Bill Gates together with other influential men in the world have joined hands in an effort to save the planet from the negative effects of climate change. They pledged to do their part by investing on the multi-billion dollar research and development of renewable energy.
Bill Gates and the investors were said to have pledged $7 billion for the clean energy research according to ABC News. In particular, the Microsoft founder worked together with Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, to draw more private company owners and urge them to invest for the betterment of the world.
Many tech billionaires including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Alibaba's Jack Ma, Sun Microsystem's Vinod Khosla, Hewlett Packard's Meg Whitman, LinkedIn Reid Hoffman, and Salesforce's Marc Benioff have signed up to do their part in clean energy innovation efforts.
The alliance of this elite group of billionaires has been dubbed as the Breakthrough Energy Coalition. On his post on Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote: "The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is working together with a growing group of visionary countries who are significantly increasing their public research pipeline through the Mission Innovation initiative to make that future a reality. 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."
"Priscilla and I are joining Bill Gates in launching the Breakthrough Energy Coalition to invest in new clean energy technologies," he added.
Primarily, the newly-formed group has committed to invest in development and implementation of clean energy methods for electricity generation, transportation, agriculture, and other sectors that use energy.
Bill Gates further stated that the BEC has been designed to "get clean-energy innovation out of the lab and into the marketplace" as well as to launch "widely available energy that is reliable, affordable and does not produce carbon."
This initiative from the private sector has been announced alongside the Mission Innovation that was held in Paris on Nov. 30. The MI is being supported by world leaders from more than 20 countries including Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and the United States.
The Guardian reported that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change stated that by year 2050, it is possible that nearly all of the electricity being used worldwide would be sourced from low-carbon energy facilities. To achieve this, the experts said that renewables must grow from 30% share today to 80% of power generation.
With all the efforts being exerted to fight climate change, Michael Brune, the executive director of Sierra Club, an environmental organization, said, "clean energy was already winning the fight against fossil fuels."
He ended his statement by praising the commitments of influential people by saying, "Now, these incredible public and private commitments, which are historic, essential, and timely, show that the nations of the world -- as well as many of the world's leading visionaries and philanthropists -- are committed to making clean energy even more widespread, even faster. What's now clearer than ever that our future will be 100% clean energy, and that dirty fossil fuels are merely riding out their final wave."
