“The clean energy transition is projected to be a strategic necessity for long-term economic stability, characterized by high initial investment and systemic risks in the near term (to 2035), followed by structural benefits and industry contraction by mid-century (2050), culminating in significant net economic gains by the end of the century (2100).”

This is a quote from a Gemini Deep Research analysis I’d run recently. The prompt:

Analyze both negative and positive economic consequences of a transition to clean energy by 2035, 2050, and 2100, respectively, breaking out consequences for the general economy and the economic effects on the fossil fuel industry and shareholders and investors. How fast may this clean energy transition happen without creating economic hardship on the general economy?

Notice that I didn’t insist that Gemini look at the good aspects of the clean energy transition as much as on what happens to the traditional and dirty energy system that’s been in place for a couple of hundred years. Nonetheless, facts are that the best plan is the clean energy transition.

That’s not the plan of Big Oil, though.

No, the plan by Big Oil is to push and scrape and pull the levers of corrupted governance as fiercely as possible for as long as possible, claiming that a flotilla of hundreds of new gas turbines is needed and Big Oil points to AI as the reason why.

And when the clean energy transition eats fossil fuel’s lunch? You can be your bottom dollar that Big Oil—alongside the too-often allies the power utilities—will argue, of course, we all need to keep using fossil fuel power generation because—Whaaa!—nobody wants stranded assets, do they? What about all those institutional investors that kept pension funds in fossil fuels, or—horror!—those poor stockholders and C-Suites full of good and decent people? You’ll have to bail them out, right?

Unfortunately, this is exactly the sort of argument we can expect if there’s not clear legislation outlining the course and timeline for the clean energy buildout. Unfortunately, bailing out the poor little rich men seems a near-inviolate tradition in America. Remember TARP in 2009, when the big financial institutions that caused the worldwide economic collapse because of their obviously crap securitizations got bailed and not jailed?

The United States needs large scale plans and authority to shift the current energy infrastructure to one based on clean energy and a full-on buildout of a digitally intelligent and flexible grid capable of load balancing, distributed energy resource management, instantaneous demand response, and incorporation of virtual power plants.

Sure, here in the land of Trump, a.k.a., President Big Oil Stooge, this seems impossible. But Trump’s days are numbered and the opposition needs clear and new alternatives for America as it reemerges from the current nightmare.

We’ve done large-scale before and we can do it again. Only smart and ambitious Federal policy and agency can bring about the shift to clean energy and capable and smart grids in the timely fashion needed, while road mapping by law to make clear where the country is going. That way, we can avoid all the brand new but doomed stranded assets being pushed by the fossil fuel interests and apply laws of fiduciary responsibilities to tell these S.O.Bs., “Sorry, do not collect $200 and go directly to jail.”

Here are a few examples of Federal energy-related agencies we’ve benefited from in the past:

• Federal Power Commission (FPC) (1920-1977): Established to coordinate federal hydropower, later became independent, regulating interstate electricity and natural gas.
• Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) (1946-1974): Managed nuclear development; abolished to separate research/development from regulation, leading to DOE/NRC.
• Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) (1975-1977): Briefly housed energy R&D from the AEC before becoming part of the Department of Energy (DOE).
• Rural Electrification Administration (REA) (1935-1994): A New Deal agency that funded rural power lines, dramatically expanding access.
• The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) (1933): Federally-owned U.S. corporation that provides electricity, manages flood control, and promotes economic development across the Tennessee Valley region (mostly Tennessee, parts of AL, MS, KY, GA, NC, VA).

This all reminds me of Public Utility Holding Company Act (PUHCA) of 1935, a landmark U.S. federal law passed during the Great Depression to regulate massive, often corrupt, interstate utility holding companies, forcing them to register with the SEC, simplify structures (often limiting them to a single state), and keep regulated utility business separate from other ventures, ultimately breaking up huge monopolies and protecting consumers from price gouging, though parts were later repealed by the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

If you want more gray hair, follow the PUHCA link to Wikipedia and see how we’ve been where we are today fighting special interests, and that there are solutions to moderate greed and self-serving. I know, radical, right?

Summary of Economic Trajectories of the Clean Energy Transition: A Multi-Temporal Analysis of Consequences to 2100 AI Report

Here’s the summary of Economic Trajectories of the Clean Energy Transition: A Multi-Temporal Analysis of Consequences to 2100. If you what the detailed analysis, follow this link. I’ve kept all the references and sources used by Gemini in its report generation. One of the more interesting conclusions is that the U.S. needs to resolve supply chain problems with critical clean tech minerals. There’s already a lot of work underway, including this bit of news from today, “A huge cache of critical minerals found in Utah may be the largest in the US.”

