Bill Gates, Other Tech Kings Sign Up For Clean Energy

The Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist announced his latest endeavor, the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, at the climate change summit in Paris.

The key big names-and pocketbooks-are owned by Bill Gates (U.S., Microsoft), Richard Branson (U.K., Virgin Group), Jack Ma (China, Alibaba), Jeff Bezos (U.S., Amazon), Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan (U.S., Facebook), Marc Benioff (U.S., Salesforce), and Meg Whitman (U.S., Hewlett-Packard Enterprise).

A couple of well-known business professionals have joined together to create the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, which will be focused on investing in new clean energy technologies.

These nations are responsible for 75 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, one of the main greenhouse gases, and more than 80 percent of the world’s investment in clean energy R&D.

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.

“But 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 wrote.

Gates hopes to pour in billions of dollars to new companies and research efforts that are involved in developing technologies that bring clean energy to all aspects of our lives.

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. Gates is the unofficial “quarterback” of this initiative.

“The UC system – with its world leading campuses and labs – produces the kinds of groundbreaking technologies that will help define a global energy future that is cheaper, more reliable, and does not contribute to climate change”, Gates added.

“Success requires a partnership of increased government research, with a transparent and workable structure to objectively evaluate those projects, and committed private-sector investors willing to support the innovative ideas that come out of the public research pipeline”, the coalition said.