Gates: innovation makes clean energy cheaper than dirty energy

Worthwhile discussion here on the new energy innovation fund Gates has founded with some other billionaires. He hopes that Trump ‘the business guy’ will see the obvious financial opportunity in this booming sector, whether or not his new administration chooses to acknowledge climate change as a motivation.

Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures co-chair, talks about creating innovative way to create clean, cheap energy, tariff, trade, Trump’s tweets and the stock market.  Here is a direct video link.

A Caveat: near the end of this discussion, Quick asks Gates about over-valued stocks and whether he changes his portfolio approach in lofty markets. Gates says he doesn’t worry about downside risks as he is a long term investor and as Warren Buffet says good companies tend to be good long term investments….yada yada. But one must never forget that most regular people are not in the same risk bracket as billionaires. Most people do not have hundreds of millions in excess capital above and beyond anything they will need to fund their lifetime expenses, and so bear market declines can be devastating to their capital given finite life spans to recover losses.  For most of us, extreme over-valuations are very dangerous to our financial stability and viability. We cannot afford to be blase about market risks to our life savings.  This is a point most often missed in all the investment sales hype and happy talk.

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