Gates, Zuckerberg and Other Tech Titans Team Up to Push Clean Energy

“The existing system of basic research, clean energy investment, regulatory frameworks, and subsidies fails to sufficiently mobilize investment in truly transformative energy solutions for the future”.

India has argued that developed countries need to help poorer countries gain access to renewable energy or zero-emission technologies by helping reduce costs and removing barriers such as intellectual property rights. A readiness to put another billion dollars of his own money into what is already a roughly billion-dollar portfolio of energy investments was also enough for Gates to convince 20 governments to commit to doubling their own R&D investments within five years.

Besides taking part in the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP 21), Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and wife Priscilla Chan are launching an initiative that would invest in zero-carbon energy technology globally.

In Paris yesterday, Gates announced a new effort called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition.

The initiative is aimed at accelerating research, development and investment in new technology that will cut carbon emissions, reducing global warming. It’s made up of more than 25 investors from 10 countries that include governments, universities, entrepreneurs and CEO’s from around the world to combat climate change and invest in early-stage clean energy companies.

The fund will support a wide range of technologies, Mr. Gates said. The coalition includes names like Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Jack Ma and Mark Zuckerberg and is expected to give a huge push to clean energy. But given the scale of the challenge, we need to be exploring different paths and that means we also need to invent new approaches. Gates is the unofficial “quarterback” of this initiative.

In their website, Breakthrough Energy Coalition said that it aims to build a technology that will solve energy issues that are affecting the climate around the world. This apart, the top industrialists will help the governments from across the globe to focus on clean energy growth through cutting-edge innovation.

The project will direct seed financing into innovative ideas that have been rejected by the energy sector.

He, however, warned potential investors that new energy technologies take longer than IT or biotech to launch. “We need to surprise them that these alternative ways of doing energy can come along and come along in an economic way”, he says.