It styles itself as a public-private partnership, claiming that current levels of government funding are inadequate for meaningful continued development of clean-energy technologies.
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The initiative is aimed at accelerating research, development and investment in new technology that will cut carbon emissions, reducing global warming. As all eyes are on climate change news, the coalition believes the fund pool should encourage people to reshuffle their priorities, stimulate more partners to support innovation, and jointly fight climate change. A day before the initial kick off of the UN Climate talks in Paris, the founders of these giants in the industry, announced that they join forces to combat climate change by forming the Breakthrough Energy Coalition.
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson and a slew of high-profile entrepreneurs are throwing their considerable wealth and technical know-how behind a new search for clean, green energy.
Gates, co-founder of Microsoft and philanthropist, will launch the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of 28 private investors who hail from Silicon Valley to South Africa, that will invest billions of dollars in “patient, flexible risk capital” to bring riskier new technologies to market.
“Private companies will ultimately develop these energy breakthroughs, but their work will rely on the kind of basic research that only governments can fund”, Gates added.
The aim is to not only boost technology, but also change the entire way we all use and produce energy. “And then, if they get scaled up over the next two decades after that, become a significant part of the world’s energy system, then you make a very dramatic contribution to climate change”, he said.
Moniz said the idea to come up with a bold R&D plan has been “bubbling now in the last few months” but accelerated in the weeks before the Paris summit.
The countries involved include the U.S., Brazil, China, Japan, Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and others.
President Obama is urging global corporations to embrace clean energy.
The group will mainly invest in early-stage clean energy companies across a range of sectors, such as electricity generation and storage, transportation, and agriculture.
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“This is why governments play an indispensable role in supporting energy research”, Gates said.
