‘Extraordinary collaboration’ needed to get clean energy ideas out of the lab and into the market: Bill Gates

[LONDON] Breakthrough Energy (BE) – the cleantech investment firm founded by American billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates – is working together with Singapore state investor Temasek and government agency Enterprise Singapore to identify and develop climate technology innovation in South-east Asia.

BE is doing so via a new fellowship programme based out of Singapore, which marks the first such BE Fellows hub outside of the US.

This fellowship, which was launched in April this year, provides researchers, scientists, engineers and innovators in Singapore and the region with funding and support, to take their climate solutions to the next stage of development and commercialisation.

Through the programme, each participating fellow’s research will receive an initial US$500,000 grant for further development and technology de-risking.

A team of technical experts from BE advise the fellows, and the funds invest in their startups. The proviso is that the technology must eventually contribute to helping companies and governments in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

BE was launched in 2015 by Microsoft founder Gates, with the aim of funding breakthrough technologies and advocating for climate-smart policies.

BT in your inbox

Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.

Sign Up

Sign Up

Gates told the media that BE was formed at a time when the Paris Agreement had just been adopted and nearly every country made commitments to ambitious emissions cuts.

“Meeting these goals would require unprecedented investment from the private sector to drive innovation. It would also require extraordinary collaboration across all sectors to get affordable clean energy ideas out of the lab and into the market,” he said.

Gates told The Business Times at a recent event in London that Temasek is a “substantial investor” in the Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) Select Fund, a venture capital fund managed by BE.

SEE ALSO

Denmark to introduce world’s first livestock carbon tax

Net-zero goals: Talk is cheap if Singapore corporates lack a road map

Food manufacturers struggle to cut down plastic packaging

A BE spokesperson said that this fund has raised US$600 million for investment in 15 to 20 companies, with a target to reach US$1 billion. Other large investors include Harvard University’s endowment fund.

According to its website, BEV has more than US$3.5 billion in committed capital to invest in more than 110 cutting-edge companies, ranging from seed to growth stage.

One company that Temasek and BEV have jointly invested in is Rize, a Singapore-based agritech startup that earlier this year secured US$14 million in a Series A funding round that also involved GenZero and Wavemaker Impact.

Rize said after the funding announcement that it would grow its team of agronomists to more than 100, in order to reach out to more rice farmers and address their challenges, such as a lack of data and the high cost of production.

“Thanks to brilliant minds, big ideas and bold investments, transformative climate tech has arrived,” said Gates.

He noted that electricity grids around the world should step up their efforts to obtain more energy from wind, water and other renewable sources. Governments should invest in building safe and advanced nuclear and fusion plants to meet the growing global demand for this energy, he added.  

Representatives of more than 100 green businesses – in areas such as carbon capture and storage, clean energy and artificial intelligence – backed by BE were in attendance at the event.

Gates told the investors: “If you are helping to solve climate, the chance of building very large and very profitable companies (will follow). It’s fair to say that what we are seeing (with) those companies is the foundation for this green industrial revolution.”