6 ms·

Gates, Bezos, and 18 others commit $1B to new cleantech fund

samfisher83 10y ago
This was posted 12 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155146
kolbe 10y ago
that's like 0.2% of their cumulative net worths.
- kkotak 10y ago
  And a fraction of what a taxi company raised recently. Oh the irony of the world we live in.
  - melvinram 10y ago
    Why the glass half empty view? $1 Billion is still $1 Billion.
    - samirillian 10y ago
      Because trump is the us president-elect.
      - lucasmullens 10y ago
        So a billion would be a lot if Hillary was the president-elect? Not sure how this is relevant.
        samirillian 10y ago
        It directly answers why a person might have a glass-half-empty perspective about piecemeal environmental efforts, like a billion dollars won't begin to undo the damage of Trump's appointments. Sounds relevant to me.
    - muse900 10y ago
      in my opinion people get too absorbed by hearing others that they donated X amount of money and then they make them like they are some kind of God's amongst us for doing so. My whole life I've been hearing by colleagues etc that Bill Gates is an amazing human being and he has donated all his money and he has done so many things for humanity. I am sorry but I just don't feel the same way and although I think I shouldn't force my thoughts on others I just feel the need of reminding them that this person still owns a yacht costing half a billion, he is still the richest man in the world, and no matter what he donates in my mind he will still be one of the "humans" that felt the need of having a 400m $ yacht while there are people out there starving to death. Please and Thank you. P.S I know am gonna get down-voted to hell and prolly shadow-banned cause of my opinion, but doesn't matter no matter what I say or what happens to me will change the way the world works (there will always be people that see goodness in people and others like my that are seeing the bad side in people).
      - ohstopitu 10y ago
        A lot of my friends have the same view but refuse to discuss about it (I have THE EXACT opposite view). In my opinion, he didn't owe the world anything - yet he's donating quiet a bit (clean water, anti-malaria etc.) - Sure he's got luxuries that most of us would probably dream about - yatches, jets etc., but he's also done net positive to the world and that's great. Usually people who share my view generally counter with "so what have you done?" and imo that's a wrong way to think about it - everyone's level of contribution will be different. If I were in his position, I too would have spent on luxuries (maybe more so than him) but the end goal is never lost - he's still helping people all over the world. --- My political view on the topic: in a way, your comment reminds me of the previous election - moral policing of "oh, Trump's against X" and that's terrible and if you support him for Y, you are still a terrible person because he supports X lead to the result - people who supported him for Y were unable to ever get Y discussed and every time they did, X was always brought up, dismissing Y - so they never bothered discussing/learning etc and instead did the only thing in their power - look after their self interest of Y.
        zajd 10y ago
    - kkotak 10y ago
      True. I'm merely reflecting upon the mindset of money. If Bill really owns a $1/2B yacht (which I don't know) then he values it the same as saving the oceans it sails on. And as to other example - Sean Parker's $250M fund to cure cancer. Just comparing that to $15B raise by Uber. It's just a sad commentary that's all.
      - patrickaljord 10y ago
        Maybe it doesn't make sense to invest more than $1B for now. That's a lot of money, you don't want it to go it to waste. Heck I wouldn't even know where to start with a $1B grant to save the environment. I guess they are trying to use it for research and development and it makes sense not to just throw $100B at it for now. They'll start with smalls teams of smart people to try come up with great ideas, $1B may be enough for that. Great discovery in R&D usually happen by accident with smart people and not because of how much money you threw at it once you get to a big enough amount.
  - quicklyfrozen 10y ago
    If something promising comes out of this initial investment, you don't think they'll be able to raise more?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- lucasmullens 10y ago
  Bill Gates and many other billionaires pledged half their wealth to charity.
source99 10y ago
Why not just start building solar plants(or windmills) and energy storage system? If we spent billions of dollars on this couldn't we make a serious dent in carbon emissions quickly?
- traviswingo 10y ago
  Because these people understand that there are experts in these fields that can do it better than they can. Usually there is always someone who can do it much better, but is really only limited by money.
- jonknee 10y ago
  We already spend billions a year installing solar panels and windmills. https://about.bnef.com/press-releases/clean-energy-investment-2016-undershoots-last-years-record/ https://about.bnef.com/press-releases/clean-energy-investmen...
SideburnsOfDoom 10y ago
Hooray, a group of oligarchs will try to save us from another group of oligarchs!
- shshhdhs 10y ago
  This kind of comment does nothing to contribute to the conversation.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 10y ago
    And this kind of measure only contributes to making the world a livable place up to a certain point. That is a troubling reality of the current political situation, and is a conversation worth having.
dchuk 10y ago
I've become intrigued recently by this technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification and its potential applications in the energy/cleantech space. From what I can tell, at least in the US, people equate it to "burning trash" and frown upon it, but it seems like a great technology space we should be investing more into because no matter what we do, we will always have trash to process/deal with. It would be cool to see some startups attack this space. But maybe it's a high cost of entry space to work in which deters startups?
- lutorm 10y ago
  The argument I've heard against "burning trash" isn't that it's unclean or anything but that, to the extent stuff in trash is made from oil, still amounts to burning hydrocarbons. From an energy yield perspective, my impression is that it's more favorable to e.g. compost organic matter and recycle plastics.
_RPM 10y ago
Meanwhile, Zuck'N Fuck is trying to figure out how we can click on more ads. Edit: because at the end of the day, Facebook doesn't make the world a better place.
paulajohnson 10y ago
The wrong billionaire won the election.

