Gates’ coalition targets global warming
Silicon Valley titans team with UC to combat crises
Bill Gates and a powerful coalition of top Silicon Valley thinkers, leaders and philanthropists will announce on Monday two initiatives created to spend tens of billions of dollars in the next five years to develop clean energy technology in efforts to fight global warming.
Along with the 10-campus University of California system — with its three national energy labs — the team of stellar names includes Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, Meg Whitman, John Doerr, Tom Steyer, Marc Benioff and Vinod Khosla. This group, Gates said, will support companies that are taking innovative clean-energy
ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace.
“I’m in Paris today with several world leaders for a big announcement on energy and climate change,” he wrote Sunday evening on his blog, Gatesnotes. com. “It is deeply moving to be in this city just two weeks after the horrific attacks here, and I am inspired by the way the French people have persevered in such a difficult time.”
The UC system had already pledged more than $1 billion over the next five years toward innovation in clean energy.
“Home to some of the best climate scientists in the world and as a public research institution,” said UC President Janet Napolitano, “we take the imperative to solve global climate change very seriously.”
Gates, the Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist, commented: “We can’t ask for a better partner than the University of California Office of the President and the Office of the Chief Investment Officer to help accomplish the Breakthrough Energy Coalition’s ambitious goal. The UC system … produces the kinds of groundbreaking technologies that will help define a global energy future that is cheaper, more reliable and does not contribute to climate change.”
In writing about the two initiatives — called “parallel” by the White House — Gates said they will be formally announced at the opening of the United Nations climate summit. They are:
Mission Innovation — a commitment by more than 10 countries, including the United States and France, to invest more in research on clean energy.
Breakthrough Energy n Coalition — a global group of the some of the world’s most powerful, private investors.
“I think it absolutely has to be clean energy or else we will all be living in a terrible situation,” said Steyer, president of San Franciscobased NextGen Climate. “This can be a statement to all businesses that we all should pitch in.”
The 10 countries, which also include India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada and Norway, have already decided to participate in the “ambitious” project that will aim at developing clean energies, according to one French official.
The amount of money involved, from countries, companies and individuals, is projected to be in the tens of billions of dollars, according to a former U.S. government official who is familiar with the initiative and a document obtained by The Associated Press. The money would be geared toward research and development of technologies, such as energy storage, that could make clean power from wind and solar more usable regardless of weather vagaries.
Gates emphasized the importance of alleviating energy poverty, a condition suffered by millions of people who can’t get any energy, by delivering nonpolluting energy to them.
“Low- and middle-income countries need energy to develop their economies and help more people escape poverty,” Gates wrote on his blog. “But the world’s growing demand for energy is also a big problem, because most of that energy comes from hydrocarbons, which emit greenhouse gases and drive climate change. So we need to move to sources of energy that are affordable and reliable and don’t produce any carbon.”
According to the AP, the billionaire investors will make their pledges good only on the condition that the governments deliver on their end. According to an early draft of Mission Innovation, governments participating were pledging to double their clean energy research and development spending in the next five years.
A major complication for the United States is securing such funds and participation approved by a U.S. Congress controlled by a Republican Party that officially rejects climate change science.
“The Obama administration recognizes that this is a fundamental competitive advantage for the United States. It’s time to double down on that competitive advantage” and invest far more in clean energy research and development, the former U.S. official said.
The conference center will host the climate summit that starts officially Monday with more than 140 world leaders including those of the United States, China and Russia, to talk about their commitment to fight climate change and reduce ever-rising carbon dioxide emissions.