By Andrew Freeman for Mashable

President Obama will join with the leaders of 18 other countries as well as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on Monday at the United Nations Climate Summit in Paris to launch a historic expansion in clean energy research and development funding.

This funding will come both in the form of public sector financing and private sector backing, and together they are likely to constitute the biggest investments in clean energy technologies in history.

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Under the public sector program, which is known as Mission Innovation, each participating country will commit to a doubling of its respective research and development funding within the next five years.