Bill Gates: The innovations we need to avoid a climate disaster | TED Countdown

Transcriber:

Bruno Giussani: Hello.

Bill Gates calls himself an imperfect messenger on climate

because of his high carbon footprint and lifestyle.

However, he has just made a major contribution to our thinking

about confronting climate change via a book,

a book about decarbonising our economy and society.

It's an optimistic "can-do" kind of book

with a strong focus on technological solutions.

He discusses the things we have, such as wind and solar power,

the things we need to develop,

such as carbon-free cement or carbon-free steel,

and long-term energy storage.

And he talks about the economics of it all,

introducing the concept of green premium.

The gist of the book, and really I'm simplifying here a lot,

is that fighting climate change is going to be hard,

but it's possible, we can do it.

There is a pathway to a clean and prosperous future for all.

So we want to unpack some of that with the author of the book.

Bill Gates, welcome back to TED.

Bill Gates: Thank you.

Giussani: Bill, I would like to start where you start,

from the title of the book.

"How to Avoid a Climate Disaster,"

which, of course, presumes

that we are heading towards a climate disaster

if we don't act differently.

So what is the single most important thing we must do

to avoid a climate disaster?

Gates: Well, the greenhouse gases we put into the atmosphere,

particularly CO2,

stay there for thousands of years.

And so it's really the sum of all those emissions

are forcing the temperature higher and higher,

which will have disastrous effects.

And so we have to take these emissions,

which are presently over 51 billion tons per year

and drive those all the way down to zero.

And that's when the temperature will stop increasing

and the disastrous weather events won't get worse and worse.

So it's pretty demanding.

It's not a 50 percent reduction.

It's all the way down to zero.

Giussani: Now, 51 billion is a big number.

It's difficult to register, to understand.

Help us visualize the scale of the problem.

Gates: Well, the key is to understand all the different sources.

And people are mostly aware of the production of electricity

with natural gas and coal as being a big source.

That's about 27 percent.

And they're somewhat aware of transportation,

including passenger cars.

Passenger cars are seven percent and transportation overall is 16 percent.

They have far less awareness of the other three segments.

Agriculture, which is 19 percent,

heating and cooling buildings,

including using natural gas, are seven percent.

And then, sadly, the biggest segment of all, manufacturing,

including steel and cement.

People are least aware of that one.

And in fact, that one is the most difficult for us to solve.

The size of all the steel plants,

cement plants, paper, plastic,

the industrial economy is gigantic.

And we're asking that to be changed over in this 30-year period

when we don't even know how to make that change right now.

Giussani: So your core argument, and really, here I’m simplifying,

is that basically we need to clean up all of that, right?

The way we make things, we grow things,

we get around and power our economy.

And so to do that, we need to get to a point

where green energy is as cheap as fossil fuels,

and new materials, clean materials, are as cheap as current materials.

And you call that "eliminating the green premium."

So to start, tell us what you mean by green premium.

Gates: Yeah, so the green premium varies from emission sources.

It's the cost to buy that product

where there's been no emissions versus the cost we have today.

And so for an electric car,

the green premium is reasonably modest.

You pay a little more upfront,

you save a bit on the maintenance and gasoline, you give up some range,

you have a longer charging time.

But over the next 15 years,

because the volume is there and the R and D is being done,

we can expect that the electric car will be preferable.

It won't cost more.

It will have a much higher range.

And so that green premium that today is about 15 percent

is headed to be zero

even without any government subsidies.

And so that's magic.

That's exactly what we need to do for every other category.

Now, an area like cement,

where we haven't really gotten started yet,

the green premium today is almost double the price.

That is, you pay 125 dollars for a ton of cement today

but it would be almost double that if you insisted that it be green cement.

And so the way I think of this is in 2050

we'll be talking to India and saying to them,

"Please use the green products

as you're building basic shelter, you know, simple air conditioning,"

which they'll need because of the heat increase

or lighting at night for students.

