Bill Gates misconception of the energy issue in Wired magazine interview:

Bill Gates has started opining on energy policy. His brusque dismissal of the  importance of energy efficiency as an option in addressing climate change in a Wired magazine interview is short-sighted.  Here are his words:  

From the Audience: What about on the usage side? What do you think of the technologies that are increasing efficiency, cutting down on the amount of energy consumed?

Gates: There’s certainly lots of room for increasing efficiency. But can we, by increasing efficiency, deal with our climate problem? The answer is basically no. The climate problem requires more than a 90 percent reduction in CO2 emitted, and no amount of efficiency improvement is going to address that. As we’re improving our efficiency, poor people are increasing their energy intensity. You’re never going to get the amount of CO2 emitted to go down unless you deal with the one magic metric, which is CO2 per kilowatt-hour. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/06/mf_qagates/

This attitude is short sighted to say the least.  Most energy experts these days regard energy efficiency programs as an essential part of the mix, along with the every other supply side option.