Microsoft, Facebook founders to invest in clean energy tech

PanARMENIAN.Net - Bill Gates and a group of elite private investors — including Facebook cofounder Mark Zuckerberg, Alibaba cofounder Jack Ma, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, among others — on Monday, November 30, announced the launch of Breakthrough Energy Coalition, VentureBeat reports.

Gates says the new multi-billion dollar clean energy research and development initiative “will help companies get clean-energy innovation out of the lab and into the marketplace.” You can read the initiative’s principles here, but the broad focus is on bringing “widely available energy that is reliable, affordable, and does not produce carbon.”

The launch was timed to coincide with the opening day of the UN climate change summit in Paris. Companies from the tech sector are increasingly joining the discussion on clean energy; Apple, for example, announced in October that its global operations are now 87 percent powered by renewables.

Key areas of focus are expected to be around electricity generation and storage, transportation, industrial use, agriculture, and energy system efficiency. Ultimately, the goal is a “near zero emissions energy future.”