https://www.wired.com/story/bezos-earth-fund-should-invest-in-these-green-technologies/

On Monday, Amazon CEO and world’s richest human Jeff Bezos announced he was pledging nearly 8 percent of his net worth to fight climate change. This money, known as the Bezos Earth Fund, will be used to support “any effort that offers a real possibility to help preserve and protect the natural world,” Bezos wrote in an Instagram post. There are plenty of problems with a billionaire single-handedly dictating how the world community will fight climate change. But it’s also true that there are a host of promising climate technologies that lack the resources to scale fast enough to be effective in meeting the UN’s climate goals. Bezos didn’t specify how he would allocate the Earth Fund’s resources, but if you’re reading this, Jeff, we’ve got some ideas.

Right now there are 173,000 trillion watts of solar energy bathing the Earth. If we were to capture just 1 percent of that, it would be enough to meet the world’s energy needs. But soaking up the rays is harder than it sounds. Cloud coverage limits the effectiveness of solar panels, top-of-the-line photovoltaic cells aren’t very efficient at converting sunlight into electricity, and solar power isn’t an option for half the planet at any given moment.