Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Catalyst has pledged an investment of $276 million in climate innovation in the United Kingdom, matching that country’s commitment to scale up a suite of clean technologies.
Gates and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the partnership totaling $552 million on Tuesday at the Global Investment Summit. The investments will be deployed over the next 10 years.
A pleasure to sit down with @BillGates at the Global Investment Summit today, where we announced a new £400m partnership between the government and @Breakthrough to supercharge a green industrial revolution across the UK: https://t.co/yUDqXdrjJ1#UKinvestment #BuildBackBetter pic.twitter.com/9lREGD5UyP
— Boris Johnson (@BorisJohnson) October 19, 2021
Catalyst is a program within the Microsoft co-founder’s Breakthrough Energy umbrella organization. Its objective is to bring together governments, philanthropists and companies to invest in climate technologies. The program’s focus is on quickly developing and deploying green hydrogen, batteries and energy storage, sustainable aviation fuels and direct air capture of carbon.
“In order to achieve net-zero emissions, we need to reduce the costs of clean technologies so they can compete with and replace the high-emitting products we use today — I call this difference in price the Green Premium,” Gates said in a statement.
The matching dollars don’t come only from Gates. Investors and businesses working with Catalyst will contribute to the investment, according to the organization.
The U.K. investment is part of that country’s broader £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.
The announcement of the partnership comes weeks before the start of the COP26 climate talks.