On Monday, Obama and Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced two aligned efforts to more than double the global investment in clean energy research.
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Each country will pledge to double government investment in clean-energy research, and to be transparent about those research efforts.
The clean energy announcements were made on the first day of COP21, the United Nations climate conference in Paris where leaders are expected to finalise a universal, binding agreement on climate change.
“More capital at the early stage is going to drive the breakthroughs that will drive costs down”, said Brian Deese, Obama’s senior adviser on climate change who announced the private-public sector initiative to reporters in Washington.
For India, the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter, access to clean energy technology is at the core of its national strategy to combat climate change.
The total amount of money being committed by these 20 countries-under Mission Innovation-amount to $20 billion, about half of which would come from the US, White House officials said.
Another major carbon solution on the table is the global solar alliance and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has signalled he is keen to move towards solar energy.
“What’s now clearer than ever is that our future will be 100 percent clean energy, and that dirty fossil fuels are merely riding out their final wave”.
It will now focus on funding on early-stage R&D. Recently launched is the Masdar Institute solar power plant in Masdar City, which is part of Masdar’s Solar Power Center to serve as a research and testing platform for new solar technologies.
One final note in the launch statement is that each participating country will commit to provide, on an annual basis, transparent, easily accessible information on its respective clean energy research and development efforts to promote transparency, broadly engage stakeholders, spur identification of collaborative opportunities and provide the private sector more actionable information to improve its ability to make investment decisions.
In addition to Gates and Zuckerberg, other members of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition include Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, HP CEO Meg Whitman, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, and Saudi investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Research and development projects would be designed and managed to attract private investors willing to advance commercialization.
There is no fund raising goal for private investors in the Gates initiative. Called “flow” batteries because a charged electrolyte goes back and forth between holding tanks, releasing energy, the technology also has the potential to help store energy created by solar cell and wind power.
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The coalition was launched here together with the “Mission Innovation”, an initiative of 20 governments including the US, India, France, UK, Germany, China, Japan and Australia. “Scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs can invent and scale the innovative technologies that will limit the impact of climate change while providing affordable and reliable energy to everyone”, it added.