Optimal Transition Pace: Fastest and Most Orderly

The analysis concludes that the optimal speed for the clean energy transition—the speed that minimizes overall economic hardship on the general economy—is the fastest possible orderly transition, aligning with the IEA’s rapid shift benchmark of 2035.

The greatest risk of economic hardship is a disorderly or delayed transition, where postponed climate action triggers a sudden, destabilizing repricing of assets, potentially causing a global financial crisis on the scale of 2008.² Minimizing hardship requires proactive policies like robust Just Transition programs and supply chain security to manage social and market friction.²

Economic Consequences by Timeline

1. The 2035 Horizon: Investment Surge and Financial Shock

2. The 2050 Horizon: Structural Costs and Systemic Stability

3. The 2100 Horizon: Net Benefits and Resilience

Mitigating Economic Hardship

The transition’s speed is constrained by policy and social stability, not just technology. To manage economic hardship (e.g., localized unemployment, cost inflation) and ensure the fastest orderly pace, two key interventions are required:

1. Fully Implementing Just Transition Policies: Proactive social support is necessary to manage labor displacement and regional friction. The cost of comprehensive worker and community support, such as guaranteeing pensions, income support, and retraining, is relatively small compared to total infrastructure spending; for example, a high-end estimate for a US program is around $600 million per year.
2. Securing Critical Mineral Supply Chains: Policies must focus on diversification, recycling, and market stabilization (e.g., strategic stockpiling) to prevent supply disruptions and cost escalation of clean technologies.⁵

The post Let’s Go Big on the Clean Energy Transition first appeared on David Guenette.

The headlines are full of Bill Gates touting some version of “Bill Gates Doesn’t Think Climate Change is Important.”

It is hysterical. The general reaction mainly proves that too many reporters either can’t read or are too busy writing to read.

In his recent “Three tough truths about climate,” published on October 28, 2025, and sub-titled “What I want everyone at COP 30 to know,” Uncle Bill sternly reproaches the world. This sermon appeared in GatesNotes. I guess he has an in there.

I suspect that Bill Gates, with all his money, probably doesn’t worry about what he pays for services. But with the publication of “Three tough truths about climate: What I want everyone at COP30 to know,” he should ask for his money back. At minimum, I’d suggest a title change. Maybe something along the lines of, “Like, Duh.”

Most news articles and opinion pieces about Gates’ recent pronouncements have rankled me. Me being rankled is no big thing, but there may be an important point being raised beyond simply how to annoy me. Of course, one sure-fire way is to state that Gates has declared that the climate change thingy is over, which is definitely not what he is saying. What he is saying is that the challenge of climate change is very important, but we might want to reframe this within the context of other pressing needs like severe poverty and threats to human health.

Like, duh.

Unfortunately, he’s missed a few studs in his reframing.

Climate Change Work is Poverty and Health Work

Of course, climate change has always contained human health and poverty issues within itself, and Gates’ pronouncements are oddly timed considering that renewables have emerged as the least expensive, faster, and most easily deployed widescale energy generation. Faster, cheaper, and wider isn’t the only strong argument, though. With renewables “build-once, generate always” systems don’t require constant re-fueling and the infrastructure for constant re-fueling demands. Renewables is the prime “give once, bless forever” counter to poverty. If you can get to a location by the sort of trucking that general contractors typical own or rent, with construction equipment general contractors use regularly, solar and batteries systems can be installed, and I’m talking anywhere there’s a road, but there’s dirigibles too, and boats and helicopters. Bringing power to people oppressed by poverty and illness has become a realistic option and a world-wide option at that.

I’m sure Bill Gates understands the connection between energy access and productivity and health, so doubling down on the spread of renewables seems like a large part of the answer to the other needs he’s identified. I’m not saying that there are no other mechanisms to address poverty and health across the world. I’m saying that getting energy into those areas that lack widely and equitably available energy—yes, a still shockingly high number—is a foundational element toward Uncle Bill’s non-climate change solutions. Sending in the gas tankers sure ain’t the solution, not unless the problem you are trying to solve is how to keep petrostates in power.

Of course, there are direct connections between renewable energy, climate change, and today’s and tomorrow’s climate threats that make poverty and illness that much more likely. Sure, wealthy countries have the means to more effectively adapt to the consequences of global warming, but for developing countries effective adaptation is weaker, and by far. The reason to keep climate change the priority is that it is a preventative, just like the variety of Gates’ global health initiatives: we can work toward a climate that kills and sickens fewer people in vulnerable parts of the world if we keep the rise in average global temperature more in check.

