Bill Gates, Others Launch Clean Energy Fund

The $1 billion Breakthrough Energy Ventures will invest in companies that make clean energy cheaper

 .. Fellow investors include Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, LinkedIn Corp. Chairman Reid Hoffman, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Chairman Jack Ma, and retired hedge fund manager John Arnold.
.. Members include billionaires Tom Steyer, George Soros and Richard Branson, and the University of California.
.. Reducing the cost of renewable energy, such as wind and solar power, and making it cheaper to add more of this power to the grid are areas the fund would likely support, Mr. Gates said in an interview.
.. While current clean-energy technologies should be used as much as possible, the technologies that will enable the U.S. and the world’s other major economies to cut greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 will be invented in the next 10 to 20 years, Mr. Gates added.
.. “By 2050, at least the large countries in the key sectors have to essentially be at zero,” he said.
.. Mr. Gates said that he and other investors want to convince the Trump administration to maintain or increase government funding for energy research and development.
.. U.S. venture-capital equity financing has fallen for new energy and other clean technology companies, to $2.2 billion this year through September, from $5.7 billion in 2011
.. More investment in next-generation technologies, such as power storage, could help solve some of the problems that come from generating more power from wind and sunshine, some energy industry participants and analysts said.

Google Says It Will Run Entirely on Renewable Energy in 2017

“We are the largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy in the world,”

.. Unlike carbon-based power, Mr. Kava said, wind supply prices do not fluctuate, enabling Google to plan better.

.. YouTube and Gmail, each of which has over 1 billion customers. They run on a global network of 13 large-scale data centers, each one a complex of many buildings containing hundreds of thousands of computers.

.. The 5.7 terawatt-hours of electricity Google consumed in 2015 “is equal to the output of two 500 megawatt coal plants,”

.. That is enough for two 140,000-person towns.

.. “Every time you double production, you reduce the cost of solar by about 20 percent. Wind goes down 10 to 12 percent,”

.. Critics note that while Google might be adding wind and solar to the world’s power grid, overall it is still dependent on fossil fuels, since sun and wind power are intermittent, while demand for things like YouTube cat videos is continual.

“In my mind it’s a P.R. gimmick,” said Chris Warren, vice president of communications at the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank in Washington supported largely by donations from individuals and companies in the fossil fuel industry.

Exxon CEO Now a Contender for Donald Trump’s Secretary of State

President-elect widens circle of candidates for top diplomatic job and will interview more prospects

Though Mr. Trump’s transition team said last week that the search had narrowed to four finalists, new candidates have emerged, including Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil Corp., one transition adviser said.

.. He’s very fortunate to have interest among serious men and women who, all of whom need to understand that their first responsibility as secretary of state would be to implement and adhere to the president-elect’s America First foreign policy, if you will, his view of the world.”

.. So far he has chosen to largely freestyle his engagement with foreign leaders, rather than rely on the State Department’s guidance for such conversations.

.. Choosing a secretary of state with scant foreign policy background, such as Exxon’s Mr. Tillerson, could further unnerve government officials serving in an institution that functions on strict protocols.

.. As Exxon’s chief executive, he has spoken against sanctions on Russia, where the company in 2012 signed a $3.2 billion deal that Mr. Putin said could eventually reach $500 billion in investments.

.. Mr. Tillerson has some of the closest CEO ties to Mr. Putin and Russia, with his work there dating back to when Mr. Putin rose to power after Boris Yeltsin’s resignation. The 2012 deal gave Exxon access to prized arctic resources. Later that year, the Kremlin bestowed the country’s Order of Friendship on the American businessman.

Oil-Price Rebound Gives Banks New Reason to Cheer

The higher oil prices stemming from OPEC’s agreement to cut crude production should give some banks a boost.

.. In particular, higher oil prices could mean that banks will release some of the reserves they set aside earlier this year to protect themselves against soured energy loans. Such releases would increase banks’ earnings.

.. Bank of America Corp. rose more than 4% on the day, Wells Fargo—2%, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.—1.6% and Citigroup Inc.—1.6%.

.. Fifteen of the largest U.S. banks amassed a combined $6 billion in reserves for energy loans, according to a Barclays analysis.