Breakthrough Energy is the umbrella name of several organizations, founded by
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
in 2015, that aim to accelerate innovation in
sustainable energy and in other technologies to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from human activities strengthen the greenhouse effect, contributing to climate change. Most is carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and natural gas. The largest emitters include coal in China and ...
. It invests in a variety of startup companies that are attempting to commercialize new concepts such as
nuclear fusion
Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles ( neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manife ...
, large-capacity batteries to store
renewable energy, and microbe-generated
biofuels.
History
At the
2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2015, Gates announced that a coalition of 28
high net-worth investors from ten countries had committed to the Breakthrough Energy initiative. A complementary initiative of Gates,
Mission Innovation
Mission Innovation is a global initiative to accelerate public and private clean energy innovation to address climate change, make clean energy affordable to consumers, and create green jobs and commercial opportunities.
History
Mission Innovati ...
, was announced at the same time.
In December 2016, a group of investors collectively worth announced more personal commitment to funding the efforts of a fund "focused on fighting climate change by investing in clean energy innovation." The fund is named Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund.
Strategy
At its inception, Gates explained, "The renewable technologies we have today, like wind and solar, have made a lot of progress and could be one path to a zero-carbon energy future... But given the scale of the challenge, we need to be exploring many different paths." Breakthrough Energy invests primarily in businesses where the risk of failure is high and the timeframe for return on investment is 20 years. Traditional
venture capitalists
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...
look for a return on investment in five years, which may not be enough for the special challenges of the energy sector.
Members
The group is spearheaded by
Bill Gates
William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...
, who previously announced a personal $2 billion investment, and includes:
*
Jeff Bezos
Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former preside ...
*
Marc Benioff
Marc Russell Benioff (born September 25, 1964) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, an enterprise cloud computing company. In September 2018, Benioff acquired ''Time (mag ...
*
Michael Bloomberg
*
Richard Branson
*
Reid Hoffman
Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman was the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily for prof ...
*
Jack Ma
Jack Ma Yun (; born 10 September 1964) is a Chinese business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate. In addition, he co-founded Yunfen ...
*
George Soros
George Soros ( name written in eastern order), (born György Schwartz, August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist. , he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated mo ...
*
Tom Steyer
Thomas Fahr Steyer (born June 27, 1957) is an American climate investor, businessman, hedge fund manager, philanthropist, environmentalist, and liberal activist. Steyer is the co-founder and co-chair of Galvanize Climate Solutions, founder and ...
*
Meg Whitman
Margaret Cushing Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is the US ambassador to Kenya, an American business executive and former gubernatorial candidate for California. She is a board member of Procter & Gamble and General Motors. Whitman was previously ...
*
Mark Zuckerberg
*
University of California
The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...
, the sole institutional investor at launch
*
Nat Simons
Nathaniel Simons (born 1966) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist. He is the founder of Meritage Group, an investment management firm managing over $12 billion in assets, co-founder of Prelude Ventures, a Clean te ...
*
Mukesh Ambani
Criticism
There has been criticism that the coalition was announced too early, before crucial details had been confirmed. At launch, a
Gates Foundation
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), a merging of the William H. Gates Foundation and the Gates Learning Foundation, is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was ...
spokesman confirmed that investment professionals had yet to be appointed, named investors—other than Gates—had not publicly stated their level of investment and a financial structure had not been confirmed.
Notable projects
*Blue Frontier - a startup developing new
air-conditioning technologies
*Verdox — carbon capture. On February 2, 2022, Breakthrough Energy agreed to join an investors syndicate providing $80 million in capital to Verdox, Inc., a
startup company
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend ...
attempting to
scale a new
carbon capture Carbon capture may refer to:
* Carbon capture and utilization, where the captured carbon dioxide is used
* Carbon sequestration, where the captured carbon dioxide is stored
** Carbon capture and storage, referring to carbon sequestration from point ...
and
removal platform developed at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
—one of five carbon capture technology investments the organization would make by the beginning of the following May. The Verdox, Inc. carbon capture design, created by chemical engineers
T. Alan Hatton and Sahag Voskian, co-won a $1 million preliminary prize along with
Carbfix (co-founded by geochemist
Wallace S. Broecker) from an
X Prize Foundation contest funded by
SpaceX CEO
Elon Musk
Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a business magnate and investor. He is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla, Inc.; owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc.; founder of The ...
.
*
Methanol fuel cells (August 2022), conversion of methanol to electricity
Some of the activities include how to connect producers and consumers of
green hydrogen
Green hydrogen (GH2 or GH2) is hydrogen generated by renewable energy or from low-carbon power.
Green hydrogen has significantly lower carbon emissions than grey hydrogen, which is produced by steam reforming of natural gas, which makes up the b ...
.
See also
*
Global Apollo Programme The Global Apollo Programme was a historic call for a major global science and economics research programme to make Renewable energy, carbon-free Base load power plant, baseload electricity less costly than Fossil fuel power station, electricity fro ...
References
; Bundled references
{{reflist, group=list
External links
Official website
2015 in the environment
2015 in Paris
Climate change finance
United Nations climate change conferences
Renewable energy commercialization
Sustainable energy
Bill Gates