Bill Gates investigating potential of cold fusion technology

17 Nov 2014

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates during his recent briefing by the ENEA. Image via the ENEA

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates caused quite a stir during a recent visit to Italy as he received a briefing from Italy’s leading energy and technology agency on its recent discoveries with regard to cold fusion energy.

The agency that Gates visited, the ENEA, had highlighted his visit on its own Facebook page, but had not gone into the specifics of what exactly the world’s richest man was there to learn.

His interest in developing clean-energy technology is clear, given his own blog post last June which he wrote under the headline, ‘We need energy miracles’, where he discussed the need for such technology.

“I’m optimistic that science and technology can point the way to big breakthroughs in clean energy and help us meet the world’s growing needs,” said Gates. “In this area, like so many, there are no quick fixes, which makes it even more urgent to start work now.”

However, after some sleuthing from E-Cat World, the site was able to deduce that from an Italian translation, Gates had “first heard a presentation of the activities of ENEA – National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development – and then focused on cold fusion, frontier research in the field of nuclear fusion”.

The country has been one of the world’s leading developers of low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR) technology, having only last month shown exciting developments in the field of small-scale cold fusion energy production with Andrea Rossi’s E-Cat that has left independent analysts baffled.

From the photos posted by the ENEA, Gates was briefed by Vittorio Violante, lead co-ordinator on Italy’s LENR research, who only last year briefed the European Union on the latest advancements in the technology and whether it can be a potential clean and renewable energy source in the future.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com