubled = also a mega infrastructure scale
⁃ It costs 5-10x more to bury a power line + the problem of heating wires remains, new technologies are needed
⁃ The USA is lucky with the sun and wind, and the world needs new discoveries in clean energy
Nuclear
⁃ Only nuclear power plants – if during the day and at night + without the influence of seasonality. In the USA 20% of energy, in Fr 70% (and worldwide sun + wind = 7%)
⁃ Based on 1 kW, the construction of hydroelectric power plants / windmills / solar panels requires 10-15 times more cement / steel / glass than nuclear power plants / gas / coal. If we take into account the downtime of windmills and solar panels 60% of the time, then the difference increases by another 3x. A NPP uptime – 90% ( = downtime 10%)
⁃ Three Mile Island/Chernobyl/Fukushima stopped solving the problem of their mistakes, the industry froze. “Autos kill people, let’s not make them”
⁃ Since 2008 founded TerraPower company, for a new generation of reactor, while in supercomputers, but working with US gov to create a prototype thermonuclear
⁃ Thermonuclear reactors: like the sun – hydrogen in the form of gas is electrified to the state of plasma and a temperature of 50 million degrees, hydrogen turns into helium and releases an enormous amount of heat. All this is held mainly by a magnetic field or a laser. The main value is that rare earth (uranium) substances are not needed, but simply hydrogen from water. They have been trying for a long time, they will not do everything. “thermonuclear will always be 40 years ahead” (c) industry joke
⁃ EU+6 countries have been building the ITER project in Fr since 2010: by 2025 the first plasma, by the end of the 2030s – electricity = 30 years
Windmills
⁃ USA consumes 1000 GW of electricity (= 250 Chernobyl nuclear power plants)
⁃ England and China pour subsidies into coastal windmills. And in the USA it is very regulated, taking into account the interests of the owners of real estate on the beaches, tourism, fishermen, environmentalists geothermal energy
⁃ Few places available, and abs. the scale is small: can give a maximum of a few % of the total world energy consumption today
Energy storage
⁃ Batteries – I spent the most time on this, and investing in such startups. It seems that we will improve the max by 3 times, it is not known when
⁃ Water tanks – suitable for the scale of cities, in fact, with electric pumps you repeatedly pump water storage for hydroelectric power plants
⁃ Still trying to pump into underground reservoirs under pressure
⁃ Hydrogen – it can turn the world like a PC. You make hydrogen green energy, it can be transported, stored, and it also does not produce CO2 about oxidation. But the molecules are so small that under pressure they seep through the metal of the tanks. Electrolysis is expensive, breakthroughs are needed
CO2 capture
⁃ It is possible to capture up to 90% CO2 after combustion at a thermal power plant, but it is purely a cost for operators, so no one did
⁃ It is difficult to catch in the atmosphere. Only 1 molecule in 2500 in the air is CO2
Manufacturing
⁃ Seattle has a 250m bridge built on 77 floating concrete floats, a marvel of engineering. China produced 26 billion tons of cement in the 21st century, and the US 4 billion for the entire 20th century. + steel. + plastic. + glass. + aluminum. + fertilizer. The growth of prosperity locally leads to long-term uninhabitability of the planet. Therefore, you need a green overpayment in order to live as you lived, but not dangerously
⁃ For steel, coal is burned at 1700 degrees. India China Japan each melts more steel than the US. The world will smelt 3 billion tons / year by 2050
⁃ Cement also needs calcium, it is extracted from limestone (and this is calcium + CO2)
⁃ Plastic is ten times smaller than steel and cement, but still consists of carbon, and it is taken from oil (since the 1950s, a breakthrough in chemistry). Plastic is more likely to decompose acidically in nature for a long time, rather than affect the greenhouse effect
⁃ On the production of 3 CO2 factors: 1 electricity for factories 2 heat (melting, etc.) 3 part of the material production (limestone for cement). It is necessary to flow to electric power, and where it is impossible (thousands of degrees of temperature) – install CO2 traps
⁃ The overpayment for environmental friendliness will be +10..15% for plastic, +15..30% for steel, and +75..140% for cement. Without state regulation, such an overpayment will not be paid.
⁃ Cement cannot yet be made without CO2, so it must be captured on production + and from the atmosphere too
⁃ Innovations lie in the field of electrification of production, collection of recyclable materials, less consumption, wooden roads, etc.
Agrotech /Livestock
⁃ Methane is released here (28 times stronger greenhouse effect than CO2) and NO2 (265 times stronger than CO2). Methane and NO2 are responsible for 80% of the greenhouse effect in agricultural technology, and it provides 7 billion tons/year of 51 billion tons/year of CO2 in general
⁃ Developed countries are gradually increasing meat consumption, China is still strong. Nobel laureate Norman Borlaug improved wheat in the 60s and saved 1 billion people in the world from starvation. But by the end of the 21st century, the population will be +40% = 10-11 billion people = the demand for food will still remain large = we need several Borlaug-level breakthroughs
⁃ Fermentation occurs in the stomachs due to bacteria, methane is released, 1 billion head of livestock, only due to farting = 4% of 51 billion tons of CO2. The same amount is given by manure and livestock feces. And also water, grass and grain for them (!). In South America and Africa, it allocates up to 5 times more mk worse than the breed = upside for optimization
⁃ It will be difficult to give up meat, including culture, but you can, for example, vegetable – I am an investor in Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods. And grow from animal stem cells – Memphis Meats fertilizers
⁃ In 1908, Haber and Bosch discovered synthetic fertilizers, “the biggest invention that most people don’t know about”
⁃ But plants absorb only half, the rest flows into the soil, pollutes, and also oxidizes and flies into the atmosphere = increases the greenhouse effect by 2-3%. There are no simple and economical solutions to this yet.
Deforestation
⁃ Responsible for one third of agricultural emissions
⁃ This is not a matter of technology, but of incentives in society and politics
⁃ Plant trees? Not very justified. In 40 years, 1 tree will absorb 4 tons of CO2. If it burns out, everything will again fly into the atmosphere. The effect if planted in the tropics. To replace the CO2 effect of at least the United States with trees, you need to plant them on 25 million square miles – this is half the world’s land
Other
⁃ The book was written by his speechwriter with whom he has been working for 14 years Josh Daniel
⁃ China wants to be carbon neutral by 2060. Biden will put the US back on this post-Trump path
⁃ Warming requires global cooperation + developed countries (as with COVID) will distribute clean tech around the world not because it is altruism, but because the temperature in Texas will not drop if India continues to burn coal
⁃ Decarbonization will destroy many jobs in fuel extraction, metallurgy, cement, and developed countries should take care of working class jobs around the world
⁃ An interdisciplinary scientific approach is needed. Although the long-term return on R&D is the largest, in the short term it is also there: US government investment in all areas of R&D in 2018 created directly and indirectly 1.6 million jobs, $126 billion in salaries and $39 billion in taxes