If ever a problem needed an urgent solution, it is climate change. During a typical year, humans release 51 billion tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—“greenhouse” because these pollutants boost the natural greenhouse effect, raising temperatures, increasing the frequency and severity of violent storms, causing sea level to rise, and acidifying the oceans. The international goal is to reduce net greenhouse emissions to zero by 2050. It’s a tall order, but Bill Gates, author of the New York Times bestseller, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, believes it can be done. Drawing on interviews with 22 experts on the cutting-edge of climate innovation, the 10 half-hour lessons of Solving for Zero: The Search for Climate Innovation explain how. Gates focuses on the “Green Premium”—the extra cost of clean technologies over traditional carbon-emitting ones—and he uses this benchmark to separate technologies that can be implemented right away from those that need further research. He examines the five major sectors affecting the climate: generating electricity, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and heating and cooling. Experts in each category describe ongoing work that is reducing the Green Premium. Industry experts comment on big-picture questions of public policy and how people can adapt to the climate change already underway. The course is both a declaration of hope and a call to action.
Solving for Zero: The Search for Climate Innovation
Trailer
01: How We Got Here
Since 1880, global average temperatures have steadily increased. Now, these overall warming trends have started to impact the Earth’s climate—taking a system we depend on to live out of balance. How is human-related activity responsible? In this introductory lesson, get the background science on how we arrived at our current climate challenge.
02: This Will Be Hard
The primary driver in the transition to carbon-free technologies? Economics—not the environment. Here, explore some of the many difficulties involved in decarbonizing five key sectors that are the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions, and consider the difficulty of reducing the cost of clean technologies to be as cheap as those we use today.
03: How We Plug In
Electricity is central to much of everyday life, but it’s also one of the leading contributors to climate change. How can we scale clean electricity in the coming decades—and use it to decarbonize in other sectors? Consider nuclear batteries radically different (and smaller) than power plants, innovative carbon-capture solutions, and more.
04: How We Make Things
In the coming decades, building construction will skyrocket. Which means we’ll need to invent new ways of manufacturing without all the emissions they create. Hear from innovators making key breakthroughs in cement and steel production, and learn why reducing the green premiums associated with them can be another essential tool.
05: How We Grow Things
By 2050, the world’s population is projected to be up to 10 billion people. As a result, we’ll need to produce far more food than we currently do. In this lesson, explore some of the ingenious advances in the agricultural industry to lower greenhouse emissions, as well as breakthroughs in AI that can help preserve and restore the world’s forests.
06: How We Transport Things
Transportability, energy density, and cost make fossil fuels the primary means for how people and goods get around. How can we replace them with something as cheap and capable of fueling long-distance travel and shipping? Find out with a closer look at electric vehicles, hydrogen-electric aviation, and the largest sailing boat humanity has ever built.
07: The Buildings We Live In
Ironically, the very thing we’ll need to survive a warming world will make climate change even worse. That’s why heating and cooling is another sector that’s ripe for innovation. Peer over the shoulders of innovators as they reinvent ways to keep ourselves cool and warm, including electric heat pumps, carbon-free synthetic fuels, and better ways to seal ductwork.
08: Adapting to a Warmer World
Climate change is already happening, and whether you’re living on a remote farm or in a major global city, we’re all going to have to adjust. Discover how scientists are developing new crops to meet changing conditions, what rising sea levels will mean our planet, and a brilliant way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using the world’s beaches.
09: Why Government Policies Matter
When it comes to climate change, the government is the only mechanism we have capable of ushering in the transformations we need. It can provide opportunities for developing ideas, testing designs, and proving them in the marketplace in ways the private sector can’t. Hear from leading experts about what we’ll need the world’s governments to do—and not do.
10: How We Do This Together
The choices we make in the coming years will determine how we handle the challenge in front of us. In this final lesson, examine some of the ways we can transform our world so everyone is lifted up and none are left behind. There’s much to be hopeful about in our quest to solve for zero. It’s just a matter of finding the collective will to do it.
About
Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen; today, he is cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In addition to authoring How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, he launched Breakthrough Energy, an effort to commercialize clean energy and other climate-related technologies.
