Breakthrough Energy Ventures — an initiative to help the planet reach zero carbon emissions through innovation — has raised its second $1 billion round of funding.
The new capital will fund some 40-50 startups, according to Bloomberg News, and will focus on some of the trickier green technologies in development, including climate-friendlier steel and cement production, long-haul transportation, and technologies for capturing carbon from the air.
Breakthrough Energy Ventures is led by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and publicly launched in December 2016. Its investors and board of directors include more than two-dozen ultra-wealthy tech and business leaders from around the globe, including Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, Alibaba’s Jack Ma, and Michael Bloomberg.
Startups already backed by the fund are working on wide-ranging technologies including batteries, fusion reactors, biofuels, geothermal power, cleaner fertilizer and alternative protein sources.
A notable feature of the fund is its “patient capital” approach that makes investments over a 20-year period, as opposed to the conventional venture capital approach that looks for returns on investments within five years.
As Bloomberg notes, Breakthrough Energy Ventures aims to make money, but is focused on meaningful climate benefits: the startups need to make the case that they can scale up to size that cuts “at least 500 million metric tons of annual CO₂ emissions — about 1% of global emissions.”
In November, one of the startups backed by the fund, QuantumScape went public by virtue of a merger with Kensington Capital, a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The company, which is developing lithium-metal battery technology, also attracted $300 million in investments from Volkswagen.
The amount invested in the low-carbon energy transition last year totaled $501.3 billion globally — a new record, according to a report out last week from BloombergNEF.
There are other efforts large and small underway to drive more innovation to cut carbon emissions.
- Last summer, Amazon unveiled its $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund, a venture capital program directed at sustainable technologies that could help it fulfill its promise to become net carbon neutral by 2040.
- A year ago, Microsoft created its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund and announced that it would be carbon negative by 2030.
- Other climate investment vehicles for the wealthiest donors include Prime and Khosla Ventures.
- Also last year, Seattle-based Decarbon8-US, or D8, and Portland-based nonprofit VertueLab announced philanthropic investment funds in the climate space.
- In 2019, Gates announced Breakthrough Energy Ventures Europe, an investment fund that aims to boost clean-energy innovation in Europe launched with 100 million euros.
But some experts caution against so much emphasis on innovation as the answer to solving climate change. Penn State climatologist Michael E. Mann argues that public policy needs to be a driving factor and that there are green technologies already available that need to be ramped up. Breakthrough Energy, the overarching organization that includes the investment fund, does include work with policymakers as one of its strategies.
