Two Major New Initiatives Seek to Accelerate the Clean Energy Revolution

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

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition was announced ahead of the opening day Monday of the U.N.-organized climate talks outside Paris.

The goal of the project is to provide capital for research into the most promising clean energy technologies. Gates told attendees of a climate change summit that the world has to move to sources of energy that are cleaner and cheaper than hydrocarbon-based fuels like oil and coal.

Bill Gates has pulled together a multinational band of investors to put billions into clean energy.

These nations are responsible for 75 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, one of the main greenhouse gases, and more than 80 percent of the world’s investment in clean energy R&D.

Brian Deese, a senior White House adviser on energy and climate issues, said the initiative “should help to send a strong signal that the world is committed to helping to try to mobilize the resources necessary to ensure that countries around the world can deploy clean energy solutions in cost-effective ways”, reports The Wall Street Journal. The group includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America. The list of participants includes Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeffrey P. Bezos.

Gates has doubled his portfolio of energy investments to $2 billion and has helped to persuade 20 governments to commit to doubling their own research and development investments by 2020.

“Private companies will ultimately develop these energy breakthroughs but their work will rely on the kind of basic research that only governments can fund”, Zuckerberg adds. “We already invest in renewable and clean energy for our Facebook facilities today, but we believe that building a positive future for the next generation also means investing in long-term projects that companies and governments don’t fund”. He says they want to bring big money back to California to further the state’s position as a leader in green technology.