Bill Gates: We Need More Energy Research To Solve Our Problems

Microsoft founder Bill Gates on Tuesday warned rich nations of the limitations of "cute" energy-efficient technologies, like individual solar panels, and advised spending more money on R&D to make energy cheaper for developing countries.

During a keynote on energy innovation at the Wired Business Conference 2011 in New York City, Gates said the only pure efficiency that comes from using energy-efficient technologies like LED lights, solar panels, and heating-efficient buildings, is economic.

"Can we, by increasing efficiency [technologies], deal with our climate problem?" he asked. "The answer there is basically no, because the climate problem requires more than 90 percent reduction of C02 emitted, and no amount of efficiency improvement is enough," he said.

Every year developed countries improve energy efficiency, but it is almost entirely offset by the voracious energy consumption of developing countries, he added.

"With the CO2 problem, even if the rich world did very erratic things it doesn't come anywhere near to solving the problem. You have to help the rest of the world get energy at a very reasonable price to get anywhere," he said. Instead of spending money on subsidizing old energy technologies, Gates said the role of the rich world is to talk about long-term problems and fund the R&D to find solutions. But there's a Catch-22 here, given that most Americans don't grow their own food or have any first-hand knowledge of how climate change affects things like food production.

"The problem is that rich countries can afford to overpay for things. We can afford to overpay for medicine, energy, we can rig our food prices," he said. "Our politicians aren't told that we're suffering because we're overpaying for things."

Gates claimed that over 90 percent of energy subsidies actually went into deploying old technology instead of R&D. "You can buy as much old technology as you want, but you won't get breakthroughs which only come out of basic research."

When it comes to energy sources, Gates' preferences are well-known. In recent years he has invested hundreds of millions in nuclear energy start-ups, like the Bellevue, Washington-based nuclear reactor plant TerraPower, which has built a prototype for a nuclear reactor that can supposedly run for 50 years without refueling.

"The good news about nuclear is that there's hardly been any innovation, so the room to do things differently has been quite dramatic," he said, arguing that the amount of waste generated by nuclear plants is "tiny" compared to coal plants.

What happened in Fukushima was terrible, but preventable with newer technology, he said, noting that the nuclear power plants there were built in the 1960s. "The emergency plants were weak," he said.