Bill Gates wants to put a new light on the future of energy research in the US. News.com reports that Microsoft's chairman has written a new editorial in the latest print issue of Science magazine, where he launches a movement to convince the federal government to put more money into the study of future energy resources.
The amount of money in the federal budget for energy research is current at $5 billion a year, but that number represents a drop of 75 percent in funding for this research in the past 30 years by the federal government. Gates believes that US lawmakers should decide to increase that amount by over three times its current amount, to $16 billion a year.
In his editorial, Gates wrote, "In a time of economic crisis, asking policymakers in Washington, D.C., to spend more money might not be the most popular position. But it's essential to protect America's national interests and ensure that the United States plays a leading role in the fast-growing global clean energy industry."
While Gates has spent a lot of his Microsoft money on other causes, such as education in the US and helping to stop the spread of diseases in third world countries, he has also put in some of his money in energy related companies. One of them is called TerraPower, which is aiming to recycle the waste generated from conventional nuclear plants as fuel.
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