Bill Gates: What companies uncover noxious about climate investments  

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has devoted more than $2 billion to funding zero-emissions technologies since 2015, when he founded project agency Leap forward Vitality. A decade later, he’s adjusting his climate investment thesis to prioritize human welfare and urging investors and companies to enact the same.

Too grand climate finance is devoted to innovation that promises near-term emissions reductions on the expense of initiatives aimed at bettering human neatly being and livelihoods as global temperatures rise, Gates argues in a lengthy “Gates Notes” essay revealed Oct. 28.

As an illustration, he cites the dedication of one low-earnings nation in 2021 to ban synthetic fertilizers so that you can promote natural farming forward of observe-efficient choices were readily available. Gates doesn’t name the nation, Sri Lanka, but the nation used to be forced to reverse the policy just appropriate eight months later to stabilize its economy.  

“Farmers’ yields plummeted, there used to be grand much less meals readily available and prices skyrocketed,” Gates wrote. “The nation used to be hit by a crisis since the authorities valued reducing emissions above a broad selection of predominant things.”

Pricey COP30 attendees

Gates’ essay, titled “Three tricky truths about climate,” is addressed to policymakers, companies and a broad selection of climate leaders planning to back the COP30 gathering in mid-November. These truths:

• “Climate alternate is a excessive scenario, but this may perchance well well perchance no longer be the dwell of civilization” — And civilization will need even more investment in low-carbon constructing gives, orderly electrical energy period, wildfire management systems and a broad selection of infrastructure designed to face up to low weather. 
• “Temperature is no longer one of the best doubtless technique to measure our development on climate” — A nearer metric is quality of existence, as expressed by the United Countries Human Development Index.
• “Health and prosperity are one of the best doubtless defense against climate alternate” — There’s an instantaneous correlation between financial growth and a reduction in projected deaths associated to rising temperatures. “While you happen to glimpse on the scenario this vogue, it becomes more straightforward to search out one of the best doubtless buys in climate adaptation,” Gates said. On the head of the listing: improvements for agriculture, such as climate-resilient crops and animals.

No time to ruin

The timing is urgent, Gates said, as governments pull back abet for constructing international locations. His standpoint is influenced by Leap forward Vitality’s work on the side of the Gates Foundation’s 25 years of philanthropy in many international locations where climate alternate is taking its toll on human neatly being and livelihoods within the create of low weather.  

“Here is an different to refocus on the metric that ought to depend even more than emissions and temperature alternate: bettering lives,” Gates said within the essay. “Our chief aim ought to be to forestall suffering, particularly for those within the hardest conditions who live within the enviornment’s poorest international locations.”

Leap forward Vitality, which has invested in additional than 150 companies over the last decade, specializes in improvements that erase the “inexperienced top class,” or the worth delta between low-carbon technologies and damaged-down approaches, in 5 areas: electrical energy, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation and structures.

The twist is that impacts on the human situation will carry even more weight for Leap forward. 

For instance, Gates wrote that whereas heating and cooling structures accounts for a rather tiny fragment of emissions this day, that share will skyrocket as the enviornment urbanizes and effect a question to for air-conditioning increases. The sector needs more investments in electrical heat pumps — 5 events more efficient than boilers and furnaces — on the side of novel approaches for windows and constructing insulation, he said.

Hints about Leap forward Vitality’s shift in thesis emerged in March, with experiences that the agency had slashed dozens of positions associated to policy and partnership engagements.

Relish many high-profile industry leaders, Gates has shunned public criticism of the Trump administration’s systemic dismantling of federal make stronger for orderly vitality and a broad selection of climate technologies. Here is one of his first public reflections since many incentives from frail President Joe Biden’s Inflation Discount Act were killed. 

While investments in early-stage climate tech cooled 19 p.c within the first half of of 2025, when compared with 2024, Leap forward Vitality remains dedicated to de-risking novel technologies. On Oct. 21, as an illustration, it disclosed a $50 million grant for low-carbon iron startup Electra.

“I desire there were ample money to fund every valid climate alternate conception,” Gates said in his essay. “Unfortunately, there isn’t, and we believe got to design tradeoffs so we can carry essentially the most relieve with restricted sources. In these conditions, our choices ought to be guided by files-based entirely mostly prognosis that identifies suggestions to carry the ideal return for human welfare.”