“Among all the swirl of different ideas of how to raise the money and how to regulate carbon,” he said, “there is no way either in this country or internationally you’re going to come close to meeting an 80 percent reduction unless you have an immense breakthrough.”

Image Bill Gates said the lack of energy research hurt American’s competitive standing. Credit... Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters

He said that the only way to find such disruptive new technology was to pour large sums of money at the problem, with the clear understanding that any number of ventures would fail before the eureka moment arrived.

Mr. Gates and his fellow executives are stepping forward at what may prove a pivotal moment in American energy policy. Oil continues to spew from a crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration is pushing for a new approach to energy and climate policy and the Senate is about to embark on a debate on a set of conflicting proposals that pit not only Republicans against Democrats but different regions of the country against each other.

There is no assurance that this latest effort will produce new ideas or bear fruit.

The executive group, which calls itself the American Energy Innovation Council, will propose a series of measures that it hopes will transcend the politics of the moment and put the nation on a path to a different energy future.

The group notes that the federal government spends less than $5 billion a year on energy research and development, not counting one-time stimulus projects. About $30 billion is spent annually on health research and more than $80 billion on military R.& D. They advocate a jump in spending on basic energy research because the private sector cannot provide that level of capital for unproven technologies, but do not say where the new money can be found.