Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, others join to fast track clean energy innovation

As part of the initiative, the participating nations intend to double their respective investment for clean energy research and development (R&D) over five years.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is joining forces with Microsoft oracle Bill Gates to fight climate change.

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is made up of wealthy investors and tech influencers, including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Virgin Group’s Richard Branson, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn and many more. With technology as a guiding principle, “the new model will be a public-private partnership between governments, research institutions and investors”, the White House said.

The announcement is expected to come at the opening of the Paris climate conference to lend a dramatic momentum to the proceedings. “We will form a network of private capital committed to building a structure that will allow informed decisions to help accelerate the change to the advanced energy future our planet needs”, the coalition’s website reads.

The group said it would invest in companies that have the best chance to make reliable zero-carbon energy available to everyone at an affordable price. But given the scale of the challenge, we need to be exploring different paths and that means we also need to invent new approaches.

The summit is a meeting of many nations, including the U.S., China and India, in an attempt to kick-start clean energy initiatives and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.

The U.S. spends $5 billion every year on research for clean energy technology.

The coalition has pledged to invest in innovative ways to produce “clean” energy, especially in the developing world, and thereby cut down on climate-warming greenhouse gases.

“You need the innovation so that the cost of clean is as low or ideally lower than what coal-based energy generates”. He says they want to bring big money back to California to further the state’s position as a leader in green technology.