UC will be the sole institutional investor in the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, according to the university. The coalition has 28 investors from 10 countries, including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman.
The coalition’s goal is to invest in projects and ideas that have the potential to deliver carbon-free power and bring them to the market.
“The University of California, with its 10 campuses and three national energy labs, is home to some of the best climate scientists in the world and as a public research institution we take the imperative to solve global climate change very seriously,” UC President Janet Napolitano said in a statement.
“The UC system — with its world-leading campuses and labs — produces the kinds of groundbreaking technologies that will help define a global energy future that is cheaper, more reliable, and does not contribute to climate change,” Gates said in a statement. Gates has committed $1 billion of his own money to the initiative, according to news reports.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition is a counterpart to another clean-energy initiative called Mission Innovation. That coalition will be led by governments from around the world.
The Breakthrough Energy Coalition and Mission Innovation will be announced this week at the high-stakes United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.
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