Announced on November 30 at the UN climate negotiations being held in Paris, a new multi-billion dollar clean tech fund is aiming to accelerate the clean energy revolution.
Mission Innovation was launched in Paris on Monday, with the tagline “Accelerating the Clean Energy Revolution.” The aim of the new joint partnership is to “reinvigorate and accelerate public and private global clean energy innovation with the objective to make clean energy widely affordable.”
While the press release states that “Additional countries will be encouraged to join in the future,” the current list of countries involved is already highly telling of the importance being placed on increasing the focus on clean energy development. Those countries are: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States of America.
As part of Mission Innovation, each of the countries involved will seek to double its governmental and/or state-directed clean energy research and development investment over the next five years. These new investments will be aimed specifically at “transformational clean energy technology innovations” that will be scalable across a variety of economic and energy market conditions.
In addition, the world leaders behind Mission Innovation applauded the business investors involved in the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, which involves Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Virgin founder Richard Branson, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
The moves have been greeted with similar applause by industry insiders.
“America’s solar industry applauds the world’s government and business leaders for their commitment in Paris to funding clean energy research,” said Rhone Resch, president and chief executive officer of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). “While it’s clear that more needs to be done to tackle the world’s global warming challenge, the formation of this clean technology fund sends an irrefutable message that use of zero carbon energy sources, such as solar energy, must be the norm if we are to take meaningful steps to halt rising temperatures.”
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