The fact is that climate change is a problem set of a different order than humans have faced, despite Uncle Bill’s efforts to reduce climate anxiety. If we don’t draw down greenhouse gas emissions, mankind is f—ed in a way our species hasn’t previously been f—ed, and by all current markers—including the fossil fuel industry’s in-place plans for long-term LNG expansion and their other well-funded wish list—we’ve already slipped beyond 1.5 C. Uncle Bill may be right when he points out that 2-point-something C sometime by 2100 is well within adaptation means for those from wealthy countries. He may call for that wealth to be shared equitably and therefore expand our capacity to adequately adapt to climate change more widely. But there is the very real danger that GHG is a runaway train, considering our slow pace to date in reducing these emissions and in the effort to quickly and widely transition to clean energy. We are already threatening planetary boundaries. There are tipping points that demand serious concern. The human world is under threat.

Yeah, not extinction level threats for us monkey boys, sure, but the potential for cataclysmic collapse of our vulnerably complex societies, that is already too real, and if not by 2100 but instead more likely later is not a comfort, no matter how many fusion reactors eventually get built. We don’t need magic solutions sometime in the future. We have the material understanding today to reverse GHG emissions and this understanding has become common knowledge. Just like the proverbial instruction for escaping from a hole in the ground, which is to first stop digging, we have to stop dumping GHG into our air. We already have the capacity to transition from fossil fuels for much of our energy needs, and the economic promise therein can be widely and fairly distributed.

Oh, Bill

It’s ironic that Gates’ arguments for focusing on alleviating human suffering rather than on the energy transition should arrive at the point of pushing nuclear and fusion down the road. It makes you suspect that he’s got some interest in data enters and AI.

He (or whoever was hired) writes:

In short, climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems. We should deal with them in proportion to the suffering they cause. And we should use data to maximize the impact of every action we take.

To the first sentence above I reply, “So stipulated.” Yes, climate change, disease, and poverty are all major problems.

To the second sentence above I reply, Wow! How does one exactly determine the “in proportion to the suffering” clause? Is this at any given moment, or can we consider the effects of actions today to suffering in the years ahead? If the politically minded take up the misinterpreted meaning of this recent Gates missive and deemphasize climate change, won’t suffering in the future climb as we miss 1.5 C and race to 2.0 C, or 3.0 C, or higher. Can’t we confidently conclude that the proportion of suffering due to climate change is the greatest?

What is telling is Gates’ confidence that the the average global temperature isn’t going to go up that much, which makes me wonder if he has others read the news for him and they haven’t recently provided updates. Or maybe he doesn’t want to offend the King of the Green New Scam bent. That seems to be one of those little peccadillos billionaires have been displaying, playing nice with President Big Oil Stooge and his happy mission to keep fossil fuels going well past their natural use-by date.

To the third and last sentence of the quote above, this seems like a suggestion we move toward singularity, if indeed singularity brings us omniscience, and, well, don’t you know, he’s got interests in AI. I’ll have to check my data on this just-typed sentence and see if I’ve maximized the impact of derision.

Bill Gates has spent a lot of money trying to make things better, that is indisputable, although I’d suggest that the existence of billionaires reflects a serious pathology in our society is also indisputable, but that’s another rant. For the purpose of today’s complaint about Gates’s recent edict, I‘ll suggest the overall piece is kinda inhuman and gives nerds a bad name.

We finally have reached the point of technological development for clean energy to be clearly economically competitive, but we should slow down? How the hell does that reduce suffering?

To Relieve Human Suffering, First Take the Patient’s Temperature

Early on he writes:

This is a chance to refocus on the metric that should count even more than emissions and temperature change: improving lives. Our chief goal should be to prevent suffering, particularly for those in the toughest conditions who live in the world’s poorest countries.

Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.

How is not raising the energy wealth for all not a solid prescription for reducing problems of poverty and disease? As for climate change not being the only or even the biggest threat to lives and welfare, what timescale should we consider? He’ll be dead by 2100, I’ll be dead by 2100. But slow work on addressing GHG emissions today makes 2100 pretty darn expensive, and unhealthy, and the cure is today for any hope of a better tomorrow. I’m pretty sure this is a physics-thingy.