This was posted 12 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155146

kolbe 10y ago

that's like 0.2% of their cumulative net worths.

kkotak 10y ago
And a fraction of what a taxi company raised recently. Oh the irony of the world we live in.
- melvinram 10y ago
  Why the glass half empty view? $1 Billion is still $1 Billion.
  - samirillian 10y ago
    Because trump is the us president-elect.
    - lucasmullens 10y ago
      So a billion would be a lot if Hillary was the president-elect? Not sure how this is relevant.
      - samirillian 10y ago
        It directly answers why a person might have a glass-half-empty perspective about piecemeal environmental efforts, like a billion dollars won't begin to undo the damage of Trump's appointments. Sounds relevant to me.
  - muse900 10y ago
    in my opinion people get too absorbed by hearing others that they donated X amount of money and then they make them like they are some kind of God's amongst us for doing so. My whole life I've been hearing by colleagues etc that Bill Gates is an amazing human being and he has donated all his money and he has done so many things for humanity. I am sorry but I just don't feel the same way and although I think I shouldn't force my thoughts on others I just feel the need of reminding them that this person still owns a yacht costing half a billion, he is still the richest man in the world, and no matter what he donates in my mind he will still be one of the "humans" that felt the need of having a 400m $ yacht while there are people out there starving to death. Please and Thank you. P.S I know am gonna get down-voted to hell and prolly shadow-banned cause of my opinion, but doesn't matter no matter what I say or what happens to me will change the way the world works (there will always be people that see goodness in people and others like my that are seeing the bad side in people).
    - ohstopitu 10y ago
      A lot of my friends have the same view but refuse to discuss about it (I have THE EXACT opposite view). In my opinion, he didn't owe the world anything - yet he's donating quiet a bit (clean water, anti-malaria etc.) - Sure he's got luxuries that most of us would probably dream about - yatches, jets etc., but he's also done net positive to the world and that's great. Usually people who share my view generally counter with "so what have you done?" and imo that's a wrong way to think about it - everyone's level of contribution will be different. If I were in his position, I too would have spent on luxuries (maybe more so than him) but the end goal is never lost - he's still helping people all over the world. --- My political view on the topic: in a way, your comment reminds me of the previous election - moral policing of "oh, Trump's against X" and that's terrible and if you support him for Y, you are still a terrible person because he supports X lead to the result - people who supported him for Y were unable to ever get Y discussed and every time they did, X was always brought up, dismissing Y - so they never bothered discussing/learning etc and instead did the only thing in their power - look after their self interest of Y.
      - zajd 10y ago
  - kkotak 10y ago
    True. I'm merely reflecting upon the mindset of money. If Bill really owns a $1/2B yacht (which I don't know) then he values it the same as saving the oceans it sails on. And as to other example - Sean Parker's $250M fund to cure cancer. Just comparing that to $15B raise by Uber. It's just a sad commentary that's all.
    - patrickaljord 10y ago
      Maybe it doesn't make sense to invest more than $1B for now. That's a lot of money, you don't want it to go it to waste. Heck I wouldn't even know where to start with a $1B grant to save the environment. I guess they are trying to use it for research and development and it makes sense not to just throw $100B at it for now. They'll start with smalls teams of smart people to try come up with great ideas, $1B may be enough for that. Great discovery in R&D usually happen by accident with smart people and not because of how much money you threw at it once you get to a big enough amount.
- quicklyfrozen 10y ago
  If something promising comes out of this initial investment, you don't think they'll be able to raise more?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
lucasmullens 10y ago
Bill Gates and many other billionaires pledged half their wealth to charity.

source99 10y ago

Why not just start building solar plants(or windmills) and energy storage system? If we spent billions of dollars on this couldn't we make a serious dent in carbon emissions quickly?

traviswingo 10y ago
Because these people understand that there are experts in these fields that can do it better than they can. Usually there is always someone who can do it much better, but is really only limited by money.
jonknee 10y ago
We already spend billions a year installing solar panels and windmills. https://about.bnef.com/press-releases/clean-energy-investment-2016-undershoots-last-years-record/ https://about.bnef.com/press-releases/clean-energy-investmen...

SideburnsOfDoom 10y ago

Hooray, a group of oligarchs will try to save us from another group of oligarchs!

shshhdhs 10y ago
This kind of comment does nothing to contribute to the conversation.
- SideburnsOfDoom 10y ago
  And this kind of measure only contributes to making the world a livable place up to a certain point. That is a troubling reality of the current political situation, and is a conversation worth having.

dchuk 10y ago

I've become intrigued recently by this technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification and its potential applications in the energy/cleantech space. From what I can tell, at least in the US, people equate it to "burning trash" and frown upon it, but it seems like a great technology space we should be investing more into because no matter what we do, we will always have trash to process/deal with. It would be cool to see some startups attack this space. But maybe it's a high cost of entry space to work in which deters startups?

lutorm 10y ago
The argument I've heard against "burning trash" isn't that it's unclean or anything but that, to the extent stuff in trash is made from oil, still amounts to burning hydrocarbons. From an energy yield perspective, my impression is that it's more favorable to e.g. compost organic matter and recycle plastics.

_RPM 10y ago

Meanwhile, Zuck'N Fuck is trying to figure out how we can click on more ads. Edit: because at the end of the day, Facebook doesn't make the world a better place.

paulajohnson 10y ago

The wrong billionaire won the election.