And unless we're willing to subsidize it or the price is very low,

they'll say, "No, this is a problem that the rich countries created,

that India is suffering from

and you need to take care of it."

So only by bringing that green premium down very dramatically,

about 95 percent across all categories,

will that conversation go well

so that India can make that shift.

And so the key thing here

is that the US's responsibility is not just to zero out its emissions.

That's a very hard thing,

but we're only 15 percent.

Unless we, through our power of innovation,

make it so cheap

for all countries to switch all categories,

then we simply aren't going to get there.

And so the US really has to step up

and use all of this innovative capacity every year for the next 30 years.

Giussani: What what needs to happen

in order for these breakthroughs to actually occur?

Who are the players who need to come together?

Gates: Well, innovation usually happens at a pace of its own.

Here we have this deadline, 2050.

And so we have to do everything we can to accelerate it.

We need to raise the R and D budgets in these areas.

In 2015 I organized, along with President Hollande and Obama,

a side event to the Paris climate talks

where what Prime Minister Modi had labeled "mission innovation"

was a commitment to double R and D budgets over a five-year period.

And all the big countries came in and made that pledge.

Then we need lots of smart people,

who, instead of working on other problems,

are encouraged to work on these problems.

So coming up with funding for them is very, very important.

I'm doing some of that through what I call Breakthrough Energy Fellows.

We need high-risk capital to invest in these companies,

even though the risks are very, very high.

And that's --

There is now --

Breakthrough Energy Ventures is one group doing that

and drawing lots of other people in.

But then the most difficult thing is

we actually need markets for these products

even when they start out being more expensive.

And that's what I call Catalyst,

organizing the buying power of consumers and companies and governments

so that we get on the learning curve,

get the scale going up,

like we did with solar and wind across all these categories.

So it's both supply of innovation and demand for the green products.

That's the combination

that can start us to make this change to the infrastructure

of the entire physical economy.

Giussani: In terms of funding all this,

the financial system as a whole right now

is essentially funding expansion of fossil fuels

consistent with three degrees Celsius increase in global heating.

What do you say to the Finance Committee,

beyond the venture capital,

about the need to think and act differently?

Gates: Well, if you look at the interest rates for a solar field

versus any other type of investments, it's not lower.

You know, money is very fungible.

It's going to, you know, different projects.

But, there's no, sort of, special rate for climate-related projects.

Now, you know, governments can decide

through tax incentives to improve those things.

But you know, this is not just about reporting numbers.

It's good to report numbers.

But the steel industry is providing a vital service.

Even gasoline, for 98 percent of the cars being purchased today,

allows people to get to their job.

And so, you know,

just divestment alone is not going to be the thing

that creates the new alternative

and brings the cost of that down.

So the finance side will be important because the speed of deployment --

Solar and wind needs to be accelerated dramatically

beyond anything we've done today.

In fact, you know, on average,

we'll have to deploy three times as much every year as the peak year so far.

And so those are a key part of the solution.

They're not the whole solution.

But you know, people sometimes think just by putting numbers,

disclosing numbers,

that somehow it all changes

or by divesting that it all changes.

The financial sector is important,

but without the innovation,

there's nothing they can do.

Giussani: A lot of the current focus is on cutting emissions by half by 2030

and on the way to reaching that zero by 2050.

And in the book,

you write that there is danger in that kind of thinking,

that we should keep our main focus on 2050.

Can you explain that?

Gates: Well, the only real measure of how well we’re doing

is the green premium,

because that's what determines

whether India and other developing countries

will choose to use the zero emission approach in 2050.

The idea, you know --

If you're focusing on short-term reductions,

then you could say, oh, it's fantastic,

we just put billions of dollars into natural-gas plants.

And even ignoring that there's a lot of leakage

that doesn't get properly measured,

you know, give them full credit and say that's a 50 percent reduction.

The lifetime of that plant is greater than 30 years.

