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Billionaire trio of Bezos, Gates and Bloomberg back company set to mine for raw materials in Greenland

Billionaire trio of Bezos, Gates and Bloomberg back company set to mine for raw materials in Greenland

Like some aging capitalist supergroup, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bill Gates of Microsoft and Michael Bloomberg of – well – Bloomberg are financially backing a mineral company planning to track down materials in Greenland which can be used for electric vehicles.

KoBold Metals, backed by the three businessmen through the Breakthrough Energy Ventures climate and technology fund, has joined forces with the London firm Bluejay Mining to explore the central west region of the country.

The work, part of Bluejay’s Disko-Nuussuaq project, also comes with $15 million worth of funding.

The area of Greenland set to be investigated is believed to contain materials such as nickel, copper and cobalt.

Kurt House, KoBold’s CEO, said the region has seen “the rare convergence of events in Earth’s history that could have resulted in forming a world-class battery metal deposit”.

“Disko is a project with great potential for the discovery of globally significant deposits of battery metals,” added Bo Stensgaard, CEO of Bluejay.

However, the subject of mining – particularly a kind known as uranium mining - has often been met with contention by some residents of the autonomous Danish territory.

According to Nuclear Engineering International magazine, a poll conducted in March by Innovation South Greenland – a government agency – found that just over half of those surveyed (52 per cent) were in favour of mining in general. For some, the exploration of Greenland for fuel has raised environmental concerns.

Breakthrough Energy have been approached by Indy100 for comment.

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