Bill Gates Raises $1 Billion As Corporate CEOs Support Clean-Energy Push
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has raised over $1 billion in corporate funding for Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, drawing on Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink to round up support for clean-energy projects.
BlackRock is making a five-year, $100 million grant to clean energy from its charitable foundation. Microsoft, alongside other supporters such as General Motors, American Airlines, and Bank of America, is providing a mix of equity capital and “offtakes”, or purchase agreements tied to the clean-energy projects.
“We’re not doing this to make money,” Larry Fink said in an interview with Bloomberg alongside Gates, “We’re doing this to seed these ideas, to rapidly accelerate ideas.”
Gates founded Breakthrough Energy Catalyst in 2015 to accelerate the commercial viability of four main solutions to climate change. These four solutions are sustainable aviation fuel, green hydrogen, long-duration battery storage, and carbon capture from the air.
Gates’ clean-energy company will supply the funding needed to kick-start capital-intensive projects until government contributions and debt financing can be raised to cover the remaining 90% of the cost.
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