Bill Gates Understands the Importance of Biofuel

Bill Gates of Microsoft fame and, more recently of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has spent his days recently addressing the dual challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. A blog post on Gates Notes entitled “How do we move around in a zero-carbon world?” shows that his understanding of available technologies and how people use them seems to have only deepened over time. He shows his understanding of electric vehicles and their limitations, and then suggests that bio-based renewable fuel may play an active role in delivering us to a zero-carbon future.

“Today’s advanced biofuels are a lot different from the first-gen ones you’ve heard about, such as ethanol,” Gates writes. “Some are made from plants that aren’t grown for food, so they need little to no fertilizer (which you might remember is a big emitter of greenhouse gases). Others are made from agricultural byproducts, like corn stalks and the pulp that’s left over from making paper. Some of these fuels can even be dropped into existing engines without any modifications needed.”

Gates encourages the use of all solutions to combat climate change, always keeping in sight the economics underlying the decisions now and in the future.

Read the entire blog post on here.

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