Boris Johnson Strikes Deal With Bill Gates To Boost Green Technology (theguardian.com) 64
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The UK government has announced plans to launch a $551 million (400 million pounds) package of investment alongside the US billionaire Bill Gates to boost the development of new green technologies. Boris Johnson said the deal would help power a "green industrial revolution" and develop emerging technologies that were currently too expensive to be commercially successful but were essential to hitting the government's climate goals. Speaking at a Global Investment Summit at the Science Museum in London on Tuesday, the prime minister said the partnership would help develop UK technology related to carbon capture and storage, long-term battery life, jet zero (zero-carbon aviation) and green hydrogen technology.
"I think these are all technologies that have massive potential but are currently underinvested in, by comparison with some others," Johnson said. "We will only achieve our ambitious climate goals if we rapidly scale up new technologies in areas like green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels -- technologies that seemed impossible just a few years ago." The UK has already pledged at least £200m to the development of new British green technologies. Gates announced on Tuesday that he would match the commitment via Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a coalition of private investors he leads in funding innovative approaches to tackling the climate crisis.
"I think these are all technologies that have massive potential but are currently underinvested in, by comparison with some others," Johnson said. "We will only achieve our ambitious climate goals if we rapidly scale up new technologies in areas like green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels -- technologies that seemed impossible just a few years ago." The UK has already pledged at least £200m to the development of new British green technologies. Gates announced on Tuesday that he would match the commitment via Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a coalition of private investors he leads in funding innovative approaches to tackling the climate crisis.
Re: "The Beating of a Liberal" (Score:2)
I mean, I'm used to you peckerwoods hiding behind your guns and Bibles, but now you need the USMC to fight your fights for you, too?
How about a show called "Peeper Sweep" where the US Army systematically checks everyone's genitals in the bathroom so you can feel safe?
Was Gates just always misunderstood? (Score:1)
Re:Was Gates just always misunderstood? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know, but it seems to me that Gates plays the roles he takes very well. When he was a CEO, he skirted (and sometimes violated) the law to make Microsoft incredibly successful. A lot of computer users (myself included) had problems with various things MS did during his time there, but it's hard to argue that he did a bad job running the company.
Now, he's in the role of a philanthropist. From what I've read of the work of the Gates Foundation, they are tackling some real problems in the world, dedicating their massive budget not indiscriminately, but in carefully targeted ways that try to affect real change while avoiding waste. Again, not everyone will be happy with the foundation's work, especially when their priorities are not aligned.
CEOs are different from philanthropists. It's no surprise that his behavior today appears to be different from that of 20 years ago. I choose to appreciate what he is contributing now, regardless of any argument about whether he deserves to have made all that money. He could hoard it until death and pass it on virtually tax-free, but he's not doing that.
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Re:Was Gates just always misunderstood? (Score:5, Informative)
When he was a CEO, he skirted (and sometimes violated)[...]
Now, he's in the role of a philanthropist. From what I've read of the work of the Gates Foundation,
If you rob a bank you're still a bank robber even if you give some of your ill gotten gains to charity. I will always remember him as a crook and a scumbag, but one who's trying to buy his way to redemption.
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Yeah to an outsider you may think so, but the GP was discussing how well he played his role.
A robber is a robber regardless of what happens to the proceeds. The question the GP postulated is: was the robber good at robbing? And the answer is undeniably yes.
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Indeed. In the words of Hans Gruber, he isn't a common thief, he is an exceptional thief.
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Now, he's in the role of a philanthropist.
No, now he's playing the role of a philanthropist, and his tax dodge foundation has an incredibly successful PR department.
From what I've read of the work of the Gates Foundation, they are tackling some real problems in the world
Yay propaganda!
The truth is that the Gates foundation has done massive harm to education, and has eradicated literally zero diseases. You can't get vaccinations from them if you don't suck Big Pharma cock, so some nations refuse to let them in and thus become reservoirs for those diseases.
Again, not everyone will be happy with the foundation's work, especially when their priorities are not aligned.
