 Bryan Olin Dozier/NurPhoto via ReutersAI and data center companies can push down the costs of climate tech by leveraging their power as massive buyers of clean energy and industrial materials — and they should, Bill Gates told Semafor. Gates, arguably the world’s top individual investor in climate tech, broke ground this month on the first next-generation nuclear power plant in the US. He has since pledged to invest “billions more” in plants like it, which he sees as the most promising way to supply the upcoming boom in power demand for data centers and EVs. But there’s a key hurdle that the new plant, in Wyoming — and others to come — needs to overcome: It has to produce cost-competitive electricity, a prerequisite for widespread adoption. Gates is confident that it will. But much of his broader climate tech portfolio has yet to pass that test. The next generation of climate tech is critical for emissions that remain unaddressed. What’s holding it back, he said, is that there still aren’t enough early buyers willing to stomach the “green premium” until it can gain enough scale. There are some problems in the energy transition even pockets as deep as Gates’ can’t solve. The lesson he takes away from a decade investing in climate tech is that the “green premium” — how much more expensive the low-carbon option is compared to conventional power — is the only data point that really matters. Few consumers and businesses are willing to pay a green premium no matter how much they might care about the environment. If that premium can be eliminated in key technologies, Gates believes, it will be a tipping point on the way to solving climate change; if we don’t, climate will be much more difficult to solve. | 
