Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg And Other Billionaires Come Together To Invest In

Mark Zuckerberg announced today that he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have launched the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with Bill Gates to invest in zero-carbon energy technology around the world.

While Gates and Zuckerberg headline the coalition’s founding, they’re in good company: other co-founders include Salesforce.com founder Marc Benioff, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Virgin’s Richard Branson, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, SAP co-founder Hasso Plattner, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise chief executive Meg Whitman, along with a healthy list of philantropists and venture capitalists.

Funding for clean energy research would come in from both, private and public sectors, as Mr. Gates is responsible to lead the coalition between the two sectors. The business leaders are making their pledges conditional on governments also pledging more money, said a former US government official who is familiar with the plan.

French President Francois Hollande, left, greets U.S. President Barack Obama as he arrives for the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference, in Le Bourget, outside Paris, Monday, Nov. 30, 2015.

Countries like India, which is also going to contribute funding to the research and development projects that will be developed at the summit, are asking the more developed countries that are attending to support them with the technology and resources required to make a change.

According to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the fund has commitments from a group of developing and developed countries, including the United States, China and India, to double their research and development budgets for clean energy and form a coalition to conduct joint work. Public companies face even more pressure to invest wisely in profitable endeavours to return funds to share holders. Developing countries such as India, the third-largest fossil-fuel polluter, have pushed for commitments by developed nations to pay for their energy transition, either through direct government spending or through low-cost access to new technology.

To pressure world leaders into forging an agreement, more than half a million people participated in climate protests around the world over the weekend. Consequently, the USA will increase its expenditure from $5 billion to $10 billion – the highest for any country.

A major complication for the United States is securing such funds and participation approved by a U.S. Congress controlled by a Republican Party that officially rejects climate change science.

The official highlighted storing electricity, which is especially crucial for wind and solar power that can be intermittent because of the weather. In a statement posted on his Facebook account, Obama expressed optimism about the meeting’s outcome.

The UN summit formally opened on Sunday afternoon with a minute of silence for the victims of this month’s Paris attacks and vows not to let terrorism derail efforts to slow or stop climate change.