Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Hi Bill, thank you again for doing the New Economy Forum.
Speaker 2: We'll begin, I think on greenery, and I've just read
Speaker 2: your new State of the Transition report, and in that
Speaker 2: you start with a bold claim that basically the climate
Speaker 2: business in twenty twenty four reminds you, or seems at
Speaker 2: the same inflection point that medicine was back in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty when you began the whole vaccines drive. And your
Speaker 2: argument is that we now have most of the technologies
Speaker 2: we need to fight climate change or to deal with
Speaker 2: climate And I wonder perhaps you just give us a
Speaker 2: couple of examples. I know that you talk about a
Speaker 2: lot of technologies like clean hydrogen, aviation fuel and so on,
Speaker 2: but just give us a couple of examples of why
Speaker 2: you think that, because it's a very big claim.
Speaker 3: Well, my key theory of change on climate is that
Speaker 3: if the clean approach, the green approach, is more expensive,
Speaker 3: that we won't get global adoption. Perhaps rich countries will
Speaker 3: subsidize clean approaches, but as you get into the middle
Speaker 3: income countries like Brazil, India and others, you know, they
Speaker 3: would say, hey, we have we're not responsible for the
Speaker 3: historic emissions and so slowing down are providing basic capabilities
Speaker 3: to our population. You know that we shouldn't be impeded.
Speaker 3: And so the way to square this is to innovate
Speaker 3: in all the areas of emissions so that the new
Speaker 3: approach that's clean costs less. That's either a zero green
Speaker 3: premium or literally a negative green premium, and that's what
Speaker 3: Breakthrough Energy was founded to do.
Speaker 4: We have one hundred and thirty companies.
Speaker 3: A good example is one that's working on the way
Speaker 3: that steel is made. You know. They're called Boston Metals.
Speaker 3: They're actually working with partners in Brazil to build a
Speaker 3: plant there that looks like it'll be able to make
Speaker 3: very competitive steel, but in a very very clean way.
Speaker 3: You know. We have geothermal company called Fervo. We have
Speaker 3: people who make windows called lux Wall that means you
Speaker 3: don't have to heat or cool your building as much.
Speaker 3: You know. So these one hundred and thirty companies are
Speaker 3: driving forward this innovative approach, and we still have a
Speaker 3: lot of work to do to take things that some
Speaker 3: which are just at the lab, some of which are
Speaker 3: still quite expensive, but volume is needed to bring the
Speaker 3: cost down, like we saw with solar panels and batteries.
Speaker 3: But we're on our way. You've got the IQ that
Speaker 3: we're in every one of the areas of mission. I
Speaker 3: see a path to zero, which means we can get
Speaker 3: adoption where we need it.
Speaker 2: Quite interested, and you've backed quite a lot of green
Speaker 2: startups or a lot of people in this audience who
Speaker 2: are involved in that industry. You know, some of them
Speaker 2: get to scale, some of them don't. Have you reached
Speaker 2: any conclusion about what is the fact of the success?
Speaker 3: Well, everything is is very domain dependent. You know, I
Speaker 3: have to learn a lot about the history of steelmaking
Speaker 3: or you know, different approaches for making cement, you know,
Speaker 3: to understand, okay, why has that stayed the same for
Speaker 3: so long? And now that we're getting lots of new
Speaker 3: people looking at that, what are these these new techniques?
Speaker 3: You know, teaming up with large companies working in multiple geographies.
Speaker 3: It's very you know, it's very science based. It's you know,
Speaker 3: fund to meet those innovators. It's more capital intensive than
Speaker 3: say the digital revolution, and you know, we can't underestimate
Speaker 3: that means that the scale is tough. You know, we
Speaker 3: can run into geopolitical barrier sometimes, but on the whole
Speaker 3: you know, even though we won't meet the the highest goals,
Speaker 3: we will start to get emissions down and will avoid
Speaker 3: this being the primary thing that's slowing slowing down human development.
Speaker 2: About nuclear you've been a big backer of nuclear through things.
Speaker 2: I looked up kind of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, as you know,
Speaker 2: they're all they're all beginning to invest money in nuclear things.
