Bill Gates Convinces billionaires to invest in cleantech energy ventures during the COP21

In the twelve-day global climate change meeting in Paris, Microsoft's Bill Gates has convinced 28 billionaires to invest big money in the Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC), which is a private venture fund for new energy cleantech.

The BEC, which Gates announced in the Conference Of the Parties (COP21), aims to mitigate the 90% dependency of the world on hydrocarbons. The BEC somehow needs to coordinate with the government to create breakthroughs out of current federal research.

This is why, according to Forbes, President Barack Obama, French president Francois Hollande, and Indian Prime Minister Modi launched the new Mission Innovation initiative that commits 20 countries to double their efforts on research and development on clean energy in the next five years.

However, BEC will still be key to these initiatives, since it will be private companies that will make these breakthroughs, according to Gates.

In a report by Observer Voice, some of the major billionaires that joined BEC are Salesforce's Mark Benioff, Hewlett Packard's Meg Whitman, Virgin's Richard Brandson, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Gfinancier George Soros, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.

"Solving the clean energy problem is an essential part of building a better world," said Mark Zuckerberg in a report by the International Business Times. "The Breakthrough Energy Coalition will invest in ideas that have the potential to transform the way we all produce and consume energy."

The BEC can only succeed if it follows Bill Gates' principle to use more money to fund more scientists instead of corporate projects.One good exampple of a failed corporate project is the single solar company Solyndra, which lost $1.5 billion. Seventy Five percent of which came from the government.

This is one of the major reasons why the word "cleantech" has a negative appeal to Venture Capitalists. However, Bill Gates influence seem to have turned this idea around.