Bill Gates and 28 other billionaires have joined hands to establish the Breakthrough Energy Catalyst (BE Catalyst) with an aim to adopt green products, innovate, and reduce their costs to help achieve the goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

"Today, green products are quite expensive as they are in the early stages of innovation and if companies invest today in them, the prices will come down," Gates said in a blog post.

The billionaire said that when many companies entered the microwave oven manufacturing or say the solar power industry, the prices came down eventually.

Keeping these goals in mind, BE Catalyst has identified four areas that can be a game-changer in the coming decades:

Long-duration energy storage

: The idea is to store energy for months compared to few days.

Sustainable aviation fuels instead of jet fuel for planes.

Direct air capture to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it to oxygen like what Boston Steel is attempting to do using a method called metal oxide electrolysis.

Inexpensive green hydrogen: Utilising Hydrogen fuels can provide more power than batteries of today which can be used for industrial processes.

Almost every country in the world has agreed to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, as per the Paris Agreement.

Bill Gates has endorsed the concept of calling everyone to join hands and invest in clean energy. His blog read, “US voters do understand and acknowledge developing clean technologies will spark new industries, creating more blue-collared jobs in the US resulting in a boom in the economy like it was in the past.”

Sharing another example of how airlines can benefit if they could invest in a sustainable aviation fuel refinery, he said that it would bring down the costs as a higher number of refineries can open up. Switching to sustainable aviation fuel will also reduce the carbon footprint that airlines produce every year, he added.

(Edited by : Aditi Gautam)

First Published:Jul 14, 2021 3:04 PM IST