You financed it,

assuming you're getting value out of it over a longer period of time.

So to say, "Hey, hallelujah,

we switched from coal to natural gas,"

that has nothing to do with reaching zero.

It sets you back because of the capital spending involved there.

And so it's not a path to zero

if you're just working on the easy parts of the emission.

That's not a path.

The path is to take every source of emission

and say, "Oh, my goodness,

how am I going to get that green premium down?

How am I going to get that green premium down?"

Otherwise, getting to 50 percent does not stop the problems.

This is very tough because the nature is zero.

It's not just, you know, a small decrease.

Giussani: So getting the green premium down,

so you mentioned India.

To make sure that the transition, the clean transition,

is also an Indian story and an African story

and not only a Western story,

should rich countries adopt the expensive clean alternatives now,

to kind of buy down the green premium

and make technology, therefore, more accessible to low-income countries?

Gates: Absolutely.

You have to pick which product paths

with scale will become low green-premium products.

And so you don't want to just randomly pick things that are low-emission.

You have to pick things that will come down.

So like, you know, so far, hydrogen fuel cells have not done that.

Now they might in the future.

Solar, wind and lithium-ion,

we've seen these incredible cost reductions.

And so we have to duplicate that for other areas,

things like offshore wind, heat pump,

new ways of doing transmission.

You know, we have to keep the electricity grid reliable,

even in very bad weather conditions.

And so that's where storage or nuclear and transmission

will have to be scaled up in a very significant way,

which we now have this open-source model to look at that.

And so the buying of green products that demand signal,

what I call Catalyst,

we're going to have to orchestrate a lot of money,

many tens of billions of dollars for that,

that is one of the most expensive pieces

so that the improvements come in these other areas

and some of them we haven't even gotten started on.

Giussani: Many people believe actually that the climate question is mostly

a question of consuming less and particularly consuming less energy.

And in the book, you actually write several times

that we need to consume more energy.

Why?

Gates: Well, the basic living conditions that we take for granted

should be made available to all humans.

And the human population is growing.

And so you're going --

as you provide shelter, heating and air conditioning,

which anywhere near the equator will be more in demand

since you'll have many days where you can't go outdoors at all.

So we're not going to stop making shelter.

We're not going to stop making food.

And so we need to be able to multiply those processes by zero.

That is, you make shelter, but there's no emissions.

You make food, but there's no emissions.

That's how you get all the way down to zero.

Now, it's made somewhat easier if rich countries are consuming less,

but how far will that go?

Giussani: So if I summarize in my head your book,

you are basically suggesting that if we eliminate the green premium,

the transition somehow can occur,

the cost and technology,

green premium and breakthroughs are the key drivers.

But, you know, you think of climate and climate is kind of a wicked problem.

It has implications that are social, political, behavioral.

It requires significant citizen involvement.

Are you focusing too much on tech and not enough on those other variables?

Gates: Well, we need all these things.

If you don't have a deep engagement,

particularly by the younger generation

making this a top priority every year for the next 30 years

across all the developed countries,

we will not succeed.

And I'm not the one who knows how to activate all those people.

I’m super glad that the people who are smart about that are thinking.

It's a necessary element.

Likewise, the piece that I do have experience in,

innovation ecosystems,

that's a necessary element.

You will not get there just by saying, "Please stop using steel."

You know, it won't happen.

And so the innovation piece has to come along

and particularly encouraging consumers to buy electric cars

or artificial meat or electric heat pumps,

they're part of driving that demand,

what I call the catalytic demand.

That alone won't do it, because some of these big projects,

like green hydrogen or green aviation fuel

require billions in capital expense.

But the demand signal from enlightened consumers is very important.

Their political voice is very important.

Their pushing the companies they work at is very important.

And so I absolutely agree that the broad community who cares about this,

particularly if they understand how hard it is and don't say,

"Oh, we can do it in 10 years,"

they are super important.

