how exactly are these investments being
structured it's quite interesting it's
basically a combination of public and
private so you've got Bill Gates Jack
Marit cetera and Zuckerberg they've got
a two billion dollar fund in factory
what they're trying to do very sort of
innovative take the risk almost like a
Silicon Valley startup and then
alongside that you've got 20 or so
governments promising to double their
more traditional much larger R&D budgets
again into clean energy so you've got a
lot of big names here a lot of buzz but
how big is the actual commitment so it's
two billion and Bill Gates today said
hey I'm going to put up a billion
dollars of my own money and so to pollen
is one of the biggest funds with such
sort of research ever but then you you
know kind of draw back and look at these
billionaires and you look at besos you
look at Zuckerberg and you look at gates
together their total net worth about 200
billion dollars so you're looking about
1% of that but I mean yeah there's an
absolutely massive number David what do
you make of this well for one thing I
think the name is interesting the
breakthrough award because in fact this
is the name of a separate prize that
Zuckerberg and Yuri Milner and Sergey
Brin have together for a science so it
applies to me that zuckerberg might have
had a little bigger role in this then
has been generally discussed I don't
know what kind of scale of contribution
he's making to it but I suspect it's
very large I mean I do think these
people really care about energy but it
also really surprises me what a wide
range of people are involved there's a
bunch of hedge fund billionaires as
george soros Jack Ma from China you know
it's really an interesting group I've
never seen this kind of group come
together for anything I think it makes a
very strong statement that's desperately
needed because let's face it we are in
deep trouble with climate change and I'm
lucky I didn't just say the word i
almost said after deep but anyway it's
really a problem we got to do something
about it on that note you know what is
the approach for the coalition and how
how do we know that they're actually
going to make progress tom well that's
the big question i guess i think sort of
why might feel reassures as david just
said it's the quality of the people
involved in this thing and gates us you
really pushing it forward I mean after
today's conference he was given a speech
next to him as Obama Modi present
hollander
so what's the actual approach so
basically for the fund itself they're
going to tie up with the University of
California and really I mean today was
the first day got announced so it's not
really clear but one suspects they'll be
you know taking in their knowledge from
tech startups so just trying to look for
very risk-taking and in some cases I
think some of the billionaires going to
best individually so they sent hate this
good in a few years we've got a long
enough time horizon to make a profit on
this all right