COP26: Bill Gates stresses on green industrial revolution to mitigate climate change

At the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP26, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stressed on green industrial revolution that could cease climate change, shield vulnerable communities and put the globe on a path of progress. The billionaire, who is also a philanthropist, informed that Gates Foundation has partnered with Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (Aim for Climate or AIM4C), an initiative by US and UAE and includes over 30 nations as members.

"As part of our work with AIM4C, I am announcing today that the foundation will provide an additional $315 million over the next three years to an amazing organization called CGIAR. CGIAR supports climate-smart agricultural research to help smallholder farmers in the developing world," Gates said.

Bill Gates states that since the Paris Summit six years ago, the efforts to stop climate change are going well. "I started Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) to complement the commitment from 22 countries to increase R&D through Mission Innovation. BEV has raised over $2 billion so far and invested in more than 80 companies from 11 countries across four continents," he said.

Mission Innovation is a world initiative to speed up public and private clean energy innovation to address climate change, provide affordable clean energy to consumers and create green job opportunities.

To scale innovations to get to the target of zero (emission), he said that we need to reduce the difference between things that emit and things that don't, a difference he termed the Green Premium. 

"The cost of the transition must be low enough that the whole world can afford it. To help make this happen, Breakthrough Energy recently announced the creation of Catalyst. Catalyst is a first-of-its-kind effort to build the big projects we need to lower Green Premiums and expand the market for critical climate technologies," Gates said.

The catalyst will do four things:

• Harness specialised expertise to scale the innovations we need.
• Connect government resources with business expertise.
• Organise philanthropic endowments and equity with a low expectation of return to be the last-mile financing.
• Create certainty for investors by guaranteeing that projects will have customers.

The billionaire informed that private sector partners have committed more than $1.5 billion to support four areas of direct air capture, long-duration energy storage, green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels.

PM Modi meets Bill Gates at COP26

Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Bill Fates on the sidelines of Glasgow COP26 and discussed sustainable development and steps to mitigate climate change. The two discussed a wide range of tops including ways to strengthen global efforts towards overcoming change.