TheEconomistSeptember 21st 2019 691B
ets on cleantechnologies have bal-
looned this decade. Over $2.6trn has
flowed into low-carbon energy alone since
2010, according to Bloombergnef, a re-
search firm (see chart 1 on next page). Now
that some ventures have soured, after
green subsidies grew stingier around the
world, many investors are thinking again.
Many, but not all. A clutch of industrial-
ists and entrepreneurs are doubling down.
The Economist’s unscientific survey has
identified 12 with notably climate-friendly
dispositions, and a combined net worth of
$200bn (see chart 2). Some, like Elon Musk,
Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, are
household names. Others are little-known
outside their industry. Their wagers cover
mature technologies (electric cars, wind
turbines), fast-maturing ones (high-vol-
tage grids, meatless burgers) and out-there
ideas (turning carbon from the air into use-
ful stuff ). All want to do good by the planet.
Most expect to do well for themselves.
The world’s most prominent green mo-
gul is Mr Musk. Having made a killing withPayPal, an online-payments firm, he
ploughed some of his fortune into Tesla.
The carmaker is in trouble; last year it lost
roughly $1bn. But it has turned electric ve-
hicles from an unsightly curiosity (think
g-Wiz) first into an object of desire, then,
with its mass-market Model 3, into some-
thing reassuringly ordinary. Production of
the Model 3 has hit snags. But no big car
firm can today go without its own evs.
Mr Musk has also put billions into bat-
teries, for Teslas and to balance the electric
grid. The minerals inside them are the pre-
serve of our second tycoon, Robert Fried-
land. His brash style and early mining in-
vestments earned him the nickname “toxic
Bob” from the press. But his investments in
battery metals, made through holdings like
Ivanhoe Mines, make him look greener to-
day. He is digging up cobalt and nickel in
Australia, and developing what could be
the world’s second-biggest copper mine in
Africa. His joint-venture with Chinese in-
vestors is working on metal sulphates for
lithium-ion cells.
Wang Chuanfu is the closest China has
to Mr Musk. byd, the company he foundedin 1995, started out making rechargeable
batteries. Today its sprawling campus in
Shenzhen shows off solar cells, electric
cars, heavy machinery, mobile-phone
components and much else besides that
needs energy storage. In 2008 Warren Buf-
fett’s Berkshire Hathaway invested $232m
in byd. The stake is now worth over $1.5bn.
byd’s sales surpassed $18bn last year, put-
ting it among the biggest makers of batter-
ies and electric cars.
Like Messrs Musk, Friedland and Wang,
others from our list joined the ranks of ty-
coons by seeing their ideas mature. Mr
Wang’s compatriot, Zhang Yue, runs Broad
Group, a huge manufacturer of chillers that
recycle waste heat. Brazil has Rubens
Ometto, the man behind the world’s big-
gest bioenergy firm and its first ethanol bil-
lionaire. His company, Cosan, produces
sugar and, through a joint-venture with
Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch energy
giant, sugar-cane ethanol. In Germany
Aloys Wobben, who built his first wind tur-
bine at university and later developed a
pioneering variable-speed model, turned
Enercon, which he created in 1984, into a
leading producer of such equipment.More than bluster
A second group of moguls funnels money
made elsewhere into climatically noble
projects seeking scale. Consider Philip An-
schutz, whose empire stretches from oil to
entertainment (and whom the New Yorker
described as the “man who owns la”). He
has spent a decade promoting a $3bn high-Climate capitalistsThe not-so-dirty dozen
NEW YORK
Some tycoons are putting serious money into climate-friendly
investments—and expect serious returnsBusiness
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