Innovation is key to making clean energy available to more countries on a cost basis, Bill Gates said Tuesday.
"With the right innovation, clean energy is actually cheaper than dirty energy," Gates said Tuesday on CNBC's "Squawk Box."
Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, announced Monday he would be chairman of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a $1-billion fund that invests in new technology aimed to generate energy more efficiently and at a lower cost.
Gates said he and a coalition of investors such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Virgin Group Ltd. Founder Richard Branson, will work with 20 governments, including "all the big ones," who committed to double research and development into energy.
"We, as private investors, would take the good things that came out of that, and, even though it's high risk, we go through and build companies out of that, with a goal of making energy both cheaper and also completely clean," Gates said.
"We want to be cheaper than coal or gasoline for transport," he said. "And so, that goal is particularly low right now. But there are a lot of paths that make us feel confident we can get there. We have five or six paths. We have several companies in each path."
President-elect Donald Trump should be interested in clean energy plans because "this administration likes a good deal," he continued, adding he wants to let Trump know how to put America in the lead on energy research and development.
"It's not a huge part of the budget and, yet, it can help the economy just like shale gas has."
The Microsoft co-founder is the world's richest man, and he has been an investor in new energy ventures for years, according to Forbes.