# Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy Founder Bill Gates on the State of the Energy Transition  ## About - Author: breakthroughenergy.org - Title: Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy Founder Bill Gates on the State of the Energy Transition - Tags: #articles - URL: https://breakthroughenergy.org/news/bill-gates-annual-report/ ## Highlights Many startups have made great strides in producing hydrogen, often through a process called electrolysis. The challenge is less about whether we can supply hydrogen — and more about whether there’s demand for it. In theory, hydrogen can play a key role in decarbonizing many sectors of the global economy, especially through seasonal energy storage. To make sure we don’t go dark when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, electricity can be converted into hydrogen, stored for months, and then converted back to electricity when it’s needed. The problem is these markets for hydrogen haven’t developed quickly enough. - Note: Without a market, hydrogen's impact is limited to niche and small scale applications. --- panacea - Note: panacea (noun): a solution or remedy for all difficulties or diseases; a cure-all 🌍💊 --- A core component of the world’s net-zero strategy is “electrifying everything”: replacing gas-powered vehicles with battery-powered ones, for example, then charging those car batteries up with clean electricity. The first step of this process is producing lots of clean electricity, and the world has made significant progress, deploying 280 gigawatts of it last year alone — about 23 times the electricity consumption of New York City. It’s the second step — transmitting that electricity everywhere — where we’re stumbling. In much of the world, power grids are either unbuilt or woefully obsolete, a problem that limits the impact every new wind turbine, solar farm, or nuclear plant can have. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), recently passed in the United States, is projected to cut emissions by roughly a billion tons — so long as there’s a functioning grid. If not, the IRA may only achieve 20% of that projection. - Note: Renewable energy sees the most impact when it is transmitted to the population. --- In many ways, electricity transmission foreshadows the next phase in the fight for our climate. New technology can definitely help improve our power grid. Engineers can invent more advanced power lines that transmit more energy. But really, transmission is a scale problem — not an innovation problem: *Even if you invent new power lines, how do you get the permits to build them?* *Will governments make it easier to send electricity across borders?* Questions like this will increasingly determine how bad things will get. Climate innovators should be given a stellar grade for their work in the lab, but in future years, we’ll all face a much harder practical exam — *getting those innovations out into the real world*. - Note: Technology translation is a key opportunity. --- Five activities in the global economy — building things, growing food, transportation, generating electricity, and keeping buildings warm and cool — account for 100% of GHG emissions, and in every single one there are new startups developing technologies to decarbonize them. I call these the “five grand challenges,” and if I were issuing an innovation report card, each would receive an A or B for the pace and promise of the R&D. In fact, if there weren’t so many sources of emissions — if there were, say, one or two grand challenges, instead of five — we’d be on track to achieve a net-zero world in the next decade or two. - Note: I like the five grand challenges notation - it's almost mythical, like the twelve Labours of Hercules ---