Bill Gates’ announcement last week that he would give 99% of his wealth to the Gates Foundation was a shot in the arm to the philanthropy’s focal areas of global health, educational access and agriculture. But to some proponents of climate action, it felt like a slap in the face.
For the past decade, the Microsoft co-founder has been publicly championing climate issues. He published the book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” He led the creation of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate tech investment fund that coalesced support from ultra-wealthy investors worldwide. That effort grew into the Seattle-based Breakthrough Energy umbrella organization, which has hosted two climate conferences featuring global leaders, most recently in London last year.
Global warming was among Gates’ priorities, stoking enthusiasm and drawing interest to the planet’s existential crisis as carbon emissions and temperatures keep climbing.
Recently, his interest seems to have cooled a little.
Earlier this year, Breakthrough Energy scrapped its U.S. climate policy team, its European team and employees working in partnership with other climate groups, as reported by The New York Times in March. A week ago, Gates shared that nearly all of his wealth — roughly $112 billion — would be donated over the next 20 years to the Gates Foundation, which will sunset in 2045.
“There is no way to read this but as negative,” said Susan Su, a Seattle-based climate investment partner at Toba Capital.
Over the past three years, the deployment of low-carbon technologies has accelerated in the U.S. and elsewhere, addressing power production, transportation, infrastructure and other parts of the economy. Biden administration programs unleashed billions of dollars for innovation and clean energy jobs, and investors ponied up for new technologies.
Once President Trump took office in January, his team quickly began dismantling those efforts and shutting down longstanding programs for tracking, preventing or responding to climate change. The near elimination of U.S. government support makes overall progress on climate a much heavier lift.
And while it’s perhaps unreasonable to expect Gates to be a prominent catalyst on both global health and climate, his apparent step back nonetheless creates a gaping leadership vacuum. Su notes that the shift is particularly difficult given he hasn’t provided a public explanation for the downsizing of his climate efforts.
Important, impactful climate work definitely is “still happening,” Su said, but the impression that Gates is less involved “really hurts the ecosystem.”
Anay Shah, co-founder and general partner for the climate investment firm Stepchange, is keeping the door open to Gates’ climate engagement while acknowledging the significance of the foundation’s news.
“If the [Gates] Foundation is going to be his major vehicle it seems less likely that we’d see a massive scale up in climate funding in the immediate future,” Shah said by email.
“The counter argument,” he continued, “is climate affects everything, so indirectly he will continue to be addressing those issues.”
A spokesperson for Breakthrough Energy told GeekWire in March that Gates’ work will continue in climate.
“Bill Gates remains as committed as ever to advancing the clean energy innovations needed to address climate change,” the spokesperson said by email.
“His work in this area will continue and is focused on helping drive reliable, affordable, clean energy solutions that will enable people everywhere to thrive,” she added.
An SEC filing in July disclosed that Breakthrough Energy Ventures was raising a $839 million fund. A spokesperson confirmed at the time that a third fund was underway, but did not share details about timing or total capital raised. Gates is also a lead investor in TerraPower, a Seattle-area company that’s building its first next-generation nuclear reactor in Wyoming and has intentions of deploying the devices internationally.
In the Gates Foundation announcement last week, foundation CEO Mark Suzman addressed a question regarding the organization’s support for climate-related efforts.
“In those areas like climate, our focus has always been in the areas of intersection where we think philanthropic capital can make the greatest difference,” Suzman said.
The foundation over the years has supported innovation that aids subsistence farmers in Africa and Asia who live on $2.25 a day or less and are being hammered by floods, droughts and other disasters made worse by global warming. Suzman also said the philanthropy is paying attention to the climate-driven spread of diseases such as malaria.
These strategies, however, are about responding and adapting to climate change, not preventing the warming.
Gates is still speaking out on climate, calling on rich nations to reach net-zero carbon emissions. In a fireside chat earlier this month with Singapore’s Ambassador for Climate Action Ravi Menon, Gates called out the need for action and proclaimed his continued belief in climate innovation.
In a 2021 interview with GeekWire to promote his book, Gates made clear he believed that government support was essential in making progress.
“In the case of climate change, even the money that I have, if it was all applied in this direction — I put in $2 billion so far and I’ll put in another $2 billion over the next five years — that’s not enough to solve it,” he said. “The role of high-risk investing and philanthropy and creating programs like [Breakthrough Energy’s] Fellows and Ventures and Catalyst … is to start things out, but it’s really government policy [that] has to carry this one.”
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