Speaker 2: Do you think the wind is changing? I suppose that's
Speaker 2: a bad metaphor, but do you do you do you
Speaker 2: think that there is a change in the way people
Speaker 2: are looking at this.
Speaker 3: Well, there's certainly a number of countries, including the United States,
Speaker 3: where both the public attitudes and the level investment in
Speaker 3: nuclear fission are quite positive. You know, at the COP
Speaker 3: twenty eight a lot of countries came together and talked
Speaker 3: about tripling nuclear over the future. So that's very different
Speaker 3: than going into decline. There's a big challenge though, which
Speaker 3: is those third generation plants. You know, they have a
Speaker 3: lot of pressure, they're very expensive, they're very complex. So
Speaker 3: as a question, can we get to this fourth generation?
Speaker 3: And so you have a number of companies trying to
Speaker 3: usher in much simpler designs, including the one I'm involvement
Speaker 3: called terror Power. There's several companies doing that. But yes,
Speaker 3: the fact that the tech companies want to be customers
Speaker 3: for green energy, and at least for a period of
Speaker 3: time they're willing to pay a bit of a premium,
Speaker 3: and it's the volume of reactors go up then that
Speaker 3: premium goes away. That is extremely helpful to reboot the
Speaker 3: nuclear industry around these fourth generation plants.
Speaker 2: There is an issue, isn't there A lot of the
Speaker 2: attention has been on small, modular reactors or kind of
Speaker 2: reviving old ones rather than building big new ones.
Speaker 4: Is that a problem? It looks at it from the outside,
Speaker 4: but I don't know.
Speaker 3: Well, if you get small, you can do a lot
Speaker 3: of your labor off site, which is advantageous, but it
Speaker 3: also means your efficiency is a lot less. And so
Speaker 3: the approach terror Powers using is to have a medium
Speaker 3: sized reactor three hundred and forty five megawatt electric in
Speaker 3: our roadmap. If utilities do want big ones, those are
Speaker 3: somewhat more efficient, but you know, first we want to
Speaker 3: build dozens of our medium size reactor, and we've been
Speaker 3: able to move some of the labor off site, although
Speaker 3: we still have some on site. But size it's very
Speaker 3: tricky to get the efficiency as you get small, because
Speaker 3: it's the kind of the volume of the reactor is
Speaker 3: your value in the areas are costs. So it you know,
Speaker 3: different people are taking different approaches, and of course we
Speaker 3: have digital design and simulation that is letting us build
Speaker 3: far far simpler plants than ever before.
Speaker 2: What about fusion, I know it's a question. I think
Speaker 2: I'd probably ask you once every five years. Do you
Speaker 2: think that is it always seems to be five years away?
Speaker 4: Or at least that is it? Is it now getting closer?
Speaker 4: It's old.
Speaker 2: I mean one or two people recently suddenly saying that's possibilities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so break through Energy we're almost all my climate
Speaker 3: work is we know, I'm the largest investor in be
Speaker 3: funded for different fusion companies. The one that's furthest along
Speaker 3: is pretty fantastic called Commonwealth Fusion Systems. That's spin off
Speaker 3: essentially from MIT, and they're hard at work building their
Speaker 3: prototype facility outside of Boston. And so it's you know,
Speaker 3: you could say it's about six to ten years behind
Speaker 3: the force generation fission, but it has a lot of
Speaker 3: advantages and over time it could be even less expensive.
Speaker 3: And so we're backing these companies and you know, they're
Speaker 3: even using very advanced software to simulate how that works.
Speaker 3: In the long run, fission infusion will be a substantial
Speaker 3: part of power generation, complementing the renewables that are are
Speaker 3: being built at high speed.
Speaker 2: Can I just contrast, because it's you've sort of alluded
Speaker 2: to it a couple of times, the kind of gap
Speaker 2: between all the kind of business optimism, the scientific possibilities
Speaker 2: that are now opening up with the political realities which
Speaker 2: seem to be going in the in the opposite direction.
