Investor Soros to chip in $1b for clean-energy tech

NEW YORK: Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the "political problem" of climate change, said he would invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and donate $100 million to an environmental advisory group to aid policymakers.

Soros, the founder of hedge fund Soros Fund Management LLC, announced the investment in Copenhagen on Oct 10 at a meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate. The group is an international association made up of 430 newspapers from 150 countries.

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