Future Beat: the solutions are here

Hi there. Bill Gates addressed an audience of more than 1,000 policymakers, executives, entrepreneurs, investors and financiers in Abu Dhabi this week.

His message was unequivocal:?"We need oil and gas at the table"?at Cop28 later this year.

“We need those that are most responsible for producing and using fossil fuels to step up and make serious commitments for a clean energy future,” he said via video feed at Climate Tech, a conference hosted by the UAE Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology, Adnoc and renewable energy company Masdar.

The event provided a glimpse into where energy companies are at in their emissions mitigation efforts, and what their messages might be when the UN climate conference convenes in Dubai 203 days from today.

Some of the solutions are niche, like drones to monitor for methane leaks, maggot farming to produce organic biomaterials and robots to roam oilfields looking for inefficiencies. But larger scale solutions like hydrogen production and carbon capture were also on display.

Today, every climate solution has one word in common: scale. The solutions are here. No need for a "eureka!" moment. The question is, can we go big enough?

Be well,

Kelsey Warner, Future Editor?

The Big Story

Masdar and Irena look to triple global renewable energy capacity with ambitious research project

In brief?| An ambitious research project aiming to triple global renewable energy capacity by 2030 will be taken on by Abu Dhabi’s clean energy company Masdar and the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) under a new initial partnership agreement.

The project will highlight the challenges faced by different regions in meeting their renewable energy ambitions and provide recommendations for action before?Cop28 in Dubai?this year.

Quoted?| "Despite this progress, the energy transition is off track." - Francesco La Camera, director general of Irena

Why it matters?| As the climate crisis accelerates, the scale of capital and zero-carbon energy capacity is falling behind. Investments in renewable energy technology reached a record $1.3 trillion last year but that figure must rise to about $5 trillion annually to meet the key Paris accord target of limiting temperature increases to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to Irena. Renewable capacity must also grow from about 3,000 gigawatts currently to more than 10,000 gigawatts in 2030, at an average rate of 1,000 gigawatts annually.

Future in focus

Search history |?Google?dropped the wait-list for its Bard AI?and launched the search assistant in more than 180 markets while at the same time announcing how AI will be integrated into more of its products like Gmail and Docs over the next year. As AI expands its reach, take a look at?why there are risks involved and what those risks are.

Seed stage |?A fund to boost climate-friendly farming practices backed by the US and UAE has?ballooned past its target amount, as the need for food security and lower-emissions agriculture comes into sharp focus.

Pharma’s future |?Last week the WHO announced Covid-19 no longer qualifies as a global emergency, marking an end — albeit a symbolic one — to the pandemic.?The?Business Extra?podcast spoke to Pfizer's Middle East director?about the pharma giant's future post-Covid and the Gulf's potential for taking a piece of the booming life sciences industry.

Predicting the future: Signal or noise?

A baby created with genetic material from three people has been born in the UK for the first time, through an IVF procedure known as mitochondrial donation treatment.

This is a signal.?The treatment is part of a study still under peer review, but the overall goal is to help mothers avoid passing on defective genes in the mitochondria and prevent children inheriting conditions which can cause serious illness and death.

The birth was reported in the same week as scientists announced?a new “pangenome” sequence, part of an effort to understand the differences between people’s genes around the world.

In case you missed it

Abu Dhabi Global Market, the capital's financial district, is expanding tenfold as it?adds Reem Island to its jurisdiction.

A Swedish start-up is reducing the use of plastic bottles with a?new drinking water system?being introduced in Dubai.

And I guess it's?happy birthday to the spam email, which turned 45 this week.