Right, Bill Gates is serving himself, inflating his reputation and his importance in order to get r
Re:Was Gates just always misunderstood? (Score:5, Informative)
Was Gates just always misunderstood?
No.
Historically he was liked if you were a Microsoft shareholder.
Historically, Bill Gates set computing back a decade — literally — by pitting Microsoft against Linux and by operating the corporation in such a way as to abuse its market position in basically every way possible.
Bill Gates is a piece of shit buying himself a new reputation while at the same time expanding his fortune. He's worth more now than when he founded his tax dodge.
Re: Was Gates just always misunderstood? (Score:5, Funny)
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Frankly, given that computing saves lives these days and Microsoft did immense harm to computing, Bill Gates is way the fuck worse than Epstein. Epstein hurt a bare double handful of young women. Bill Gates' influence on computing literally killed people, and arguably is still killing people.
Dr. David MacKay old them what needed to be done (Score:3, Interesting)
Years ago the UK hired Dr. David MacKay as the chief scientif advisor to the department of energy and climate change to study the problem. He did his study and laid out in a number of papers, presentations, and interviews what the UK needed to do to lower their greenhouse gas emissions. He laid it out quite plainly with arithmetic that someone with a high school education should be able to understand.
UK needs nuclear fission power or they will fail.
Again, Dr. MacKay went into detail on why they need nuclear power or they will fail. He would mention carbon capture but I don't recall him going into much detail on that. I don't recall him mentioning synthesized jet fuel but I'm quite certain he'd approve. Dr. MacKay did not appear to be all too fond of solar and wind power, which is understandable once one grasps the very simple math behind that.
Batteries, hydrogen, and aviation fuels are all good things to talk about but they will be dependent on energy production. There's not enough wind, water, and sun in UK to power UK. Going out to sea to plant windmills will simply cost more than if they used nuclear fission.
A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that 13 nuclear reactors provides 20% of their electricity. Okay then, they need to plan on building 65 nuclear reactors. Electricity is only part of their total energy use, transportation and heating fuels make up a sizeable chunk so to replace the fossil fuels used there means even more energy production. UK has some hydro and geothermal, and perhaps there is some room to grow there. The 65 nuclear reactor estimate is really a minimum, a place to start, they will likely need many more. I watch a recently released YouTube video on the Just Have A Think channel about UK buying wind and solar power from Morocco but that's not nearly enough. Link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
UK needs nuclear fission power, and synthesized hydrocarbon fuels. But then they are not unique in this.
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UK needs nuclear fission power or they will fail.
12 sites are permitted, and only two are likely to be used as the companies, even with subsidies, cannot be persuaded to build.
Bear in mind you are citing only one study.
There's not enough wind, water, and sun in UK to power UK.
There's a lot of wind. Why do you think there isn't enough? Citations required.
Going out to sea to plant windmills will simply cost more than if they used nuclear fission.
Offshore wind costs already overlap with nuclear.
They need to plan on building 65 nuclear reactors.
12 sites are permitted, but little interest in them being utilised by companies. Also, previously you have said no one has talked about 100% nuclear, but now you are. You are not very consistent except in your re
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12 sites are permitted, and only two are likely to be used as the companies, even with subsidies, cannot be persuaded to build.
How is that relevant? They need nuclear fission or they will fail on reaching net zero CO2 emissions. They are simply going to have to find a way to get enough nuclear power plants built.
Bear in mind you are citing only one study.
I can cite more than one. The point is that they were informed on what needs to be done by an expert in the field, what is there to gain from someone that dropped out from college halfway through a mathematics degree to write software?
There's a lot of wind. Why do you think there isn't enough? Citations required.
I know there's not enough because Dr. David MacKay laid out the math quite clearly, in
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Wind and solar are already cheaper than nuclear.
Have you noticed nuclear is getting more and more expensive...
Nuclear requires massive subsidies, wind does not.
Re:Dr. David MacKay old them what needed to be don (Score:4, Informative)
They need nuclear fission or they will fail on reaching net zero CO2 emissions. They are simply going to have to find a way to get enough nuclear power plants built.