He follows the quotes above with some proactive defense (“I know that some climate advocates will disagree with me…”), but his overall point is hardly radical, nor is it in any way “anti-climate.” However, the overall result, judging by how this jeremiad has been taken, is “anti-climate.”

He doesn’t make this any better with his Truth #1, which is, “Climate change is a serious problem, but it will not be the end of civilization.”

Let’s define terms, please, since “end of civilization” is mighty broad. After all, humans aren’t likely to go extinct from climate change, as miserable many will be, and as dead many may be, because of climate change. And humans, short of extinction, will collect together and form civilizations. But Gates doesn’t spend much time looking at how civilization is defined. Here’s a general definition from a jewel of our current civilization, Wikipedia:

A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond signed or spoken languages (namely, writing systems).

A more realistic definition relevant to our day is “a system with great complexity and fragility that promotes hyper-consumption over sustainability, stressed by population growth and dangerous income disparity.”

Today’s Western society is incredibly intertwined with the rest of the world. This spans food production, energy, trade goods, raw materials… you know the drill. Western society is fragile, with major shocks capable of cascading into disasters, especially of the economic sort. Renewable energy got going back in the Oil Crisis of the 1970s, if you’ll recall. If anything, the supply chains are now more prone to disruptions, so failing to imagine what a series of major shocks might do to our society, that’s just tone-deaf on many levels.

I’m someone who thinks that a lot of climate fiction looks at apocalypse, collapse, and dystopia, and I think that’s too bad (hey, unless written snappily, I guess), and fighting over a can of beans in a desert wasteland or clinging to a floating fragment in a drowned world, well, that’s all she wrote, Katy bar the door. I think it is more useful to write climate fiction that looks at where we are and where we can be, and that makes the more interesting story, too. Nonetheless, there are better and worse scenarios regarding climate change and even the relatively good ones aren’t great and the worst ones are that much more terrifying. In terms of a complex society and all its various fragilities, ineffective and slow effort to address climate change is more than able to bring about a mightily high jump in mankind’s suffering.

Gates’ Truth #2 is that “Temperature is not the best way to measure our progress on climate.” Yeah? So? Omniscience would be nice, but Truth #2 could have said, “Human and environmental outcomes are the best way to measure our progress on climate.” He goes on to say that quality of life is the better measure and even cites U.N. tools for making such assessments, but quality of life is an obvious metric. It isn’t that man’s greatest goal is to continuously read thermostats. The whole thing about fighting climate change is to improve the quality of life, like, literally. Um, so, again, so stipulated, but again, so what.

One of the most chilling pieces in Gates’ piece is his casual projection of 3.0 C by 2100. Oh, sorry, he said 2.9 C, so I guess that future world will be okay. A bit hot under the collar maybe, but…what? Is he kidding?

With Great Wealth Comes Great Energy

Bill Gates didn’t really get great value from the authors of this piece.

He makes a valid observation when he says, “From the standpoint of improving lives, using more energy is a good thing, because it’s so closely correlated with economic growth. This chart shows countries’ energy use and their income. More energy use is a key part of prosperity.”

I’m with ya, Bill!

Oh, wait. He then says, “Unfortunately, in this case, what’s good for prosperity is bad for the environment. Although wind and solar have gotten cheaper and better, we don’t yet have all the tools we need to meet the growing demand for energy without increasing carbon emissions.”

It’s disappointing to see that Bill Gates hasn’t been paying attention.

It would have been nice to say something like, “If the wealthy nations of the world build out their own economies to support renewable energy, and then share that with the poor countries, we’ll all have more energy and all be more wealthy and all without increasing carbon emissions. But he didn’t say that.

In fact, there’s far too little talk about shaping the world’s economies around renewable energy buildout and the positive consequences for improving international relations even while expanding geopolitical advantage. The cost savings from reducing war would be a boon in and off itself. Foreign aid—including renewable energy buildout in poor countries—would increase the overall wealth of the world, and thus decrease the spending on foreign aid. All of this has onlypositive upsides, unless, of course, you are wedded to the concept of zero-sum gaming. You know who loves zero-sum gaming? Really rich people. Power comes not from the actual sums of wealth but from the relative differential between the rich and the poor.

Uncle Bill is confusing. He goes on to claim a talking point of climate action:

But we will have the tools we need if we focus on innovation. With the right investments and policies in place, over the next ten years we will have new affordable zero-carbon technologies ready to roll out at scale. Add in the impact of the tools we already have, and by the middle of this century emissions will be lower and the gap between poor countries and rich countries will be greatly reduced.

