Soros Bets $1 Billion on Cleantech

With two months to go until world leaders gather in Copenhagen to try to hammer out a climate change agreement, billionaire George Soros is putting up some big money to invest in clean technology.

Soros said at meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate, an international association including 430 newspapers from 150 countries, that he will invest $1 billion in clean energy technology. The billionaire activist said he will also donate $100 million to an environmental advisory group to aid policymakers, Bloomberg reports.

The $100 million will come in $10-million-a-year increments to the Climate Policy Initiative, a San Francisco organization Soros will establish.

As for the investments, "I want to apply rather stringent criteria to the investments," Soros wrote in an email to Bloomberg. "They should be profitable but should actually make a contribution to solving the problem."

Soros' commitment comes as policymakers gear up for a 194-nation summit in Copenhagen in December to hammer out a new climate-change treaty.

It also comes at a time of renewed action in cleantech investing. Soros is the second legendary capitalist to commit $1 billion or more in the past few months to investing in the field.

Vinod Khosla, the venture capitalist, has raised two funds worth slightly more than $1 billion and which will focus primarily on cleantech investments.

Exxon Mobil has committed up to $600 million to a project with biotech entrepreneur Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics to come up with alternative fuels made from algae.

Duke Energy has cut deals with two utilities in China to jointly explore cleaner ways of generating electricity.

The U.S. House has passed a bill that would cap greenhouse-gas emissions and set up a trading system in which companies that pollute less can trade the right to emit greenhouse gas with those that emit more.

Soros prefers a tax on carbon emissions, because trading systems can be manipulated by investors.

The goal of the Climate Policy Initiative Soros is setting up is to advocate for the public interest as governments set up programs to address climate change.

“The problem of global warming is primarily a political problem at this point,” Soros told Bloomberg. “The science is beyond dispute, but how do we achieve the objectives we all know are necessary? That is a political problem.”