The Breakthrough Energy Catalyst fund has attracted another major investment. Mitsubishi Corporation – a Japanese trading company, is investing $100 million in Bill Gates’ initiative, created to expand decarbonization technologies, to support the clean energy innovation.
Mitsubishi Corporation is the first Asian company to make a commitment of this scale to Breakthrough Energy Catalyst. The company aims to fulfill its climate change targets by reducing emissions and assisting in growing technologies that will stop polluting our environment in a way that will not compromise our quality of life.
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Breakthrough Energy was founded by Bill Gates in 2015 and unites a network of initiatives in funding, developing, and commercializing the most promising technologies needed to solve the climate crisis.
Breakthrough Energy Catalyst is the program that brings together corporations, governments, and private philanthropy to accelerate the adoption of climate technologies, focused on four areas – clean hydrogen, long-duration energy storage, sustainable aviation fuel, and direct air capture.
Catalyst aims to speed up the commercialization of these technologies by making targeted investments from a pool of provided financing. The fund will target to significantly decrease the price of these potential climate change solutions to increase their availability in the market and thus demonstrate how to finance the infrastructure of decarbonization at scale.
According to Breakthrough Energy, the four technologies mentioned above will underpin the net zero economy. However, currently, they are more expensive than their fossil-fuel alternatives. Bill Gates refers to the difference in the costs as a “green premium”.
Mitsubishi Corporation has its own climate goal of carbon neutrality and published its roadmap in October 2021. It plans to cut in half its emissions compared to 2020 levels by 2030 and achieve net zero by 2050. It bets on doubling the renewable power capacity and creating supply chains for hydrogen/ammonia and other next-generation energy sources.
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By participating in Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, the company wants to accelerate its commitments and assist Catalyst’s partners in decarbonizing steel, aviation, finance, energy, and other industries while working to achieve its roadmap.