Isn’t he aware that the renewable energy transition has what it needs, but the effect of cumulative emissions is already set in place. He argues energy innovations have already curbed emissions and the guy is right, but unfortunately, we’re still adding emissions, and emission draw down has not yet been enough to compensate for additions of GHG. Even if we’re closing in—which we are—this calls for continuing our focus on climate change, not confusing people about climate change. Hoping for innovations is not the same as implementing existing innovations at sufficient scale and within advantageous timelines. Existing innovations is better than hoped-for innovations, I’m pretty sure.

Build, Baby, Build is the order of the day, and when I say build, I mean renewable energy and electrification and not new gas plants and LNG terminals. Gates’ hope for nuclear remains beyond the timelines we should be scrambling to meet ASAP. If you want to reduce suffering and improve the world’s health, maybe there’s better ways to spend that money today, but unfortunately, this message is not the core message in this recent diatribe by Uncle Bill. I’m as much in favor as the next guy of innovation to decarbonize the hard to decarbonize sectors of the economy (e.g., industrial processes, agriculture, and more), but we have the tools today to replace emissions-generating energy with clean energy, and it is unconscionable to delay and dilly-dally.

Truth #3: This is a Really Bad Position Paper

“Health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.” That’s Truth #3.

Sure, let’s expand the wealth of all nations, delivering prosperity widely. Sure, if you have a well-insulated building and air conditioning and reliable and affordable electricity to run it, you are more likely to survive climate change’s increasing heatwaves.

Here’s the Uncle Bill nugget of wisdom:

This finding [that people with protection from the consequences of climate change have higher survival rates] is exciting because it suggests a way forward. Since the economic growth that’s projected for poor countries will reduce climate deaths by half, it follows that faster and more expansive growth will reduce deaths by even more. And economic growth is closely tied to public health. So the faster people become prosperous and healthy, the more lives we can save.

Yeah, of course. But how do poor countries get the power and wealth they need to afford such protection? This has been covered above: provide energy cleanly and replace costly dirty energy. Using fossil fuels to provide that energy makes the climate conditions worse. Ergo, use clean energy to save more lives. Huge numbers of people across the globe are energy poor, lacking energy infrastructure, but clean energy can leapfrog more expensive—and dirty!—energy infrastructure.

The Two Priorities

The report, or sermon, or diatribe ends with Gates’ strongly suggested two priorities for COP 30:

1. Drive the green premium to zero;
2. Be vigorous about measuring impact.

Uncle Bill, we know this about green premiums, your term for equalizing the cost for clean energy solutions to non-clean energy solutions. Been there, done that for clean energy already, so the real question is how to drive innovation for the hard to carbonize sectors, and the real answer is to have fossil fuels account for their true cost that includes direct health problems and the consequences of climate change, both very high coasts and both resulting from the pollution inherent in burning shit to boil water.

We also know that there is wealth available to undertake expansive clean energy buildout. Tax billionaires and corporations, and, like a lot, and fairly. Cut the trillion-dollar annual U.S. military budget, and, like a lot, and intelligently. Make carbon emissions pay, whether through a Carbon Fee and Dividend program or some other means, but make sure to address economic hardship by paying in dividends to those in need. Annual revenues for fossil fuels world-wide is somewhere near $5 trillion, so let’s get to the point where we don’t give fossil fuel corporations and petrostates so much money. We have better things to spend on.

Speaking of spending, the whole “measuring impact” point is to direct spending. Here’s the intro paragraph for this priority:

I wish there were enough money to fund every good climate change idea. Unfortunately, there isn’t, and we have to make tradeoffs so we can deliver the most benefit with limited resources. In these circumstances, our choices should be guided by data-based analysis that identifies ways to deliver the highest return for human welfare.

This is weird from a billionaire, frankly, especially one who touts innovation and the promised return on investment. We have plenty of good climate change ideas that have already established economies of scale—yeah, renewable energy and batteries—and as we build more and more, the economies of scale improve even more. I’m not sure how much additional measurements are needed for this good climate change idea to have a full-out green light.

Why, Oh Why?

What is the point of Gates’ piece, Three tough truths about climate?

If I were cynical I’d suggest he is looking to sow doubt about climate change, but I’m not that cynical. Gates has put up a lot of money for climate change work he could have instead used to buy a yacht or to go on a ride into orbit. I’m happy enough to assume he means well, and I know that diseases and vaccines are important priorities of his.

I loved Bill McKibben’s Substack on the Gates report, called “Climate Gates,” published on October 31, 2025, on The Crucial Years. The sub-title of McKibben’s latest is wonderful: “Maybe we don’t need billionaire opinions on everything.”

