Bill Gates is leading a group of investors to launch a $1 billion clean energy fund. In 2015, Gates established the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with more than a dozen billionaires, including Alibaba's Jack Ma, Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group.
Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Coalition
Breakthrough Energy Coalition is Bill Gate's initiative to search for radical startups that can provide electricity, transportation, food and more, without contributing to climate change. The first wave of that investment is materialized through Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is established to consider a long-term approach to backing energy ideas viewed too risky by regular venture capital firms.
"Our goal is to build companies that will help deliver the next generation of reliable, affordable, and emissions-free energy to the world," Bill Gates said. "I am honored to work along with these investors to build on the powerful foundation of public investment in basic research," he added, as per The Telegraph.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures will invest in technologies that have the potential to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by at least half a gigaton. Bill Gates, hailed the richest man in the world, has personally supported energy startup groups and encouraged other well-off individuals to do the same, reports Quartz.
Bill Gates And His Billionaires' Club To Fight Climate Change
Bill Gates' initiative aims to support emerging ideas that can't reach commercialization because of poor funding. Its investments, which spans a lengthy 20 years, is not limited to electricity alone - it'll also include new innovations for manufacturing, agriculture, construction and transportation. It will provide necessary capital to promising projects that will offer the biggest possible benefit to the planet's future climate, as long as the idea is backed with studies and can plausibly be carried out.
Apart from announcing Breakthrough Energy Ventures, the group released a framework called Landscape of Innovation. This project outlines the areas where they could invest to bring carbon emissions almost non-existent.
