Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates unveiled plans Monday by an worldwide coalition to invest billions of dollars in clean-energy projects to combat global warming.
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The presentation of the fund, dubbed the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, was made the first day of the COP21 Climate Change Summit in Paris, according to a communique in which Gates says that “the renewable energy sources we have today, like wind and solar, have made a lot of progress and could be one path to a zero-carbon energy future”. At the same time, Gates said investors will support companies that bring innovative clean-energy ideas to the marketplace.
“Private companies will ultimately develop these energy breakthroughs, but their work will rely on the kind of basic research that only governments can fund”.
The White House said it was “essential” to increase clean energy innovation in order to limit global temperature increases to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (two Celsius) above pre-industrial levels, the United Nations target ceiling.
The university and its Office of the Chief Investment Officer is the only institutional investor among 28 coalition members in 10 countries, university officials said.
Backers include Hewlett Packard’s Meg Whitman, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, Indian industrial titans Ratan Tata and Mukesh Amabani, business magnate George Soros, and the head of Amazon, Jeff Bezos. Gates is the unofficial “quarterback” of this initiative.
He went on to say that the current system does not encourage the type of innovation that will get the world to where it needs to be.
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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”. Together, all 20 countries represent over 80% of global clean energy research and development budgets. In a statement, the group said that it aims to close the gap between commitment towards a new energy concept and transforming it into a profitable and usable technology, which “neither government funding nor conventional private investment can bridge”.
