Bill Gates & the EU Pledge $1 Billion for Green Technologies

With the aim of rolling out low carbon technologies, the Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy Ventures is teaming up with the European Union to raise USD 1 billion in funding.

The cooperation entails gathering private capital and philanthropic funds by Breakthrough Energy and combining them with EU community funding. The goal is to provide up to EUR 820 million, or USD 1 billion between 2022 and 2026. The European Commission said the money would be spent on the development of sustainable aviation fuels, technology to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, long-duration energy storage, and hydrogen produced from renewable energy sources.

The overall goal is to eliminate emissions from sectors like heavy industry and aviation, where currently these technologies are too expensive to compete with current fossil fuel alternatives. According to the EC, the investments will finance building large-scale commercial demonstration projects with the aim of reducing the cost of such technologies.

Source: Euractiv