Tens of billions promised to goose clean energy tech

Government and business leaders plan to spend tens of billions of dollars in the next five years to develop clean energy technology in efforts to fight global warming, an official and a former official tell The Associated Press.

The initiative, which will be announced Monday along with the opening of the UN climate summit, involves Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates, US President Barack Obama and French President Francois Hollande, according to a French official and a former US official who weren’t authorized to talk on the record.

France, the US, India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada and Norway have already decided to participate in the “ambitious” project that will aim at developing clean energies, the French official says.

The amount of money involved, from countries, companies and individuals would be in the tens of billions of dollars, according to the former US government official, who is familiar with the initiative, and a document obtained by the AP. The money would be geared toward research and development of technologies, such as energy storage that could make clean power from wind and solar more usable regardless of weather vagaries.

— AP