This is how Bill Gates wants to stop climate change

This summer, Bill Gates promised to help “bend the curve” on climate change. Now he is showing how. The Microsoft co-founder is teaming up with India, France, the US, and other nations to throw his weight – and his billions – behind clean technology.

Gates will join Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, US President Barack Obama, and French President Francois Hollande to announce the Clean Tech Initiative on the opening day of the UN climate change summit in Paris today, media reports said.

It will see nations doubling their budgets for research and development into clean energy technology by 2020. It will also see private investors putting in more resources in the sector, financial news site DealStreetAsia reported.

Indonesia, South Korea, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Canada and Norway are among the other countries expected to join the initiative, the site said.

Access to clean energy technology will be in focus in the global agreement to combat climate change. The pact will be negotiated at the 21st UN Conference of the Parties summit from November 30 to December 11. More than 190 countries are part of the discussions.

India, the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter, will be one of the founding beneficiaries of the new initiative. It has consistently argued that developed countries need to help poorer nations gain access to renewable energy or zero-emission technologies.

Billionaires for clean technology

This comes right after the launch of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a club of 20 billionaires, including Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, which has promised to invest in clean technology.

“With people like him [Gates] getting involved, there is a real possibility of there being private-sector partnerships on the technology side,” a Modi spokesperson was quoted as saying in The Guardian.

As the earth heats up due to emissions, putting lives and livelihoods at risk the world over, the billionaires of the Breakthrough Energy Coalition are diving in with their billions and influence. “Our primary goal with the Coalition is as much to accelerate progress on clean energy as it is to make a profit,” Gates says in a post on his website.

The world needs widely available energy that is reliable, affordable and does not produce carbon, the coalition says. The only way to accomplish that goal is by developing new tools to power the world, it believes.

Gates believes breakthrough technologies are needed to help reduce emissions. Earlier this year, he pledged US$2 billion of his wealth over the next five years to “bend the curve” on climate change.

The billionaire-philanthropist believes government backing for research and development into clean technology is key to roping in private investment in the sector.

That is already visible In India. While Prime Minister Modi has set ambitious targets of 100GW solar and 60GW wind power for the country by 2022, Japan’s SoftBank, India’s telco Bharti, and Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn have also formed a fund named SBG Cleantech. The fund aims to back clean technology startups and also bid for solar plant tenders ‎under the National Solar Mission program and state-specific solar programs.

Sources: DealStreetAsia, The Guardian, Forbes, Tech in Asia, Breakthrough Energy Coalition