Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 11.1
Innovating to zero: philanthropy, innovation and
business leadership
Microsoft founder and former CEO Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, through their
Foundation established in 2000, have become one of the world's most important
leaders in corporate philanthropy and sustainability. They have funded a range of
research and development projects across the world, including Internet access in
libraries, research on malaria, family planning, sanitation, nutrition, agricultural develop-
ment and financial services for the poor. The Gates Foundation's work is globally
integrated and emphasizes the importance of leadership through innovation. Millions
of dollars of grants are awarded every year on a proactive basis to primarily US tax-
exempt organizations from its Asset Trust Endowment of over US$38 bn. Gates has
also been an active promoter of low to zero carbon energy. To do this at a global
scale, Gates believes, 'we need energy miracles'. With his former Chief Technology
Officer at Microsoft and co founder of one of the world's largest patent holding
companies
Intellectual Ventures
, Nathan Myhrvold, Bill Gates's mission led energy
company
TerraPower
aims to develop 'a sustainable and economic nuclear energy
technology' through worldclass privatesector leadership, supercomputer modeling,
durable metallic fuels and safe, clean and secure nuclear innovation.
Nathan Myhrvold and I actually are backing a company that, perhaps surprisingly,
is actually taking the nuclear approach. There are some innovations in nuclear:
modular, liquid. And innovation really stopped in this industry quite some ago,
so the idea that there's some good ideas laying around is not all that surprising.
The idea of
TerraPower
is that, instead of burning a part of uranium - the one
percent, which is the U235 - we decided, 'Let's burn the 99 percent, the U238.'
It is kind of a crazy idea. In fact, people had talked about it for a long time, but
they could never simulate properly whether it would work or not, and so it's
through the advent of modern supercomputers that now you can simulate and
see that, yes, with the right materials approach, this looks like it would work.
And, because you're burning that 99 percent, you have greatly improved cost
profile. You actually burn up the waste, and you can actually use as fuel all the
leftover waste from today's reactors. So, instead of worrying about them, you
just take that. It's a great thing. It breathes this uranium as it goes along, so it's
kind of like a candle. You can see it's a log there, often referred to as a traveling
wave reactor.
(
TED Talk
by Bill Gates, 2010, available at:
Source: adapted from TerraPower:
www.terrapower.com/
meritocracy, excitement, achievement, partnership, responsibility, communal benefit
and, more recently, citizenship and sustainability have become important elements
of the discourse of business which have at least in part disarmed the impact of
businesses detractors. Authentic leadership has become a major element in discussions
of business development where a renewal of the ancient Greek axiom of being true
to oneself is seen as a foundation for authenticity, which is not necessarily to be
confused with sincerity. Authenticity is often quite self-referential and does not
