As many as 20 billionaires worldwide including Microsoft's Bill Gates, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Alibaba's Jack Ma have committed an investment of $1 billion to support advancements in the production of clean energy.
The objective of the fund, called "Breakthrough Energy Ventures," is to bring about a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, according to Bloomberg. The fund will invest money for 20 years into risky, long-term energy technologies. The investment would likely go into areas such as electricity generation and storage, agriculture, and transportation.
The fund, backed by a mix of technology luminaries and heavyweights from the energy industry, also include Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Group Ltd., John Arnold, a billionaire natural gas trader, and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, the founder of Kingdom Holding.
The Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund is not a new idea. A group of wealthy investors joined Bill Gates last year to form the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with the aim of investing a large portion of their fortunes into energy technology.
Gates has been serious about supporting advances in energy production. He remains bullish about the idea that technologies like solar plants, nuclear power, and electric cars are only short term solutions to global warming. Gates believes that the only way to stop global warming is to come up with an energy source that produces no greenhouse gasses at all.
Gates is personally backing some energy startups and has encouraged other wealthy individuals to follow suit.
"I am honored to work along with these investors to build on the powerful foundation of public investment in basic research," Gates said in a statement. "Our goal is to build companies that will help deliver the next generation of reliable, affordable, and emissions-free energy to the world."
Two venture capitalists, who have invested in clean energy startups -- John Doerr and Vinod Khosla --, are among the backers of the new fund.