Among the voices calling for action on climate change, Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates.
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The coalition is a global group of private investors that will take the risks that allow early stage energy companies that emerge from the research programs of Mission Innovation countries to come out of the lab and into the marketplace.
More than a dozen governments have also committed to double their spending on carbon-free energy development over the next five years in a complementary effort dubbed “Mission Innovation”.
“The renewable technologies we have today, like wind and solar, have made a lot of progress and could be one path to a zero-carbon energy future”, Gates said in a blog post.
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and several other of the world’s wealthiest tech and business titans are banding together to fight climate change by investing billions in clean-energy research and technologies.
The coalition includes names like Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Jack Ma, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Vinod Khosla and Meg Whitman, among others and is expected to give a huge push to clean energy.
“Given the scale of the challenge, we need to be exploring many different paths, and that means we also need to invent new approaches”, Gates explained in a statement.
Twenty countries – including the U.S., China and India – have signed the pledge, which was announced in Paris alongside the Gates initiative. Its aim, according to the coalition’s Web site, is to cover gaps in government funding in nations where the most promising and scalable ideas from public research institutions could be commercialised.
According to renowned computer programmer, Gates, the objective of the new initiative is to research and develop artificial photosythenthesis, using sunlight to produce liquid hydrocarbons that could replace fossil fuels.
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The coalition was launched as part of “Mission Innovation”, an initiative of 19 governments, which will be hosted by the US President Barack Obama after inaugurating the 21st Conference of Parties summit (COP21) in Paris.