McKibben starts this way:

I feel quite strongly that we should pay less attention to billionaires—indeed that’s rather the point of this small essay—so let me acknowledge at the outset that there is something odd about me therefore devoting an edition of this newsletter to replying to Bill Gates’ new missive about climate. But I fear I must, if only because it’s been treated as such important news by so many outlets—far more, say, than covered the UN Secretary General’s same-day appeal to international leaders that began with a forthright statement of the science.

Maybe I just should have waited for this issue of The Crucial Years, because Bill M and I seem very much in agreement about the Gates piece. I especially loved this line, “It was wrong of him to write it because if his high-priced PR team didn’t anticipate the reaction, they should be fired.”

Amen, brother.

The Path Forward is Here and it’s a Good Deal

There are economic sectors that are currently resistant to decarbonization, it’s true. One example is concrete, which some estimates suggest contributes 8% of greenhouse gases each year, and this manufacturing process is still waiting for technology to provide useful solutions (there are some likely developments in the pipeline, fortunately). But what hard-to-decarbonize sectors mainly tell us is to take on those other sectors in which we already have economically effective solutions, and these include transportation, electricity production, and building heating and cooling, and these add up to a good chunk of the carbon load.

Cost is often cited as a barrier to clean electrification, but this is a framing issue, not an indisputable block. The big challenge for solar/battery generation buildout is that it is mainly upfront costs, but this is based on the short-term financial considerations that are rife in our economy: next quarter’s stock price or profit. Guess what? The world is not a short-term economic entity. The geological and climatological timelines make a twenty-year span seem like a blink of the eye.

Here’s a longer-term view on natural gas electricity generation and costs:

Over a 20-year period, the estimated total amount spent to buy natural gas for an average-sized (around 400 MW) combined-cycle electricity generation plant can range from approximately $500 million to over $1.5 billion, depending heavily on natural gas prices, the plant’s capacity factor, and its efficiency.

Of course, the totals above are only for the natural gas consumed by the plant. Here’s the cost to build the natural gas plant in the first place:

As of 2025, the estimated cost to build a 440 MW natural gas electricity generation plant generally ranges from approximately $880 million to $1.1 billion for a combined-cycle plant, and potentially less for a simple-cycle combustion turbine plant.

How much money is spent to build a 440 MW solar and battery electricity generation plant in 2025? The low-to-high range comparison between solar/battery and natural gas electricity significantly favors solar/battery:

The estimated cost to build a 440 MW utility-scale solar farm with co-located battery storage in 2025 is approximately $523.6 million to $946 million. This estimate is based on the average capital costs for utility-scale solar and battery energy storage systems (BESS).

Sure, such estimates represented above can vary greatly in the real world and there are plenty of details and conditions to consider. But whatever details one might want to nitpick pales when you add to the comparisons the more or less equal cost for the natural gas you have to buy over the twenty year period, and so the score remains solar/battery 1, natural gas 0. And then there is the issue of total Cost of Operations (COS) that is mostly maintenance and repair, and this also significantly favors solar/battery.

While twenty-year finance planning is different than the short-termism of today’s stock price-obsessed boardrooms, twenty years or thirty or forty is well within the sort of planning we have for retirement and a variety of institutional investing. It’s a wonder that pension plan managers and other long-term investors aren’t wholesale shifting their portfolios to solar/battery given the clear advantages, and that’s not even considering the economic benefits of reducing the consequences of climate change. And, oh, did I forget to mention that clean electricity prices will be lower, too?

Go figure. Maybe it is a matter of pension management fees. Maybe long-term investment is also addicted to making a fast buck. Maybe we are so uncomfortable looking beyond the next month that we’re willing to risk burning down the world to avoid thinking things through.

But don’t look to me to figure this out. I’m not a businessman.

But how come Uncle Bill isn’t pointing this out, hmmm? Long-term investment in clean and cheaper energy for all goes a very long way to alleviating poverty and disease and goes into effect as soon as the solar/battery generation is online. So, Bill, maybe we can be asking that COP 30 make clear to the businessmen of the world that clean energy is a great long-term investment strategy with live-saving benefits.

Green Savings Bonds, anyone?

Maybe we should work on ways to discourage the epidemic of short-termism that’s killing our world.

Maybe that’s Truth #1.

The post The Headlines are Full of Bill Gates’ Latest Wisdom—It’s Hysterical! first appeared on David Guenette.