On Monday, the United Nations climate change summit will open in Paris, and Bill Gates will be launching a multi-billion dollar clean energy research and development initiative alongside some of the world’s most-powerful politicians. The members of the initiative, which includes both developed and developing countries, will pledge to double the amount of funding they put into clean energy research and development by 2020, and Bill Gates will invest more than $1 billion of his own wealth over the next five years.
In June 2015, Microsoft co-founder and philantrophist Bill Gates announced he would invest $1 billion in clean energy tech over the next five years. Now, according to a report by ClimateWire, Gates is making good on that promise by launching a multibillion dollar fund focused on clean energy research and development. The fund, reportedly scheduled to be unveiled Monday in Paris, during the United Nations Climate Change Conference, will be funded by Gates and other billionaires to a multibillion tune, though exact figures are unknown at this point. Also on Monday, a group of countries including the U.S. and India are expected to reveal they will double their research and development budgets for clean energy, as well as form a coalition for joint efforts in the future. The money from Gates’ new fund will be used to help the new coalition’s projects. One of the ClimateWire sources called this “the single biggest cooperative research and development partnership in history.” The two-week conference in Paris starts Nov. 30, with more than 160 nations sending their delegations. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in November he expects the governments to “conclude a meaningful, binding agreement in Paris.”
