Bill Gates launches $1bn energy investment fund

Billionaire philanthropist, founder of Microsoft and investor Bill Gates is launching a $1 billion fund, called Breakthrough Energy Ventures, to invest in new forms of clean energy. Gates has gathered a group of like-minded investors, including Silicon Valley venture capitalists John Doerr and Vinod Khosla and former hedge manager John Arnold, to join him in the fund.

In a post on his Gates Notes blog, Gates said the fund will invest in “scientific breakthroughs that have the potential to deliver cheap and reliable clean energy to the world.”

“We need affordable and reliable energy that doesn’t emit greenhouse gas to power the future—and to get it, we need a different model for investing in good ideas and moving them from the lab to the market,” Gates said in his post.

He also mentioned on his latest blog post that it’s the next step in an effort that began December, 2015 when we brought together private investors from around the globe who were passionate about solving this problem. We formed the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of entrepreneurs, business leaders, and institutional investors committed to help bring promising new zero-emissions energy technologies to market. The Coalition partnered with Mission Innovation, an initiative of more than 20 countries and the European Union to double their investment in clean energy research and development in the next five years

The investors in Breakthrough Energy Ventures have a high tolerance for risk and are willing to wait longer than typical venture funds for a return on their investment, Gates pointed out. The group has spelled out five “grand challenges” which it says are the biggest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions around the world: electricity, buildings, manufacturing, transportation and food.

Gates, the world’s richest man, and his investors see this list as a “landscape of innovation”—essentially, a roadmap that Breakthrough Energy Ventures and others can use to focus their attention and guide their investment decisions over the next two decades.

Even though $1 billion is a significant step, it is just one of many steps on the path to a sustainable energy future.

Gates concluded that with patience, flexibility, collaboration, and a clear vision backed by meaningful investment, we, the fund’s investors, are confident the world can meet its energy needs in a way that is fair, safe, and sustainable. And we’re excited about the role that Breakthrough Energy Ventures will play in that effort.