Soros pledges $1.3b to find climate change solutions

Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the "political problem" of climate change, says he will invest US$1 billion ($1.3 billion) in clean-energy technology and create an organisation to advise policy makers on environmental issues.

Soros, the founder of hedge fund Soros Fund Management, announced the investment in Copenhagen yesterday at a meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate. The group is made up of 430 newspapers from 150 countries.

"I want to apply rather stringent criteria to the investments," said Soros in an emailed message. "They should be profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem."

Soros, whose own wealth accounts for much of the approximately US$24 billion his New York-based money-management firm oversees, didn't provide details on the type or scope of possible investments.

Soros, 79, also will establish the Climate Policy Initiative, a San Francisco-based organisation to which he will donate US$10 million a year for 10 years.

"It will be part advisory service, part policy developer and part watchdog," said Thomas Heller, who is heading the initiative. Heller is a professor at Stanford University Law School whose expertise is in energy law and regulation and environmental law.

Its goal is to look after the public interest as policies and programmes are created to address climate change.

The organisation will address subjects such as carbon-emissions trading. Soros has said he prefers a greenhouse-gas tax because carbon emission-trading systems can be manipulated by investors.

Some US legislators, energy companies and traders are campaigning for a so-called cap-and-trade system in the US. It would set limits for the release of carbon dioxide, blamed for global warming, and let firms trade emissions allowances.

- BLOOMBERG