Climate Summit 2015: Global push towards clean energy

Gates told TOI that slowing development to go green is a very hard trade off. “So if you say to a developing country like India because of green reasons you slow down the development, that is really a very hard thing because we know development can save lives, provide education to kids, take care of health and there are so many benefits of energy usage”.

For Gates, there are three specific energy solutions that excite him: solar chemical technology, flow batteries and solar paint.

Editor’s note: This week, at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, President Obama, President Hollande, and other world leaders launched Mission Innovation.

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition will reportedly work with the countries involved in the Mission Innovation agreement.

It is expected that the leaders of the world’s industry will double their R& D via the event that will speed up energy transition by dramatically expedite the cycle of novelty.

Obama indicates that commitment to innovation and acquiring capital to drive down the cost of clean energy will be needed.

While Australia’s investment in clean technology research and development will double to $200 million a year, the government is still planning to abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, two of the major players in the sector.

Gates and a group of developing and developed countries will launch the Clean Tech Initiative, in which countries will commit to doubling their clean energy technology research and development budgets by 2020 and private investors will boost their own investments in the sector. As a means to help achieve this, Obama referenced what he calls a historic joint effort to accelerate public and private clean energy innovation on a global scale. Former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates heads the group and announced its creation on Monday.

From Europe, members include Hasso Plattner, the co-founder and chairman of SAP, the German software giant, and Xavier Niel, who made his money in French telecommunications and is the founder of one of France’s most active venture capital firms.

It will now focus on funding on early-stage R&D.

In the past, too often energy technologies have not crossed the investment “valley of death” where there was little funding to develop ideas because the risk profile and long return time horizons.

“The new model will be a public-private partnership between governments, research institutions, and investors”.

The current the U.S. Government investment portfolio of more than $5 billion spans the full range of research and development activities – from basic research to demonstration activities (RD&D).

China, the world’s largest emitter, petro-states Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, EU countries, Canada, Indonesia, Korea and Japan are among the other signatories. 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.