Speaker 2: Just to give you an example, you know, you played
Speaker 2: quite a big role in getting the Inflation Reduction Act
Speaker 2: through in America. You personally went and persuaded Joe Mansion.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a big deal, and there was
Speaker 2: there was kind of green within that. As we both know,
Speaker 2: a good portion of that could well get dumped if
Speaker 2: if Trump comes in, what do you think is the
Speaker 2: most endangered technology out of the stuff that managed to
Speaker 2: get through under that bill.
Speaker 3: It'll be interesting because you know, what the Congress will
Speaker 3: see is that that bill is causing a lot of
Speaker 3: projects to be built in red states, and so ideally
Speaker 3: we'll get some bar by partisan defense of what's being
Speaker 3: done there. I do think nuclear is particularly bipartisan because
Speaker 3: it has to do with energy security as well as climate.
Speaker 3: But you could have some things like the electric vehicle
Speaker 3: tax credit or the green electricity tax credits. You could
Speaker 3: have them come under attack. You know, I think I
Speaker 3: think they're a good thing. I think they're ushering in
Speaker 3: new industries. You know, they're general idea that taxpayers are
Speaker 3: going to pay a lot of extra money for products
Speaker 3: because they want to reduce emissions. That has been pushed
Speaker 3: hard enough that there really is a backlash. We see
Speaker 3: that in Europe, we see that the US. And that's
Speaker 3: why this theory of UH innovation is the only way
Speaker 3: you squared the imperative to get rid of the emissions,
Speaker 3: but without having people say, hey, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: pay for it. And actually, you know that can even
Speaker 3: influence elections if you push too hard.
Speaker 4: Do you think that thing? Though?
Speaker 2: On the demand side, in a strange way, the demand
Speaker 2: kick is being given. Now these technologies are un the way.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't be terrible if they wouldn't help if they
Speaker 2: went away, but it would if those kind of reliefs
Speaker 2: were taken away.
Speaker 3: Well, you have you have different levels of maturity and
Speaker 3: so you know, I'd say the electric vehicles even without
Speaker 3: the subsidies over I'm they are going even to the
Speaker 3: people park on the street at the low end, they
Speaker 3: will get to a zero green premium. You have things,
Speaker 3: particularly industrial emissions like steel cement that we're just building
Speaker 3: the pilot plants now, and so without governmental policy and support,
Speaker 3: the transition of the industrial emissions would slow down a lot.
Speaker 3: And you know that's that's very unfortunate if that takes place. Likewise,
Speaker 3: in transportation, airlines are you know, the toughest part of
Speaker 3: all of the emissions, and and they're you know, without support,
Speaker 3: that will get pushed back.
Speaker 2: So I ask you one kind of strangely capitalism related question.
Speaker 2: I mean, you have arguably been one of the worlds
Speaker 2: will definitely been one of the world's most successful capitalists
Speaker 2: of the post twenty five thirty forty years. Last week
Speaker 2: I saw on the stage with Donald Trump and he
Speaker 2: said that he wanted to use tariffs ten twenty percent
Speaker 2: on everywhere, and his argument was this was very good
Speaker 2: for American business and your experience, Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: No, it's certainly not the case. And the difficulty of
Speaker 3: convincing voters that pre trade is overwhelmingly to their benefit.
Speaker 3: It's unfortunate how difficult it is to make that case.
Speaker 3: And so you know, I understand the politician who chooses
Speaker 3: to take advantage of that, but you know, we we
Speaker 3: will suffer. Overall, welfare will improve less as not only
Speaker 3: will if US puts tariff on, of course, other people
Speaker 3: will put tariff on as well, and the economic dynamism
Speaker 3: and speed of innovation will be significant, significantly slow.
Speaker 2: Just to push you on that dynam point, you know,
Speaker 2: it's very easy to make the argument that this means
Speaker 2: higher prices for consumers. But this issue of dynamism, the
Speaker 2: sort of you've been involved in entrepreneurship, these things.
Speaker 4: Most of your life.
Speaker 2: If you have less foreign competition, less foreign goods, that
Speaker 2: must have an impact on it. I know it's back
Speaker 2: to a creed you've believed in. But in practice that
Speaker 2: is that argument possible to make?
