Bill Gates Pledges $1.5B For Climate Change Projects If Infrastructure Bill Passes

Microsoft Corporation MSFT co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates is offering to provide $1.5 billion for projects to slow greenhouse gas emissions if President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan passes through the U.S. Congress.

What Happened: The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill cleared the Senate in a 69-30 vote this week and needs to get the House of Representatives’ approval before going to the White House for the president to sign it into law.

Part of the bill allocates $25 billion to the Department of Energy for developing technologies designed to lower the carbon emissions that fuel climate change.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gates injected himself into the process by promising to provide $1.5 billion through a fund run by his Breakthrough Energy organization over a three-year period for emission-lowering initiatives, including zero-emissions plane fuel, long-duration energy storage, green hydrogen and direct air capture.

“Critical for all these climate technologies is to get the costs down and to be able to scale them up to a pretty gigantic level,” Gates said. “You’ll never get that scale up unless the government’s coming in with the right policies, and the right policy is exactly what’s in that infrastructure bill.”

Gates added that he hoped his offer would spur additional investors to provide up to $15 billion for other climate-focused projects.

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What Happens Next: The infrastructure bill’s journey through the House is on indefinite hold for two reasons: the chamber adjourned on July 30 for a monthlong August recess and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated she would not bring the infrastructure bill up for a vote until the Senate — which is also on recess — passes a $3.5 trillion spending bill.

Gates added that if the infrastructure bill fails to pass, he would shift the $1.5 billion that he pledged to climate-focused projects in Europe and Asia.

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Photo: OnInnovation / Flickr Creative Commons.