Meanwhile, government funds are being used to remove dams which could instead be used for small-scale hydro generation.  Harvey and so many others are living in a world of total delusion.

Havey, your statement is just not true. If it was, people would be investing like crazy in it and making money as they undercut the fossil fuel/nuke companies.

Here we read about new advances in technology on a weekly basis with very few, (actually none so far) who actually get to market their factor 2 - 10 improvements. That said, I think there is a good chance Tesla will actually succeed at making batteries good enough to get a non-trivial fraction (> 10%) of home PV's generating electricity without government subsidies.

My personal hope is that numerous molten-salt nuclear reactor concepts get a good chance of actually building working technology with funds like this. For example if the vision of

http://www.transatomicpower.com/

is full-filled the energy problems of humans will be substantially changed. Their technology is truly scalable and sustainable into the very long term (> 10^6 years on Earth). Likely needs a few billion dollars though and so far they've received about 4 million.

Is it just me, or is there something oddly dystopian about the phrase "Global billionaires unite"

Maybe they could start with buying a better government...

My plan: wind down gas and oil subsides over the next ten years to force the fossil fuels industries to stand on their own; knowing they can't. Then channel the money into renewables development and continuing battery research and development. We are almost at the point where BEVs will make sense for the mass market, i.e., long range batteries will go into mass production.

To save this World may I be so bold as to say; We have to put the fossil fuels businesses out of the business of burning fossil fuels in the atmosphere, yesterday. Using oil, coal and gas as feedstock to produce non-fuel products is a good use of carbon; fuels are not...just to repeat myself.

As pointed out, It does little good for well-meaning investors to invest in clean energy when their Government is working against the betterment of its people and these very investors, by continuing to fund the fossil fuel demons.

Looking at that list, it may be hard to get them to agree on anything.

You might be better just getting less cash from Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.

I wonder what the admission price is ?

They should invest in storage. Battery factories for stationary battery technology and hydro storage. There are numerous sites where hydro alone is not economical. A valley may be adequate for a dam, but the river is small and low flow. That flow combined with pumped storage may make more sense. And, since these guys own the governments, they can get them to implement eminent domain.

Harvey is only slightly incorrect. However, huge investments that utilize economies of scale will in fact reduce costs of renewables to below fossil and nuclear (or nucular if you prefer).

ECI, yep, the government is owned by these guys. So our failure is really theirs. What people forget is that they are not particularly intelligent, but rather more ruthless than the typical person and perhaps with a bit more luck. While they often talk about long term and societally beneficial investments that can be massively profitable, they seem to lack any real understanding of tech and science. They also seem to somewhat lack the ability for rational thought. They are after all billionaires and so rationally one would think that they would be without fear and determined to do good for the world that made them so privileged. But, their slow and inhibited response to issues and crisis suggests a rather mediocre capability.

I firmly believe that the only real hope for clean safe energy that can displace most of the fossil fuels now being burned is nuclear power. If you read the Energy Innovation paper by Bill Gates, you will see the statement "the IEA has estimated that wind and solar PV could cut the world’s annual emissions from electricity generation 22 percent by 2050." This is a maximum given all kinds of rosey scenarios. Where does the rest of it come from? Fossil Fuels and even for the amount being generated by the so-called renewable, tere needs to be a backup system. "Today that requires maintaining a parallel system powered by fossil fuels." So you often pay twice for the capital cost.

Another interesting potential nuclear system is the traveling wave reactor. See http://terrapower.com/ Traveling wave reactors essentially burn to completion with very little waste and can use spent fuel, natural uranium, or even depleted uranium as fuel. And who is supporting this?

Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold serve respectively as Chairman and Vice Chairman of TerraPower’s activities

mahongj, the corner case becomes a much smaller issue for a off-grid homeowner who owns a medium/high-range BEV near a public charging station. Then again, autonomous vehicles may enable "car as a service" and less car ownership....