Bill Gates didn’t say if we get a carbon tax, he said when we get a carbon tax: “When we get a carbon tax we should put some of that into innovation,” Gates told energy executives gathered at Houston’s IHS CERAWeek conference Thursday evening.
Renewable forms of energy are growing far faster than any other form of energy, a BP economist said in Chicago last week, but are unlikely to significantly impact the world’s reliance on fossil fuels without continued government interventions, such as a price on carbon. The world’s oil consumption grew by less than 1 percent in 2011, natural gas by 2 percent, coal by about 5 percent, and nuclear reactors contributed 4 percent less energy in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, according to Mark Finley, BP’s general manager for global energy markets.