Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and several other billionaires recently launched a new global initiative aimed at accelerating private sector investment in clean energy technologies. Zuckerberg announced the launch of the initiative called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition on his Facebook page on Sunday evening.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition consists of a group of private investors from all over the world who have committed to support companies providing innovative and profitable clean energy solutions in bringing these innovations to the market place.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Pricilla Chan, launched the initiative in partnership with Bill Gates and the likes of Virgin founder Richard Branson, Jack Ma the executive chairman of Alibaba and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Speaking on the important role this initiative will play, Zuckerberg in his Facebook post said, “Solving the clean energy problem is an essential part of building a better world. We won’t be able to make meaningful progress on other challenges — like educating or connecting the world — without secure energy and a stable climate. Yet progress towards a sustainable energy system is too slow, and the current system doesn’t encourage the kind of innovation that will get us there faster.”
Bill Gates on the other hand also announced a second clean energy initiative during the COP21 climate change conference in Paris, on Monday, called ‘Mission Innovation’. This Mission Innovation program is a commitment by over fifteen countries to invest more in research on clean energy.
Gates in his blog post said “The renewable technologies we have today, like wind and solar, have made a lot of progress and could be one path to a zero-carbon energy future. But given the scale of the challenge, we need to be exploring many different paths—and that means we also need to invent new approaches. Private companies will ultimately develop these energy breakthroughs, but their work will rely on the kind of basic research that only governments can fund. Both have a role to play.”
We are indeed hopeful that both initiatives would succeed in achieving their separate but interrelated goals of creating a future that’s increasingly powered by clean energy sources.
