Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg

Two of the richest people in America have joined forces to solve the clean energy problem.

Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have launched the Breakthrough Energy Coalition to invest in new clean energy technologies.

"Solving the clean energy problem is an essential part of building a better world," Facebook chief Zuckerberg wrote in a post. "We won't be able to make meaningful progress on other challenges—like educating or connecting the world—without secure energy and a stable climate."

But progress, he said, is too slow; the current system "doesn't encourage the kind of innovation that will get us there faster."

So, Zuckerberg, his wife Priscilla Chan, and philanthropist Gates partnered with a handful of people—including CEO Marc Benioff, Amazon head Jeff Bezos, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, LinkedIn creator Reid Hoffman, Alibaba Group exec chairman Jack Ma, and HP CEO Meg Whitman—to speed up that process.

"Our primary goal with the Coalition is as much to accelerate progress on clean energy as it is to make a profit," Gates wrote in a blog post.

According to Gates, the world will be using 50 percent more energy by 2050 than it does today. That's good news for the 1 billion-plus folks living without access to basic energy services. But most of that energy creates greenhouse gases and drives climate change. Even the renewable technologies available today, like wind and solar, aren't enough to generate an entirely zero-carbon energy future, Gates warned.

"We need to be exploring many different paths—and that means we also need to invent new approaches," he said.

The Breakthrough Energy Coalition aims to invest in ideas that have what Zuckerberg called "the potential to transform the way we all produce and consume energy."

Facebook already supports renewable and clean energy at data facilities across the country.