Giussani: You mentioned artificial meat and I know you love burgers.

Have you tried an artificial burger, and how did you find it?

Gates: Yes, I’m an investor in all these Impossible, Beyond and various people.

And I have to say,

the progress in that sector is greater than I expected.

Five years ago,

I would have said that is as hard as manufacturing.

Now it's very hard, but not as hard as manufacturing.

There is no Impossible Foods of green steel

and the quality is going to keep improving.

It's quite good today.

You know, there's other companies coming in to that space

covering different types of food.

And as the volume goes up, the price will go down.

And so I think it's quite promising.

I have to admit, 100 percent of my burgers aren't artificial yet,

it's about 50 percent, but I'll get there.

Giussani: It’s a start.

You're already on 2030 on that on that front.

So you mentioned your expertise in innovation.

You have a couple of lines of -- how to say it? --

of exquisite modesty in the book

where you say you think like an engineer,

you don't know much about politics,

but actually you talk to top politicians more than any of us.

What do you ask them and what do you hear in return?

Gates: Well, they’re mostly responding to voters interest.

Most of the countries we're talking about are democracies.

And you know,

there are resources that will need to be put in

like tax credits that encourage buying green products

or government purchasing of green products

at slightly higher prices.

Those are real trade-offs.

And, you know, making sure

that the areas where there's lots of jobs

in, say, coal mining,

or things where the demand will go down,

having that political sensitivity and thinking through,

can we put the new jobs in that area

and what are the departments that handle that.

This is a tough political problem.

And, you know, my admonition to people is not only to get educated themselves,

but help educate other people.

And often, like in the US,

if it's people of both parties, that's even better.

The level of interest is high,

but it needs to get even higher,

almost like a moral mission of all young people

to go beyond their individual success,

that they believe that getting to zero by 2050 is critical.

Giussani: Thank you.

Now, before we continue the interview,

I would like to take a short detour for one minute

because my colleagues at TED-Ed have produced a series

of seven animated videos inspired by your book.

They introduce the concept of net zero emissions,

they discuss other questions and challenges

that we are facing relating to climate.

So I would like to share one short clip from one of those animations.

(Video) You flip a switch,

coal burns in a furnace which turns water into steam.

That steam spins a turbine

which activates a generator

which pushes electrons through the wire.

This current propagates through hundreds of miles of electric cables

and arrives at your home.

All around the world,

countless people are doing this every second:

flipping a switch, plugging in, pressing an "on" button.

So how much electricity does humanity need?

Giussani: The answer to that and to many other climate questions, of course,

is in the seven animations available on the TED-Ed site,

and the TED-Ed YouTube channel.

Bill, you mentioned the younger generation before.

How does the younger generation's role in solving this problem inspire you?

Gates: Well, they ...

can make sure this is a priority.

And if we have, you know, it's a priority for four years,

then it's not for four years,

you can't ask the trillions of investment in the new approach

to take place.

It's got to be pretty clear

that even though political parties may disagree on the tactics,

the same way they agree there should be a strong defense

that they agree this zero by 2050 is a shared goal,

and then discuss, OK, where does government come in,

where does the private sector come in,

which area deserves priority?

That will be a huge milestone

where it’s a discussion about how to get there

versus whether to get there.

And the US is the most fraught in terms of it being politicized,

even in terms of, is this a huge problem or not.

So, you know, young people,

they're going to be around to see the good news

if we're able to achieve this.

You know, I won't be around.

But, they speak with moral authority

and they have particular people who are stepping up on this.

But I hope that's just the beginning.

And that's why this year, I think, is so important.

All this recovery money being programed,

people thinking about, do governments protect us the way they should,

do governments work together?

You know, the pandemic has teed this up, it’s OK,

what's the next big problem we need to collaborate around?

And I'm hoping that climate appears there

because of these activists.

Giussani: Yeah, we ought to come back to the pandemic question.

