Bill Gates Cuts Staff at His Climate Change Lobbying Group

Bill Gates funds a climate change policy group called Breakthrough Energy aimed at reducing carbon emissions. The group seems to combine investments in clean energy tech as well as lobbying for public policy. This pitch for the group was posted four years ago.

But as of today, Gates appears to be pulling back pretty dramatically on this one-stop climate shop. He is cutting staff here and abroad.

Dozens of staff members were cut, including Breakthrough Energy’s unit in Europe, its team in the United States working on public policy issues and most of its employees working on partnerships with other climate organizations, according to three people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The change shows how Mr. Gates is retooling his empire for the Trump era. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, Mr. Gates calculated that the Breakthrough policy team in the United States was not likely to have a significant effect in Washington, said the people familiar with his thinking. The U.S. policy team was also one of the largest and most expensive parts of the organization…

Instead of trying to influence policy, Mr. Gates is now focused on building clean energy companies through the Breakthrough Energy Catalyst program, Breakthrough Energy Ventures and the Breakthrough Energy Fellows, the people familiar with the matter said. Those efforts, which fund start-up companies and entrepreneurs working on a range of renewable technologies, were not affected by the cuts.

I don’t think it takes a genius to see that now is not the moment for climate change lobbying in Washington. There were reports last month that Breakthrough would be cutting funding to partner groups.

Bill Gates’ climate tech advocacy organization has told its partners that it will slash its grantmaking budget this year, dealing a blow to climate-focused policy and advocacy groups that relied on the Microsoft founder, Heatmap has learned.

Breakthrough Energy, the umbrella organization for Gates’ various climate-focused programs, alerted many nonprofit grantees earlier this month that it would not be renewing its support for them…

Among its beneficiaries was the Breakthrough Institute, a California-based think tank that promotes technological solutions to climate change. (Despite having a similar name, it is not affiliatedwith Breakthrough Energy.) Last week, a representative from Breakthrough Energy told the institute’s executive director, Ted Nordhaus, that its funding would not be renewed. The Breakthrough Institute had previously received a two-year grant of about $1.2 million per year, which wrapped up this month.

“What we were told is that they are ceasing all of their climate grantmaking — zeroed out immediately after the USAID shutdown because Bill wants to refocus all of his grantmaking efforts on global health,” Nordhaus told me on Monday, referring to the Trump administration’s efforts to defund the United States Agency for International Development. “But it’s very clear that this wasn’t brought on solely by USAID. I had heard from several people that there was a big reassessment going on for a couple of months.”

So Gates is shifting his priorities in light of current realities. He was a big supporter of Kamala Harris behind the scenes (he didn’t endorse her) but that bet obviously didn’t work out.

Mr. Gates, who resisted partisan politics for almost his entire career, was deeply concerned about the 2024 election and how a victory by Mr. Trump could set back progress on climate and global health. Mr. Gates donated about $50 million to a political nonprofit supporting Kamala Harris’s presidential bid.

The downside here is that the climate change groups have so much money that Gates’ contribution was no more than 1% of the total. So even if he pulls back all of his money, the climate change industrial complex will be fine without him.