Gates, Branson, Zuckerberg launch global energy project at COP21

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

Jason Blumberg, chief executive and managing director at Energy Foundry, a venture capital firm focusing on new energy and clean technologies, explains how much money is needed to find clean, high tech energy.

Priscilla and I are joining Bill Gates in launching the Breakthrough Energy Coalition to invest in new clean energy technologies.

Gates says the energy sector’s complacency about developing new technologies makes it ripe for disruption.

The founders of Facebook, Microsoft, and Amazon have joined forces to invest in a massive clean energy initiative.

Backers include U.S. President Barack Obama, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, billionaires George Soros and Saudi Prince Alaweed bin Talal, Jack Ma of China’s Alibaba and Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani.

The 20 worldwide signatories represent nearly 80 per cent of the global R&D budgets in the field of clean energy innovation. “Gates’ announcement should prompt other countries to follow suit”, the source said.

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and more have teamed up for Breakthrough Energy Coalition to invest in zero-carbon energy technology around the world.

The fund, which doesn’t have a set figure attached to it yet, will centre on electricity generation and storage, transportation, industrial use, agriculture and energy system efficiency.

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is a counterpart to another clean-energy initiative called Mission Innovation.

The International Energy Agency released a report that tracked the progress of clean energy technologies and the results are bleak. “But the world’s growing demand for energy is also a big problem, because most of that energy comes from hydrocarbons, which emit greenhouse gases and drive climate change”.

These two initiatives form a powerful public-private alliance that demonstrates success in addressing climate change will depend on a new model of collaboration among governments, research institutions, investors, and others. Despite their own comfortable lives, “these are investors who care about clean energy and cheap energy”, Gates said. “We need to surprise them that these alternative ways of doing energy can come along and come along in an economic way”, he says.