Bill Gates Launches Clean Energy Fund

Smarter, more efficient technologies and manufacturing are also needed to drive down the cost of renewable electricity compared to conventional sources, including coal-fired power plants, the Microsoft (O:MSFT) co-founder said. “We need to bring the cost premium for being clean down,” he told CNN’s New Day show in an interview Monday.

Gates, who is listed by Forbes as the world’s richest person with a net worth of almost $80 billion, has already invested about $1 billion of his own money into breakthrough energy projects. This summer, he pledged to double that amount over the next five years, telling the Financial Times in June that existing technologies could only curb global warming pollution at a “beyond astronomical” economic cost.

As private investors pour more money into energy breakthroughs, Obama and other government leaders are promising to ramp up federal support for basic energy research and development. As part of Mission Innovation, an initiative announced Monday in Paris, 20 countries -- including China, India and Brazil -- committed to doubling their respective funding for clean energy research and development by 2020.

The U.S. spends about $5 billion a year on clean energy technology research, the most of any country in the world, according to government data. Clean energy advocates said those levels are insufficient given the challenge the U.S. faces in transitioning its energy system away from coal, oil and natural gas, and toward cleaner alternatives, such as wind and solar power.

“Five billion dollars is woefully inadequate,” said Tom Kimbis, vice president of executive affairs for the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade organization. By contrast, the U.S. spends $31 billion a year on healthcare research and $70 billion on defense research, out of an annual budget that surpasses $3 trillion, according to a review of federal budget data by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit.

Kimbis said the U.S. government shouldn’t just ramp up investments in research and development, as it’s pledging to do, but should also boost funding to help install existing renewable technologies. Solar, wind, biomass, geothermal and other low-carbon sources accounted for just 13 percent of total U.S. electricity generation in 2014, with coal, natural gas and nuclear power supplying the bulk of power to American homes and businesses, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

“We don’t need to reinvent the solar panel; the technology exists today,” Kimbis said. “It’s more important for governments to step forward and take dramatic action to implement changes in their energy infrastructure.”