Boris Johnson and Bill Gates Entered into a Partnership to Cover the UK’s Climate Commitments

Boris Johnson and billionaire Bill Gates entered into a partnership to achieve Britain’s climate goals. According to the British PM, Britain will only be able to meet its climate commitments by spending on newly emerging technologies.“We will only achieve our ambitious climate goals if we rapidly scale up new technologies in areas like green hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuels – technologies that seemed impossible just a few years ago,” the PM said.He further added that the collaboration with Bill Gates would mark the beginning of a “green industrial revolution” by scaling up new and innovative technologies that seemed unfeasible just a couple of years back. As per the PM, the partnership will help London a great deal in paying the amount London couldn’t afford by itself.   As per the sources, the PM discussed Britain’s plan of deploying a partnership with philanthropist Bill Gates on Tuesday 19th October 2021whilst he was rendering a speech at a Global Investment Summit in London’s Science Museum ahead of the COP26 climate conference. As the UK feels the necessity of investing in new green technologies, we have already seen London’s commitment regarding the same. London showed its willingness to cover the cost of new green technologies earlier by promising a contribution of at least £200 million. Although £200 million isn’t a small amount, environment development initiatives are expensive, and it was impossible for the government to bear the cost alone. Keeping everything in mind, Bill Gates pledged to contribute another £200 million to the Global Investment Summit on Tuesday. Gate will finance the UK’s climate goals via Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a commercial model founded by Gates to fund sustainable energy and greenhouse gas emission reduction projects. He is also known for investing in several other green projects in the past. A few years back, Gate announced to spend £1.3 billion on renewable energy projects. Back then, Gates committed to double the investment in renewable technologies to “bend the curve.” In his vision, “high-risk” technological investments are a key to reducing carbon emissions and avoiding a climate catastrophe. Boris Johnson also shares the same vision of investing in new green technologies to enhance carbon capture and storage. According to Johnson, Gates’ contribution would help the UK’s technological advancement in green carbon technology, reducing carbon emission, giving shape to zero-carbon flying (“jet zero”), and long-lasting battery life. He later added that the initiative would increase employment by bringing superior quality job opportunities to the UK. Gate estimated his commercial assistance in the latest green innovations would do these projects at par with onshore wind and solar developmental programs. He added the partnership with the UK would increase the deployment of vital solutions to protect the environment and make these solutions cheaper and easily accessible to the UK. It is also explained by Gate how the high rates of clean technologies are one of the main reasons why such technologies are less in use. Therefore, he urged the need to reduce the cost of clean technologies and bring down the level of harmful or less-green energy types to reach the net-zero goal.As admitted by Johnson, the partnership is essential for Britain because Britain has many things to figure out in terms of the current economic conditions. Given that the nation is facing increased fuel prices and a shortage of labour, the government has to work on commencing a new economic direction. In the scenario where the UK is facing a petrol crisis due to the government’s decision to turn to ‘greener fuel', Gate's donation would make a remarkable difference, as per the PM. 

Johnson perceives this partnership not only as a step to meet the UK’s climate commitments but would encourage “green jobs” and “green growth” across the world. He said that this moment should be used collectively to not only deal with the problem of climate change, but also to promote "green jobs" and "green growth" worldwide. 

Besides the partnership, the PM also outlined Britain’s other plan to bring about global climate change, including increased use of electric vehicles, hydrogen, solar, and wind power. As claimed by the PM, the aim is to push Britain towards carbon neutrality and initiate a worldwide climate change revolution. It seems that the PM’s speech motivated other global leaders to take a step forward in creating a green planet. Gautam Adani, India’s business tycoon and the chairman of Adani Group, met Johnson after the meeting to share his plans towards climate change. As per the reports, Adani Group has committed to spending $70 billion to shift to sustainable energy sources. 

The same is what Tom Burke, chairman of E3G, expects from the PM. In his view, there is an urgent need for the PM to convince and push other world leaders to come to an “ambitious agreement.” 

“That’s the test of the prime minister: can he get his peers to give the high ambition signals he is asking for; he’s not going into this with a lot of capital,” said Mr. Burke. “Britain has a legitimate claim to have led the world over climate change, the question is whether the prime minister has enough guns with his peers,” he added.It’s not wrong to say that everyone’s expectations are high from the PM. However, the question is, will the PM successfully meet Britain’s climate goals with this new partnership? It’s too early to make predictions about the outcome of the deal between Johnson and Gates. Since Britain’s claim to reach carbon neutrality by 2050,  experts have been waiting to see official documents of Britain’s progress towards climate change. It was on Tuesday that the PM finally shared the official reports outlining Britain’s green plan. We are yet to see how far Britain goes in its initiative to improve the planet. Nonetheless, it appears that the partnership would certainly prove to be fruitful for the environment.