But I want to talk a moment about some specific technology breakthroughs

that you mention in the book.

But you also just mentioned

the organization you set up, Breakthrough Energy,

to invest in clean tech start-up and advocate for policies.

And I assume somehow your book is kind of a blueprint

for what Breakthrough Energy is going to do.

There is a branch in that organization,

called Catalyst,

that's prioritizing several technologies,

including green hydrogen direct carbon-capture,

aviation biofuels.

I don't want to ask you about specific investments,

but I would like to ask you to describe why those priorities,

maybe starting with green hydrogen.

Gates: If we can get green hydrogen that’s very cheap,

and we don't know that we can,

that becomes a magic ingredient to a lot of processes

that lets you make fertilizer without using natural gas,

it lets you reduce iron ore for steel production

without using any form of coal.

And so there's two ways to make it.

You can take water and split it into hydrogen and oxygen.

You can take natural gas and pull out the hydrogen.

And so it's kind of a holy grail,

you know, and so we need to get going.

We need to get all the components to be very, very cheap.

And only by actually doing projects, significant scale projects,

do you get on to that learning curve.

And so Catalyst will fund

the early pilot projects

along with governments to go make green hydrogen,

get the electrolyzers to get up in volume

and get a lot cheaper,

because that would be a huge advance.

Lot of manufacturing, not all of it, but a lot of it would be solved with that.

Giussani: So just for those who don’t know,

green hydrogen is produced with clean energy sources,

wind, solar and so,

nitrogen produced from natural gas or fossil gas is called gray hydrogen.

The second priority that you have set is direct carbon capture,

pulling carbon from the atmosphere.

And at least in theory,

we can find a way to do that at large scale.

Together with other technologies the problem could be solved,

but it's a very early-stage, unproven technology.

You describe it yourself in the book as a thought experiment at this stage.

But you are one of the main investors in this sector in the world.

So what's the real potential for direct carbon capture?

Gates: So there’s a company today, Climeworks,

that for a bit over 600 dollars a ton will do capture.

Now it’s at fairly small scale.

I'm a customer of theirs as part of my program

where I eliminate all of my carbon emissions

in a gold standard way.

There are other people who are trying to do larger-scale plants

like Carbon Engineering.

Breakthrough Energy is investing

in a number of these carbon-capture entities.

In a way, the carbon capture is for the part

that you can't solve any other way.

It's kind of the brute-force piece,

and no one knows what that price will be.

If it's 100 dollars a ton,

then the cost against current emissions would be five trillion a year.

Can we get below 100 dollars a ton?

It's not clear that we can,

but it would be fantastic to take the final 10,

15 percent of emissions,

and instead of making the change

at the place where the emission takes place,

just do this, direct air capture.

To be clear, direct air capture means you're just filtering the air,

and you're pulling out the 410 million current parts per million

and putting that into a pressurized form of CO2

that then you sequester in someplace

that you know it'll stay for millions of years.

And so this industry is just at the very, very beginning.

But it's a necessary piece for the tail of emissions.

Giussani: And a third priority is aviation biofuels.

Now flying over the last several years

has become a symbol of a polluting lifestyle, let's say.

Why aviation biofuels as a priority?

Gates: Well, the great thing about passenger cars

is that even though batteries don't store energy

as well as gasoline does,

there's dramatic difference,

you can afford to have the extra size and weight of those batteries.

On a plane that is a large plane going a long distance,

there's no chance that batteries will ever have that energy density.

I mean, there's some crazy people who are working on it,

and I'll be glad to fund them,

but you wouldn't want to count on that.

And so you either have to use hydrogen as a plane fuel,

that has certain challenges,

or you just want to make today's aviation fuel with green processes,

like using plants as the source of how you make those.

And so I'm the biggest individual customer

of a group that makes green aviation fuel.

So that's what I'm using now,

costs over twice as much as the normal aviation fuel.

