Bill Gates on energy: Innovating to zero!– Part I

Following are the notes taken from the lecture delivered by Bill Gates regarding the energy issues:-

Price of energy has declined over the decades. As the energy consumption increases, the CO2 emissions increase in proportion. This leads to increase in the average temperature. The only solution to this problem is reduction in energy consumption which can lead to reduction in CO2 emissions. The world today has a population of around 6.8 billion. The amount of CO2 emissions are directly proportional to population, services consumed by people, efficiency of the services and amount of CO2 generated per the unit of energy production.

This demands for finding out the ways in which we can control the population. It also demands for devising the efficient services which consume less energy for the same amount of work done. The major solutions which we can consider for energy production are :-
1)Carbon capture while producing the energy using fossil fuels: This demands for designing the system to trap the carbon produced by burning the fossil fuels , pressurize it to convert it into liquid form and store it. The storage can be a critical issue as the volume would be high.
2)Nuclear Energy: – The problems to be solved with this would be the cost of energy production, safety and the long term waste.
3)Wind Energy
4)Solar Energy
5)Solar Thermal Energy

We will continue this discussion in the next part.