Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft; Jeffrey R. Immelt, chief executive of General Electric; and John Doerr, a top venture capitalist, urges the government to more than triple spending on energy research and development, to $16 billion a year. And it recommends creation of a national energy board to guide investment decisions toward radical advances in energy technology. “Among all the swirl of different ideas of how to raise the money and how to regulate carbon,” he said, “there is no way either in this country or internationally you’re going to come close to meeting an 80 percent reduction unless you have an immense breakthrough.” – from NYTimes

“It’s the only way you’re going to get to the goal of not driving extreme climate change without extreme pain,” Gates said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “The fact that we’re not getting going is terrible.” Gates said he supports putting a price on carbon, as well as measures to make buildings and vehicles more energy efficient. But what’s really time critical, he says, is spending money to develop breakthrough technologies that can be commercialized at large scale. – from WSJ