Some of the world's highest-profile tech executives are putting US$1 Billion (AU$1.333 Billion) into a fund to spur clean energy technology and address global climate change a year after the Paris climate agreement.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates launched the Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund along with Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, ana Alibaba Holding Group's Jack Ma.  In a statement, the godfathers of tech say their goal is to increase financing of emerging energy research and reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to help meet goals set in Paris.

"We need affordable and reliable energy that doesn’t emit greenhouse gas to power the future and to get it, we need a different model for investing in good ideas and moving them from the lab to the market," Mr. Gates told online magazine Quartz. 

Gates and the others formed this coalition in December 2015 to spur research, development and deployment of clean energy technologies.  They see it as more necessary than ever because of US president-elect Donald Trump's denial of global warming - which he claims is a hoax invented by China - and hostility towards clean energy projects.

"The dialogue with the new administration as it comes in about how they see energy research will be important," said Gates, "Tthe general idea that research is a good deal fortunately is not a partisan thing."  Gates says they'll continue to bring the message to Trump by appealing to his self-described business acumen: "Even if you don't look at the climate change piece of this, investing makes sense."