Bill Gates, a founding member of the group alongside Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, lays bare the rationale behind the Breakthrough Energy Coalition’s cause in a video.
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The coalition will help funnel billions of dollars of early investment into clean energy technologies that have high potential to bring affordable clean energy to a large number of people with minimal environmental impact.
Zuckerberg, together with wife Priscilla Chan, partnered with Gates to launch the campaign to try to achieve a zero-carbon energy technology.
Gates will join Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande to announce the initiative on the opening day of the two-week summit, according to an agenda released recently.
“Burning coal in most places is still cheaper than renewables and we need breakthroughs so that cost goes down”, Mr Gates said.
But the investors who back Mission Innovation say government support for basic research will allow them to invest wisely through their newly created group called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition.
“Our primary goal with the coalition is as much to accelerate progress on clean energy as it is to make a profit”, Gates said.
He said accelerating government funding for clean energy research and development is crucial to attracting private investment. This collective failure can be addressed, in part, by a dramatically scaled-up public research pipeline, linked to a different kind of private investor with a long term commitment to new technologies who is willing to put truly patient flexible risk capital to work.
The US government now invests around $5 billion in clean energy R&D.
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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. Its investment field would cover power generation and power storage, transport, industry, agriculture, as well the improvement of energy systems efficiency. India and other developing nations have asked wealthier nations to help finance their transition to clean energy. Investing in clean technology can deliver real benefits for the environment and the economy, including more good-paying, middle class jobs for Canadians.