Speaker 3: Devoters Well, we should find articulate politicians who can make
Speaker 3: the case. If you take most of the industries I
Speaker 3: think about, like you know, inventing a new drug or
Speaker 3: writing a new piece of software, or birthing a new
Speaker 3: climate technology, you have these gigantic fixed costs and the
Speaker 3: fact that you can do that work and then sell
Speaker 3: it on a global basis means that everybody's getting you know,
Speaker 3: faster innovation and lower prices. And if you start to
Speaker 3: fragrant markets because of either tariffs or regulatory barriers to
Speaker 3: that trade, it absolutely takes away the lower prices in
Speaker 3: high speed innovation.
Speaker 2: You mentioned health. It struck me maybe this is unfair,
Speaker 2: but health is kind of the opposite to climate. Is
Speaker 2: that at least there were incredible health gains in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands.
Speaker 4: It seems to have stalled a bit.
Speaker 2: What's needed to create another global health boom?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm actually quite optimistic. You know, both the diseases
Speaker 3: in lower income countries and the diseases and rig countries,
Speaker 3: we are seeing incredible advances, whether it's obesity drugs, long
Speaker 3: acting drugs. You know, gene editing is still super expensive,
Speaker 3: but the Gage Foundation is putting a lot of money
Speaker 3: into trying to get that from millions of dollars to
Speaker 3: hundreds of dollars. So we can take a disease like
Speaker 3: sickle salad's prominent napka and as we do that, it
Speaker 3: will benefit all the world's health systems. And then of course,
Speaker 3: you know, AI will be applied in health in the
Speaker 3: upstreme discovery piece to speed up new drugs, but it
Speaker 3: will also be applied in the in the downstream delivery,
Speaker 3: sitting in the sessions, with doctors helping with follow up,
Speaker 3: helping with paperwork, and so I think the health sector
Speaker 3: will be an exemplar that AI can improve things quite dramatically.
Speaker 2: There's one thing which is a little bit similar is
Speaker 2: that issue, and you did it in your Netflix series.
Speaker 2: This issue of trust is that there are these things
Speaker 2: that appear very logical to do with health, and yet
Speaker 2: people don't seem to believe it, COVID being the obvious example.
Speaker 2: How do we deal with this sort of deficit of
Speaker 2: trust when it comes to health. Is it just to
Speaker 2: do with a deficit of trust in governments or is
Speaker 2: it broader than that.
Speaker 3: Well, certainly I never expected as the pandemic came along that,
Speaker 3: you know, many people had warned about the idea that
Speaker 3: that people would reach for over simplistic explanations, you know,
Speaker 3: like attacking either myself or Tony Fauci, or you know,
Speaker 3: attacking the idea of vaccines. I wouldn't have expected that,
Speaker 3: and certainly a lot of people, particularly older people who
Speaker 3: should have been vaccinated were not, So you know, those rumors,
Speaker 3: you know, literally caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. I'm
Speaker 3: hopeful with that out of the way that we can
Speaker 3: go back to, you know, a more scientific way of
Speaker 3: looking at health innovation. You know, the when people see
Speaker 3: the effects of things like these obese drugs, you know,
Speaker 3: to remind them that, you know, we can improve health
Speaker 3: pretty dramatically.
Speaker 2: I agree the obystis are the obesity drugs are a very.
Speaker 4: Good example in one direction.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, you have stuff about I don't know,
Speaker 2: hurricanes and things like that. You still see that basic
Speaker 2: trust that people used to have in quote unquote scientists
Speaker 2: and governments is it's it's amazingly small compared with what
Speaker 2: it was twenty thirty years ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, they're like these latest hurricanes. Some people
Speaker 3: blame me for those two. You know, I'm very busy,
Speaker 3: you know it. Hopefully, you know, the basic decisions about
Speaker 3: what say and what's beneficial we maintain that, and you know,
Speaker 3: I think progress, positive progress will help get people back,
Speaker 3: you know, looking at what experts are are telling them.