That has nothing to do with it. Nuclear is a way to give their pals taxpayer money. I think you call it "pork" in the US.
Those plants cost a fortune to build and maintain and decommission, all lucrative work for Tory donors.
The claim is that wind power will get less expensive with new developments in the technology, that claim applies to nuclear fission too.
We are over 70 years into nuclear power and it's more expensive than it started out.
I'd like to see some people cite sources on how the people of UK are supposed to survive without nuclear fission power.
Sure.
Imperial College London states that the fastest way to net zero is to ditch nuclear and solar and go all in on wind. Continuing with nuclear and solar will work but cost about 3.3% more: https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/... [imperial.ac.uk]
Even the World Nuclear Industry agrees that nuclear is too slow and too expensive to meet aggressive net zero goals: https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
The old justification for nuclear was base load, but the former head of the National Grid argues that base load is an outdated concept: https://energypost.eu/intervie... [energypost.eu]
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No matter what way you want to cut it, the country needs to maintain a stable power supply.
Nuclear fission is the only technology that currently exists that can supply the country with a stable power supply which doesn't involve activately destroying the planet.
The people who campaigned against nuclear power would of done less environmental damage by all buying an axe and attacking their local forests with them.
It would be nice if we had th
Re:Dr. David MacKay old them what needed to be don (Score:4, Informative)
If you read the study they are looking at a large number of turbines spread over a wide area, so there are no times where there is no wind and a lot of times when there is excess cheap energy. Another nice benefit.
The cost includes some storage for smoothing. It's needed even if you have nuclear.
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Do you really believe we can run the countries power grid on non-existent technology?
What you are saying is utterly ridicious. We have a 1.1 GW battery aka. in the right ballpark for smoothing out nuclear power.
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Not a single battery, lots of smaller ones. Even with nuclear they are needed.
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Wind, solar & batteries will have their day, no doubt, but it isn't right now. Another decade of power storage costs dropping.
Nuclear generates too much not too little power. Simpler problem.
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Let's take a look at France, they have 70% of their electricity grid running on nuclear. 70% of their power causes no emissions, not in the far future but today.
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France's nuclear fleet is corporate welfare. The government is trying to move away from nuclear because the voters got fed up of giving the operators vast amounts of money in subsidies. When they went all in on nuclear they expected it to get a lot cheaper, but that never happened.
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Nuclear is even safer than Solar power and Solar deaths are usually just installation engineers falling off roofs.
The gas/coal plants current kill 23,835 people per day for comparsion.
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Even the World Nuclear Industry agrees that nuclear is too slow and too expensive to meet aggressive net zero goals: https://www.reuters.com/articl [reuters.com]...
The World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR) is about the world nuclear industry, it is not from the world nuclear industry. The authors are a bunch of anti-nuclear paid shills, paid by politicians and companies in the renewable energy industry to say things are not looking good for nuclear power. It is hardly an unbiased report, it is a report with the one and only goal of making nuclear power look bad.
We are over 70 years into nuclear power and it's more expensive than it started out.
The cost of civil nuclear fission power is not going to go down until the UK government allows the
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https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy... [ons.gov.uk]
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e.g.
https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]
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They need nuclear fission or they will fail on reaching net zero CO2 emissions.
The study you cite ignores the time element. The UK is better off getting close to but not achieving net zero CO2 emissions sooner than it is waiting for nuclear power to come and save the day after the world is burning.
That's the sad reality we face. Nuclear is not viable in the timeframe required. Our most nuclear friendly nations in the world are at present unable to get a reactor online within 20 years. Oh except China, they can do it... but then it only runs for 6 months before having a nuclear acciden
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Years ago the UK hired Dr. David MacKay
The late Dr MacKay sadly.
Dr. MacKay did not appear to be all too fond of solar and wind power, which is understandable once one grasps the very simple math behind that.
I'm not sure he was against it per-se, but did note pretty strongly that the energy balance simply doesn't add up.
A quick look at Wikipedia tells me that 13 nuclear reactors provides 20% of their electricity.
