Bill Gates to help with clean-energy initiative

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and several other of the world’s wealthiest tech and business titans are banding together to fight climate change by investing billions in clean-energy research and technologies. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are launching the campaign in partnership with Gates; other members of the organization include Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Virgin founder Richard Branson, and Alibaba executive chairman Jack Ma.

“The Breakthrough Energy Coalition will invest in ideas that have the potential to transform the way we all produce and consume energy”, Zuckerberg wrote in his latest Facebook post.

Gates has been advocating doubling the investment in clean energy initiatives in order to provide access to growing energy needs as well as to reduce carbon emissions.

UC will be the sole institutional investor in the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, according to the university.

“The increased governmental research and private investment are to address climate change and to reduce the cost of energy, to reduce poverty”.

“Our climate imperatives, coupled with the world’s need for energy and electricity, mean that we don’t have the luxury of decades to develop and deploy new technologies”.

As these two clean energy initiatives demonstrate and those to be announced through the Action Agenda in the coming days only reinforce, the transition to a clean energy future is accelerating and coming up fast.

The funding will not only come from public sector financing but will also get backing from the private sector.

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is said to have a combined net worth of US$350-billion. But most of that energy creates greenhouse gases and drives climate change.

Gates planned to join Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande to announce the initiative.

Similarly, 20 countries have pledged support for “Mission Innovation”, promising to double their public investments in basic energy research over the next five years and making clean energy widely affordable.