Elon Musk Tops $500 Billion List of Green Billionaires

Six years ago, around the time the ink was drying on the Paris Agreement, a so-called green billionaire was someone who donated to environmental causes. Maybe they had a mansion with solar panels, or a hybrid or two parked in the garage.

Now, as world leaders and executives gather for urgent UN climate talks, the richest person on Earth is an actual green billionaire.

Elon Musk’s vast fortune stems from a company that’s revolutionized electric-powered transport and is hastening the demise of the internal combustion engine, responsible for 10% of global carbon emissions. While Musk courts outrage and embraces drama—just last weekend he polled Twitter over whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stake—he’s also made clear the serious wealth-building potential of green investments.

Green fortunes can grow quickly but can also be extremely volatile. Musk’s wealth plummeted $50 billion in just two days this week. Yet it’s still up 70% this year to $288 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index—putting him well beyond Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, and making him the wealthiest person in recent history. The size of his fortune is on a par with John D. Rockefeller’s peak inflation-adjusted net worth, a fortune amassed from fossil fuels.

Musk is an example of the riches that are achievable over the coming decades. Lower-carbon technology is no industrial niche—it is industry. It’s evident in the big-ticket commitments emerging from the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, where financial institutions with $130 trillion of assets have pledged to reach net-zero, and in the mammoth fortunes being created by the clean-energy transition.

The 15 billionaires on Bloomberg Green’s ranking showcase the explosive growth of electric vehicles, batteries, and solar power. Not every dollar in these fortunes is derived from climate-aligned businesses whose core products reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. With Musk, his green net worth, or the portion of his fortune tied to cars and solar, is $247.9 billion—86% of his overall wealth—but it excludes his interests in other businesses such as space rockets.

Altogether, these green fortunes are worth about half a trillion dollars—more than double the market capitalization of Chevron Corp.—and an increase of 41% since February, when Bloomberg last updated the list. Much of that gain is due to Tesla, whose stock has soared on increased production, rising profits and last year’s inclusion in the S&P 500 Index. That’s enriched shareholders of all sizes and launched one of its biggest, Singapore-based investor, Leo KoGuan, onto the list in his own right.

Billionaires across the green spectrum are getting wealthier. China’s solar moguls shot up the ranks as government policies and the skyrocketing cost of natural gas lifted demand for solar panels. The pace of new solar capacity is on track to expand more than 20% this year after a record 2020, according to Bloomberg Intelligence data. The combined value of the solar fortunes on the ranking has more than doubled since February.

Eighty percent of the billionaires on the list hail from China, a sign of the nation’s preeminence as a manufacturing hub for clean technologies despite its leader’s conspicuous absence from the COP26 summit.

Tycoons who make electric vehicles or the batteries that power them still dominate. The biggest investors in Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., the world’s biggest supplier of batteries to electric-car makers, exceeded Musk’s gains in percentage terms. Still, challenges persist. Automaker Nio’s Chief Executive Officer Li Bin fell six rungs and Li Auto’s Li Xiang and Fan Zheng fell off completely as supply-chain snarls hampered production.

With assistance from Andrew Heathcote, Venus Feng, Matthew Dunn, Ben Stupples, Chunying Zhang, Luz Ding, Annie Lee, and Cecile Vannucci, and Ying Tian.