Mostly UK built ones too. Except because we all seem to have got worse at engineering nuclear po
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and because we decided to shut down the industry, we now can't build any more of our own so we have to buy them at great expense
That is exactly backwards. Because you couldn't profitably build any more of your own, you decided to shut down the industry.
Also we did the really expensive bit of doing the R&D and building the first generation commercial plants... then abandoned the project, a great way at minimizing the effect.
Yes, abandoning a dead-end, toxic technology is a great way to minimize the negative effects it has on the environment.
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That is exactly backwards. Because you couldn't profitably build any more of your own, you decided to shut down the industry.
Except we didn't shut down the industry. The nuclear power plants are too important to not have them on the grid, so they keep running ancient designs well past their service life because apparently that's better than building new ones with using hindsight. This is the worst of all worlds: pay by far the most expensive part of the process (R&D), squander the resulting knowledge wh
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Except we didn't shut down the industry
You shut down the building-nuclear-plants industry, which is what I was referring to.
It's a lower carbon source of power than wind or solar, because it take less carbon to build and fuel
False [wiley.com]
Also you have to mine a lot more stuff for those
That, sir, is unmitigated bullshit. Uranite is the least concentrated ore we mine....
which is also a destructive and polluting process.
Uranite is nearly always gathered with strip mining, and the mine tailings are literally never properly tended so they literally always result in contamination of surroundings, water systems etc. with radioactive elements. The majority of lithium mining operations work by pumping water. Most new designs use little cobalt and some new
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Gas and coal power plants literally kill people every day they are in operation.
Also the fuel is recyclable if you weren't aware. You can build another type of nuclear power plant that uses the spend fuel from the first type and so on.
Nuclear is pretty cheap once you remove the costs inoccured from idiots, who wish to destroy the planet, campaigning against it.
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You shut down the building-nuclear-plants industry, which is what I was referring to.
Yes so just after figuring out how to actually effectively build them, we stopped. But the ones we built were so good they're all still going. But rather than getting incremental improvements, driving up safety and down the cost we have to keep rather aged ones running.
You do realise that in the UK the choice is between nuclear and fossil fuels, right? We do not have enough renewable capacity possible to power the country,
Making lemonade. (Score:2)
Bill needs to pair with Cave Johnson for much more interesting results.
Green industrial revolution (Score:3)
I have always wondered why Democrats in the US can't reliably present the concept of a 'green industrial revolution.' There is an enormous amount of money to be made in research, development, manufacturing, transport, installation, operation, and maintenance of green energy production, storage, grid modernization, vehicle technology, and so forth. Not to mention related industry projects like more climate-friendly concrete and steel production, renewable forest products that can replace plastics, and many other things.
Somehow, all of this opportunity is almost always framed in the US as the loss of jobs in coal (which is withering and dying on its own) and gas/oil, rather than the potential boom in new tech. Why wouldn't we want to be at the forefront of green tech? Not just to mitigate climate change, but to be world leaders at tech that's driving the future. In fact, even if you don't believe in climate change, the dollar value of these industries should still be reason enough to get into them.
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Re: Green industrial revolution (Score:2)
Watch what happens with the D's spending bill. They're already cutting things that would directly benefit the people, and I imagine they'll probably try to stall it's passage until the R's regain some power in the midterm election.
Re: Green industrial revolution (Score:2)
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Because their voices get drowned out by the paid shills and the fear-mongering right wing media outlets that tend to dominate in the US.
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Well, that's easy. Because it's a punishment. It's a punishment for being morally wrong. It is very satisfying for the mandarins of the professional-managerial class (PMC) to sit atop Mount Olympus and send famines and rain fire from the sky when we fail to meet their expectations. [caitlinjohnstone.com]
And just like the Greek gods, they themselves are naturally exempt. They can fly private jets to climate conferences and it's no problem. They can go to $30,000 galas full of pedophiles and pedophile enablers and it's no pr
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I have always wondered why Democrats in the US can't reliably present the concept of a 'green industrial revolution.'
That's literally the concept they have been presenting, although they don't use the word "industrial" because it conjures up images of environmental destruction.
