George Soros is getting serious about climate change.

Billionaire George Soros, looking to address the “political problem” of climate change, said he will invest $1 billion in clean-energy technology and create an organization to advise policy makers on environmental issues.

Soros, the founder of hedge fund Soros Fund Management LLC, announced the investment in Copenhagen yesterday at a meeting on climate change sponsored by Project Syndicate. The group is an international association made up of 430 newspapers from 150 countries.

“I want to apply rather stringent criteria to the investments,” said Soros in an e-mailed message. “They should be profitable but should also actually make a contribution to solving the problem.”

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Soros has said he prefers a greenhouse-gas tax because carbon emission-trading systems, which are used in Europe, can be manipulated by investors.

It will be interesting to see if the advocacy by Soros helps to tip the debate in the U.S. towards a carbon tax as opposed to cap-and-trade.