But as the demand scales up,

that's one of those green premiums that we hope to bring down

so that at some point lots of consumers will say,

"Yes, I'll pay a little extra on my plane ticket,"

probably through Catalyst or through the airline

to make sure that we're building up that industry

and trying to get the costs, that green premium down quite a bit.

So this is a super important area

that, you know,

I was amazed when I went to buy

that I was by far the biggest individual customer.

Giussani: It’s also, of course, a very symbolic area, right?

People think of cars and think of airplanes

when they think of pollution and emissions.

There is a fourth technology that I want to bring up

because you are an advocate of and an investor in nuclear power,

which is also not universally accepted as clean energy because of the risks,

because of radioactive waste.

Can you make the case, briefly, but can you make your case for nuclear?

Gates: Well, one thing that needs to be appreciated

is that energy has to come from somewhere.

And so as you stop using natural gas to heat homes

and gasoline to power cars,

the electric grid will have to grow dramatically.

And even in the case of the US,

where electricity demand has been flat the last few decades,

will need to be almost three times as large.

As you do that with weather-dependent sources,

the reliability of the electricity generation goes away,

that as you get big cold fronts

that for 10 days can stop most of the wind and solar,

say, in the Midwest.

So the question is, how do you use massive amounts of transmission

and storage and non weather-dependent sources which at scale nuclear

as the only choice there,

to maintain that reliability

and not have people, say, freeze to death.

And nuclear --

People will be pretty impressed with how valuable it is

to create that reliability.

Now, 80 percent, at least in the US, will be wind and solar.

So we have to build that faster than ever.

But what is that piece that's always available is where nuclear would fit in.

Giussani: Now, you talk a lot about scaling up technologies in the book.

I want to ask you a question about scaling down,

because one thing that's absent from your book

is a discussion about scaling down fossil fuel production,

maybe starting with at least not expanding it anymore,

with adopting a sort of fossil fuel nonproliferation approach,

because right now we are talking about a green transition,

but at the same time we are building out further fossil fuel infrastructure.

What's your view on that?

Gates: Well, it’s all about the demand for fossil fuels

and the fact that the green premium is very high.

If you want to restrict supply,

then you'll just drive the price up.

People still want to drive to their job.

If you know, say you made fossil fuels illegal.

You know, try that for a few weeks.

My view is you have to create a substitute

because the services provided by the fossil fuel

are actually quite valuable.

Electricity is valuable.

Transportation is valuable.

And are you willing to drop demand for those things to zero?

So the capitalistic economy will respond.

If it's clear, you know,

how you're going to do your tax policies and your credit,

you're going to drive innovation,

then the infrastructure investments in those things will go down.

We see that with coal already today.

But ...

Just speaking against something when you haven't created an alternative

isn't going to get you to zero.

Giussani: OK, I want to shift topics.

You mentioned before the pandemic,

and your main focus since you set up the Gates Foundation

has been on global health.

I actually read the letter,

the annual letter you wrote with your wife, Melinda, in January 2021,

which was very much about the COVID-19 pandemic.

And I found myself marveling

at how what you write resonates with the climate challenge.

What lessons from the pandemic can be actually applied to climate?

Gates: Well I think the biggest lesson is that governments got to, on our behalf,

avoid disastrous future outcomes.

And individual citizens aren't equipped to either do those evaluations

or think through that R and D and deployment plan

that's necessary here.

And so we have to make it an imperative

that governments, hopefully of any party,

join in to this.

The pandemic, we did eventually get global cooperation.

The US didn't play its normal role there,

but the private sector innovation created the vaccine.

Now, sadly, with climate,

the pain it's causing gets worse over time.

So with the pandemic, we had all these deaths,

and people were like, "Wow, OK, we should do something."

With climate you can't wait.

You know, the coral reefs will have died off,

the species will be gone.

And so if you say, "OK, well, let's, when it gets bad,

we'll invent something like a vaccine."

