Gates, Zuckerberg, Bezos: the big hi-tech join forces for the environment

THERE ARE (almost) everyone in the large group. Bill Gates, of course, is the leader of the fight for renewable energy and thus climate change, the central theme of the twenty-first Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention of the United Nations started today at the Parc des Expositions Paris le Bourget. Together with other colleagues, let's call them, the founder of Microsoft has decided to launch the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a holy alliance that, to the sound of money, can push the best innovation projects related to green energy worldwide. The stated goal is a bit 'as the strategy of Mark Zuckerberg on the web in developing countries, so that the production of energy from renewable non-fossil and non-polluting is really for everyone.

The name of the founder of Facebook is not accidental. In the group of investors decided to join Gates in fact appear, along with the future father and founder of the social network's most populous planet, even Jack Ma, the great leader of the Chinese portal (increasingly oriented to break through in the rest of the world) Alibaba, Jeff Bezos, the deus ex machina of Amazon, Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn professional social, the inevitable Richard Branson (Virgin Group) and George Soros and Meg Whitman, CEO of HP. Just to mention the leader of the new, ambitious project.

"Priscilla and I join Bill Gates in the launch of Breakthroug Energy Coalition to invest in new technologies for clean energy - Zuck said in a post on his profile - solve the problem of clean energy it is essential for building a better world. We will not be able to achieve any significant progress on other challenges, such as education or a more connected world, without secure energy and a stable climate. The path to a sustainable energy system is too slow, do not encourage the kind of ' innovation that we serve, and that would lead quickly to the objective. "

But what will actually great (and very rich) heads hi-tech international, along with some multimillionaires, venture capital funds and philanthropists? Invest. Put money on ideas that have the potential to "transform the way we produce and consume energy," said Zuckerberg. The announcement was therefore not accidental: in conjunction with the important conference that opens at this time in the City of Lights - which moreover is even Bill Gates himself - such a message pointing to stir doubts and resistances of Representatives of many countries to conduct, on 11 December, the signing of a binding agreement seriously and that it can enter into force quickly. Although many observers will be extremely complex.

Obviously it is not the first step of these pachyderms green technology in the world: many of them, all of Apple (who does not seem, for now, having taken part in the alliance for renewables), fed by the time of its production, the plants, the date of the factory and futuristic campus in clean energy. Now, however, the direction changes to: from the inside out, from its energy self-sufficiency - and shares some important but often little more than symbolic - the stimulus to new revolutionary ideas for the sector. Along with the free for all and health, the environment appears therefore more and more powerfully as macroambito strategy on which the protagonists of technology and web services will focus in the coming years.

Are 28 investors from across the world - from Silicon Valley, of course, to South Africa via China - on which Gates can count today in Paris. Besides those already mentioned, will be the game also Ratan Tata, owner of the Tata Group, Mukesh Ambani, CEO of Reliance Industries, Neil Shen, managing partner of Sequoia Capital, and the South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe's African Rainbow Minerals. The idea is to provide private companies and new business venture capital flexible resembling appropriations government: "The private companies will develop these new renewable energy - Gates said in a statement - but their work will consist of works research that usually only the government funds allow you to perform. " Gates obviously alludes to the US context, not to the more disheartening picture European and Italian in particular.

"We will focus on companies in the early stages that have the potential to develop energy with zero emissions of CO2 - the website says the alliance - some key principles to choose how and where to invest will invest quickly, across multiple areas, from agriculture to transport, in a deep, intelligent and preferring the countries that have signed the shareholders Mission Innovation ".

It does not end with the new initiative, the founder of Microsoft. Also during the day today with President Barack Obama, the first Indian minister Narendra Modi and Francois Hollande will present its Mission Innovation: with 17 other countries, the US, France and India will announce plans to double within five years 10 billion they spend collectively in research on clean energy.