On Monday, Amazon CEO and world’s richest human Jeff Bezos announced he was pledging nearly 8 percent of his net worth to fight climate change. This money, known as the Bezos Earth Fund, will be used to support “any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world,” Bezos wrote in an Instagram post. There are plenty of problems with a billionaire single-handedly dictating how the world community will fight climate change. But it’s also true that there are a host of promising climate technologies that lack the resources to scale fast enough to be effective in meeting the UN’s climate goals. Bezos didn’t specify how he would allocate the Earth Fund’s resources, but if you’re reading this, Jeff, we’ve got some ideas.
Space-Based Solar Power
Right now there are 173,000 trillion watts of solar energy bathing the Earth. If we were to capture just 1 percent of that, it would be enough to meet the world’s energy needs. But soaking up the rays is harder than it sounds. Cloud coverage limits the effectiveness of solar panels, top-of-the-line photovoltaic cells aren’t very efficient at converting sunlight into electricity, and solar power isn’t an option for half the planet at any given moment.
Yet if you were to construct a giant solar farm in space and beam that energy to Earth, the power of the sun would be available around the clock. Isaac Asimov first floated the idea for space-based solar power in the 1940s. A handful of companies like Solaren and Solar Space Technologies have tried to build businesses around space-based solar energy, but lacked the capital needed to bring their technology to fruition.
Last year, the Air Force Research Lab announced a $100 million program to develop the hardware for a satellite that will beam solar power to Earth. If Bezos spent just 1 percent of the Earth Fund to develop space-based solar power, it would effectively double the available funding in the US. If he wanted to sweeten the deal, he could offer solar power satellites a lift to orbit on one of his rockets. Although Blue Origin, Bezos’ space company, hasn’t yet sent a rocket to orbit, they plan to do so by next year.
Enhanced Geothermal Energy
Geothermal power uses superhot water pulled from deep within the Earth to drive turbine generators on the surface. It’s a promising source of inexhaustible clean electricity that could meet the world’s needs several times over. But at present, it accounts for well under 1 percent of the world’s power supply. The problem is that geothermal power is limited to areas that have natural springs with water hot enough to spin the turbines with their steam.
Enhanced geothermal systems are technologies that promise to make the Earth’s energy available almost anywhere. Instead of relying on natural springs, these systems borrow techniques from the fracking industry by drilling deep into hot dry rock and pumping water into the newly created chamber. The water is heated to several hundred degrees and brought back to the surface, where it is used to power a turbine generator. The hot rock needed for these systems is available all over the world. What’s missing is the drilling technology and engineering knowledge needed to access it—drill in the wrong place and you risk triggering a massive earthquake.
Although a number of companies are developing enhanced geothermal systems, they are struggling to raise money to actually build them. Drilling the wells is a very capital-intensive process, and since it’s a new technology it carries a lot of risk for investors. In January, the Department of Energy announced it would spend $25 million on enhanced geothermal systems research, which is hardly enough to get the industry off the ground. Just the interest on the Earth Fund’s bank account would be a major boon to this nascent industry.
Small Modular Nuclear Reactors
Since 2011, Bezos has been investing in General Fusion, a Canadian company attempting to build the world’s first nuclear fusion power plant. It’s a longshot gamble to create an unlimited source of clean energy by essentially building an artificial sun. Fusion works by slamming atoms into each other so that their nuclei fuse and release a tremendous amount of energy. A fusion plant would be able to produce several times more energy than a traditional nuclear power plant, without generating long-lasting toxic waste in the process.