Speaker 2: The truth is One quick thing on health, the mosquito
Speaker 2: borne diseases seem to be a little bit back on
Speaker 2: the Rah Tanky and the West Nile stuff.
Speaker 4: People, Are you worried about that?
Speaker 2: I mean, it just seems to be a slight blip
Speaker 2: in an otherwise very positive picture.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Of course. The biggest part of that, which is
Speaker 3: kind of invisible in middle income and rich countries, is
Speaker 3: the malaria burden, you know, which is killing about six
Speaker 3: hundred thousand kids a year. You know where you are
Speaker 3: in Brazil, Denghy's gone up somewhat. We do have new
Speaker 3: tools to reduce mosquito populations, one that's still in the
Speaker 3: lab called Jean Drive that the Gates Foundation funds and
Speaker 3: should help us with all those mosquito born diseases. You know,
Speaker 3: what we see is when you get a lot of flooding,
Speaker 3: you know, we should get a bit more with climate change,
Speaker 3: mosquitoes really thrive, and so places like Pakistan where you
Speaker 3: have very little malaria then when they had the flooding.
Speaker 3: Now it's come back in a pretty big way. And
Speaker 3: so you know that innovation pipeline is coming along. It
Speaker 3: should get even more money, but we will be able
Speaker 3: to get rid of those vector born diseases in countries
Speaker 3: that want to embrace these new tools.
Speaker 2: I'll ask you one last question about Brazil. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a place we've heard where, especially on the
Speaker 2: climate side, a very very high proportion, probably higher than
Speaker 2: eywhere else, certainly above ninety percent coming.
Speaker 4: From renewable sources.
Speaker 2: Do you see Brazil as the center of this climate
Speaker 2: It seems to be the center of both the pain
Speaker 2: and the Amazon, but also on the creative side. Is
Speaker 2: that something you've been following well?
Speaker 3: Certainly. I at the UN General Assembly, the Keys Foundation
Speaker 3: had our Goalkeepers event and I gave them a word
Speaker 3: to a loop for the work they've done in reducing malnutrition.
Speaker 3: We've been talking with Brazil a lot about COP thirty
Speaker 3: that's coming up, and you know that will be a
Speaker 3: very important milestone both for climate mitigation and climate adaptation.
Speaker 3: You know, Brazil has done some good pioneering things on
Speaker 3: mitigation the deforestation. It's important that that, you know, get
Speaker 3: under control, both for Brazil itself and for the world.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot being learned there, you know. As
Speaker 3: I said, one of our best breakthrough companies is building
Speaker 3: a steel plant with partners in Brazil. So Yes Agriculture
Speaker 3: Innovation with imbrapa. Brazil is very strong, So it's it's fantastic.
Speaker 3: You know that the issue is is a very important
Speaker 3: issue and it you know, deals with kind of the
Speaker 3: equity things that Brazil has been a global leader on.
Speaker 2: That's one last thing on that, particularly on Brazil, you
Speaker 2: now much more. It sounds like you're more optimistic about
Speaker 2: Brazil than maybe if you and I talked about it
Speaker 2: twenty thirty years ago.
Speaker 4: It's a more positive story.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, Brazil's got a lot of assets, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's kind of a mixed story because
Speaker 1: they've had, you know, challenges with governance and you know
Speaker 1: who knows.
Speaker 3: They're like the US. They have a party that's sort
Speaker 3: of against all climate things and for Amazon destruction, and
Speaker 3: you have a party who's who cares about that. So
Speaker 3: you know, I'm not an expert on what the balance
Speaker 3: will end up being over time. You know, the whole
Speaker 3: world has this problem that we do need to invest in.
Speaker 3: You know, Amazon force destruction. We're very good at measuring
Speaker 3: it now because of satellite systems, but the exact policies
Speaker 3: that will get us there, you know, still still somewhat challenging,
Speaker 3: particularly if you get different parties in Power Bill.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for talking to us again, covered many,
Speaker 2: many subjects.
Speaker 4: Thank you very much, on behalf of everyone here. Thank you,
Speaker 4: thank you,