Roughly a year ago, Gates launched clean-energy investment fun, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with the help of other famous billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Jack Ma. Gates serves as the co-chair of the board with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
Under his leadership, Gates is using the $1 billion fund to invest in promising but underfunded technologies that could help humans "adapt to the climate change that is already affecting the planet, and develop new tools that will keep the problem from getting worse."
These particularly promising areas include grid-scale storage, liquid fuels, mini-grids, alternative building materials and geothermal power. Gates believe that investing in these fields could have real results.
"Breakthroughs in storage — for example, storing energy as heat or in flywheels — would make today's renewable technology more practical and affordable," he explains.