Climate change appears to be high on the agenda for tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates but some are questioning whether they’re focusing their efforts on the right areas.
Broadly speaking, the three richest tech billionaires who rank in the top five richest people on the planet are all trying to develop new technologies that can reduce the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.
Musk is largely focused on funding carbon capture technologies, Gates is particularly bullish on nuclear energy, and Bezos has created a dedicated “Bezos Earth fund.” All of them believe that technology has a major role to play in tackling climate change and they’re doing their utmost to ensure they’re pushing the boundaries when it comes to climate tech.
The London-headquartered start-up is aiming to build an online solar electricity forecasting service for the U.K. and Europe.
The service will aim to predict cloud cover, which determines how much electricity solar panels can generate, through a combination of satellite images and new artificial intelligence software.
Jack Kelly, the co-founder of Open Climate Fix and a former research engineer at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, told CNBC on Tuesday that the U.K. currently has to keep lots of fossil fuel generators spinning at less than their full capacity in case a large cloud comes along and covers Cornwall.
These generators are a lot less efficient when they re ramped down, said Kelly.
Google backs former DeepMind employee s solar forecasting start-up msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.