Bill Gates assured that green hydrogen can be a “big business” to complete the energy transition in 2050

The investor and philanthropist Bill Gates told a virtual conference Monday that cheap green hydrogen would be a “big deal” to help with the energy transition., but added that the call “green premium ”will influence its use.

The “First green” is a concept that Gates developed in his new book for put a number on the cost difference between doing something in a way that produces greenhouse gases and doing the same thing without the emissions.

This difference is particularly significant in sectors such as green fuel for aviation and cementGates said Monday.

“The ecological bonus is the metric that indicates that we are on the right track to succeed in 2050”, Gates said at the CERAWeek oil and gas conference hosted by consulting firm IHS Markit.

The event, which this year was practically due to the pandemic, is focusing more and more on how to target the reduction of polluting gases to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2050. The choice of Gates as the event’s first speaker was a sign of the importance this year has placed on the subject.

As I had already done in an article for the magazine Fortune, Gates also did again the example of biofuels to power planes, which they cost three times more than traditional petroleum-based fuel.

“It will be interesting to see how we can change this and how this 300% green premium can be reduced, which for the aviation industry, this would imply higher ticket costs ”, Gates said.

Gates added that in the energy transition, oil and gas companies can play a role and bring a specific skill set to help reduce carbon emissions, how to capture carbon and bury nuclear waste.

Gates has previously spoken about tackling climate change and touched on the challenges of reducing emissions from manufacturing. The founder of Microsoft, now a philanthropist, It has invested some $ 2 billion in the development of clean technologies.

In his new book “How to Avoid Climate Disaster,” Gates urged eliminate the current 51 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases by 2050 to avoid a “catastrophe”, to secure in which the world will need a three-decade “transition” period.

The cost of the green premium

As Gates wrote, replacing all sources of electricity in the United States with exclusively clean sources, such as wind, solar, hydraulic and nuclear energy, would slightly increase consumer payments: a 15% on average, around $ 18 per month. In some cases money would be saved —The green premium would be negative—, for example if air conditioners and gas burners were replaced by heat pump systems.

However, in the most areas that affect the climate, the green premium is high, stratospheric.

“The cost of using current technologies to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions in all sectors of the economy would be as high as billion, year after year», Doors summarized in Fortune.

The concept would then illuminate the spaces where is a priority to reduce this premium. However, he warned, it will take a lot of investment in innovation, both from the private and public sectors.

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