That doesn't work,

because to stop the emissions,

you have to change every steel plant, cement plant, car,

things that have massive lead times

and literally trillions of dollars of investment.

And so with the pandemic, we messed up.

We didn't pay attention.

You know, people like myself said it was a problem.

But, now we're getting our way out of it through innovation.

But climate's harder, much harder problem.

And so the political will to get it right

needs to be unprecedented

compared to the pandemic or almost any other political cause.

Giussani: I want to correct you about private-sector innovation,

because, of course, a lot of public money went into funding research

and guaranteed purchases.

And so for the vaccines.

But that's a separate interview.

Gates: Well, the Pfizer vaccine used no government money.

Giussani: That’s absolutely true.

Bill, still related to our reaction to these big challenges,

over half of the total greenhouse gas emissions since 2017,

50 or 51 have gone up in the atmosphere in the last 30 years.

And we have known for more than 30 years that they have pernicious effects,

to say the least.

So if we could mobilize such enormous resources and policies

and collaborations and global collaborations against COVID-19,

what's the lever we can use to mobilize the same against climate?

Gates: Well, until 2015, nobody pushed for the R and D budgets to go up.

So, you know, there are times when I think

"Wow, are we serious, are we not?"

You know, that R and D question just wasn't discussed.

And you could read every paper on green steel

and there were hardly any.

And so we are just starting to get serious about climate.

And you know, we've wasted a lot of time

that we should have used to work on the hard parts of climates,

just having short-term goals and not focusing on the R and D piece,

you know, the last 20 years,

we don't have much to show for the hard categories.

Now, there's still time to get there.

We will have to fund adaptation a great deal

because the 2050 goal is not because that's a goal

that gives you zero damage.

It's simply the goal that is the most ambitious

that has a chance of being achieved.

And we are causing problems for subsistence farmers

and sea-level rise and wildfires and natural ecosystems.

And so the adaptation side is even more underfunded

than the mitigation side.

For example, helping poor farmers

with seeds that can deal with the droughts and high temperatures

is funded at less than a billion a year,

which is deeply tragic.

Giussani: Bill, we’re getting towards the end.

I mentioned at the beginning,

in the book you describe yourself as an imperfect messenger on climate.

What changes have you made in your personal and family life

to reduce your footprint?

Gates: Well, I’m certainly driving an electric car,

you know, putting solar panels on the houses where that makes sense.

Using this green aviation fuel,

I still can't say that I've stopped eating meat

or that I never fly.

And so it's mostly by funding at over seven million a year

the products that although their green premiums are very high today,

like the carbon capture or like the aviation fuel,

by funding those, you actually get those on to the learning curve

to get those prices down very dramatically.

One area that I do

is I fund putting in electric heat-pumps into low-cost housing.

And so instead of using natural gas,

they get a lower bill because it's done with electricity.

And I paid that extra capital cost as an offset.

So, you know, accelerating those demand things.

I've tried to get out in front of that.

Giussani: You also talk in the book about paying more than market value

or the current market price for offsets,

and you hinted to them before, talking about the golden standard.

Tell us about what kind of --

offsets can be kind of confusing and controversial.

What are the right offsets?

Gates: Well, first of all, it’s great that we’re finally talking about offsets,

and any company that actually looks at their emissions

and pays for offsets

is way better than a company that either doesn't look at their emissions

or looks at them and doesn't pay for offsets.

And so the leading companies are now buying offsets,

some of them spending hundreds of millions to buy offsets.

That is a very, very good thing.

The ability to see which offsets actually have long-term benefit

that really keep the carbon out

for the over thousands of years that count.

There are now organizations that I and others are funding

to label offsets as either gold standard

or different levels of impact.

And the price of offsets range from 15 dollars a ton

to 600 dollars a ton.

Some of the low-cost ones may be really legitimate,

like reducing natural gas leakage.

That is pretty dramatic in some cases

in terms of the dollars per tons avoided there.

