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Comment and Technology

We don't need 'miracle' green technologies to save the planet

A focus on revolutionary solutions like carbon capture and geoengineering is slowing the uptake of existing answers to the problems of climate change, air pollution and energy security, says environmental engineer Mark Jacobson

By Mark Jacobson

15 February 2023

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Michelle D’urbano

BILL GATES has put billions of dollars into new technologies he believes will help halt climate change: small modular nuclear reactors, biofuels, capturing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel facilities (carbon capture) or the air (direct air capture) and geoengineering (reducing solar radiation by adding particles to the atmosphere). ExxonMobil is building a “blue hydrogen” plant that produces the fuel from natural gas and tries to capture the CO2 emissions. The US Inflation Reduction Act provides funding that Gates, ExxonMobil and other companies can use to capture CO2 . It also helps to fund Gates’s dreams of small …

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