In Wired magazine, there is a great interview with Bill Gates on energy. While interesting in its entirely, this passage on Solar Power has caught the eyes of many, including the Wall Street Journal,
[Gates] "Do we want everybody to have [solar power] on their roof? No. It’s just not going to happen."
[Wired] "So suffice to say we will find no solar cells on the roof of the Gates residence?"
[Gates] "Oh, we like to be cute like everyone. For rich people, this is OK. Rich people can do whatever they want."
Exactly. Rich people can do whatever they want, regardless of cost. The problem comes when we foist what is "cute" and fashionable and frightfully expensive on those of us who are not rich.
In the Wired interview, Gates makes a number of other goods points about energy policy. This passage should make the guys at the Breakthrough Institute happy,
"We’re putting 90 percent of the [solar] subsidies in deployment—this is true in Europe and the United States—not in R&D. And so unfortunately you get technologies that, no matter how much of them you buy, there’s no path to being economical. You need fundamental breakthroughs, which come more out of basic research."
Gates on efficiency,
"But can we, by increasing efficiency, deal with our climate problem? The answer is basically no. The climate problem requires more than a 90 percent reduction in CO2 emitted, and no amount of efficiency improvement is going to address that."
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