Somehow, all of this opportunity is almost always framed in the US as the loss of jobs in coal
Yeah, "somehow" as in the reich-wingers continually push that view of reality.
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I have always wondered why Democrats in the US can't reliably present the concept of a 'green industrial revolution.' There is an enormous amount of money to be made in research, development, manufacturing, transport, installation, operation, and maintenance of green energy production, storage, grid modernization, vehicle technology, and so forth. Not to mention related industry projects like more climate-friendly concrete and steel production, renewable forest products that can replace plastics, and many other things.
Somehow, all of this opportunity is almost always framed in the US as the loss of jobs in coal (which is withering and dying on its own) and gas/oil, rather than the potential boom in new tech. Why wouldn't we want to be at the forefront of green tech? Not just to mitigate climate change, but to be world leaders at tech that's driving the future. In fact, even if you don't believe in climate change, the dollar value of these industries should still be reason enough to get into them.
Because it's a the broken window fallacy [wikipedia.org]. Let's break windows, there's tons of money to be made in replacing them! Let's phase out coal, there's tons of money in replacing it with renewables!
No, no there isn't. At best it's a "there's a ton of money to be suckled off taxpayer's teat" in replacing it with renewables. There's a ton of good arguments for renewables, global warming, environment, so on, but simply "because it's more profitable" isn't one of them. If it was then all buisnesses would be installin
How is this a Bad Thing[tm]? (Score:2)
Anyone?
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Am I missing something, or is it the name that matters?
I thought it was the technology that mattered, or are these technologies in fact not "green" at all?
Or is trying to capitalize on them is the problem?
A clue pls?
--
Perhaps a student learns once. A teacher for all his students, perhaps.
Yeah right. (Score:2)
Boris Johnson is good at announcing things, not so good at actually doing them. Nothing he announced so far actually happened, be it new hospitals or a trade agreement with Australia.
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Really worried (Score:3)
Boris had an "oven ready" Brexit plan. He also had a plan to "level up" Britain...you only need to look at the UK's state to see where that has led.
I hope for the UK that this new green plans. Statistically Boris has to get some things right, right?
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I find it helps to think of other countries. China seems to be making progress on energy. When I arrived in this god forsaken land in the 90s, hyped about the importance of the internet, I was told by a 2nd generation immigrant that the British aristocracy doesn't like to pioneer anything. They like to wait until the hard work is done, skip the advantages of being first in, and leverage the advantages of being a tiny minority skimming off the top of a significant country and economy. In the 2000s, I thought we'd have an energy and economic boom, but we got the terrorist war instead. Then after the banks crashed the economy in an orgy of fraud again in 2007 (see 1929), I thought we'd have an energy and economic boom driven by a green new deal, but we got austerity instead (with 1/4 of a million excess deaths in 10 years). I'm the worst analyst ever! ("God forsaken" = secular)
I've often thought of a way to summarise the long string of failures and so far I got "It's coming home!"
Like that driver that signals left constantly without turning. Eventually, surely a left turn will be taken...except it might genuinely never happen.
Maybe this will be it? -> https://www.science.org/conten... [science.org]
What do UK slashdotters think? (Score:2)
The UK could start the eco-turnaround right away. They're in a deep Brexit+CoViD19 rut right now. IMHO they might as well roll with it and redo the entire infrastructure to be more nimble and efficient while they're at rock bottom (or heading there). That would prepare the UK for nice times when the slump is over. Bikelanes, Trains and Busses and an Insulate Britain campaign would have some real and soon impact. ... But dropping half a billion on science fiction stuff OTOH is quite a bit of a gamble IMHO.
Wh
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BJ is a salesman plain and simple. He's charismatic and good at getting people involved. He's both bad at, and uninterested in delivering.
So far, that's fine so long as someone else picks up the idea and delivers.
Brexit is a good example. He oversold what could be done, but crucially he 1) did actually sell it to parliament and the voters and 2) did actually get other people to deliver it - albeit not quite the shiny version he sold.
So, he can get stuff done simply by convincing people to do it - certainly
Greenwashing? (Score:1)