A lot of the forestry things will probably not end up looking that good,

as you really look at the lifetime of the tree

or what would have happened otherwise.

But, you know, at least we're talking about offsets now.

And now we're going to do it in a thoughtful way.

Giussani: So some of the people listening to this interview

may already be very involved with climate,

others may be looking for ways to step up.

And at the end of your book,

you have a chapter about individual action.

Give us maybe, say, two examples,

two practical examples of things that individual citizens in the US,

but also elsewhere,

can do to play a meaningful role in tackling climate change.

Gates: I think everybody should start by learning more, you know.

How much steel do we make and where are those steel plants?

The industrial economy is kind of a miracle,

although sadly, it's a source of so many emissions.

Once you really educate yourself,

then you're in a position to educate others,

hopefully, of diverse political beliefs

about why this is so important.

And yet it's also very, very hard to do.

You have all your buying behavior,

electric cars, artificial meat, you know,

and you'll see for all the different products

various things that indicate how green that product is.

And your demand doesn't just save those emissions,

it also encourages the improvement of the green product.

Political voice, I'd still put it number one.

Making sure your company is measuring its emissions

and is starting to fund offsets

and is willing to be a customer

for breakthrough storage solutions

or green aviation fuel.

That is catalytic.

And a lot of those funds hopefully will go through this vehicle

that's really identifying which projects globally

are technologies that won't stay expensive

but can do like what solar and wind did and come down in price.

So individuals are what drive this thing.

The democracies are where most of the innovation power is

and they have to get activated and set the example.

Giussani: I would like to end on the outcome.

Maybe we should have started with the outcome,

but let's imagine a world

where we will actually have done all of what you describe in the book

and everything else that's necessary.

What would that future everyday life look like?

Gates: Well, I think everybody will be really proud

that humanity came together on a global basis

to make this radical change

and there's no precedent for it.

Even world wars,

where we orchestrated lots of resources,

it was, like, four or five year duration.

And here we're talking about three decades of hard work

dealing with an enemy

that the super bad stuff is out in the future.

And so you're benefiting young people and future generations.

In some ways, you know,

life will look a lot like it does today.

You'll still have buildings,

you'll have air conditioning, you'll have lights at night.

But all of those you'll multiply by zero

in terms of what the emissions that come out of those activities are.

During the same time frame

we'll have advances in medicine of curing cancer

and finishing polio and malaria and all sorts of things.

And so by taking away this one super negative thing,

then all the progress we make in other areas

won't get reduced by this awful thing

that, if it goes unchecked,

the migration out of the equatorial regions,

the number of deaths,

it'll make the pandemic look like nothing.

I think so from a moral point of view

and letting the other improvements not be offset by this.

It'll be a source of great pride

that, hey, we came together.

Giussani: OK, let’s hope that we actually do.

Bill Gates, thank you for sharing your knowledge,

thank you for this very, very important book.

And thank you for coming back to TED.

I want to close by showing another short clip

from the TED-Ed animation series inspired by Bill's book.

This one is about material that's all around us,

has a big carbon footprint and how to reinvent it.

Now, the series includes seven videos.

You can watch them all for free at ed.ted.com/planforzero.

That's planforzero, one single word.

And on the TED-Ed YouTube channel.

Thank you. Goodbye.

(Video) Look around your home.

Refrigeration, along with other heating and cooling,

makes up about six percent of total emissions.

Agriculture, which produces our food, accounts for 18 percent.

Electricity is responsible for 27 percent.

Walk outside and the cars zipping past, planes overhead,

trains ferrying commuters to work.

Transportation, including shipping,

contributes 16 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Even before we use any of these things,

making them produces emissions,

a lot of emissions.

Making materials, concrete, steel, plastic, glass,

aluminum and everything else

accounts for 31 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

[Watch the full animated series at ed.ted.com/planforzero

and youtube.com/ted-ed]