Branson’s ‘Virgin Earth Challenge’ gets underway

Virgin group head, Sir Richard Branson along with former U.S. Vice President, Al Gore today announced a $25 million prize for scientists who can device a way to suck greenhouse out of the atmosphere and help combat global warming.

In an announcement made at a press conference in London, British tycoon with an estimated net worth over £3 billion will award the Virgin Earth Challenge prize money to anyone who develops technology capable of removing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at the rate of one billion tons a year.

Other rules of the vie stated, “The winner must be able to demonstrate a commercially viable design which will result in the net removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric, greenhouse gases each year for at least ten years without countervailing harmful effects.”

Furthermore, the prize was intended for a project that would be different from technologies currently under development that capture and store large amounts of carbon dioxide from heavy emitters, Mr. Gore said.

The six judge panel includes, apart from Sir Branson and Al Gore, James Hansen, head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, U.K. scientist who devised the “GAIA” theory, James Lovelock, a former British diplomat, Crispin Tickell and Tim Flannery, an Australian author and conservationist.

Steve Howard, CEO of the Climate Group, an organization that works with governments and companies to help mitigate climate change, will help the panel in their deliberations.

The winner of the Virgin Earth Challenge would receive $5 million once judges ruled a carbon-dioxide removal process succeeded. The remaining prize money would be paid out over a 10-year period if the goal of removing significant amounts of greenhouse gases is achieved over the long term.

Skeptical about global warming in the past, Branson vowed to contribute $3 billion over 10 years to combat global warming, in September last.

The billionaire had committed to invest 100 percent of the profits from his Virgin Group's transportation sectors, including train companies and five airlines, over the next 10 years.

The prize he announced today will not come from that fund, he specified.

In the latest report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued last week, global warming is more than 90 percent likely to have been caused by humans. The panel also predicted atmospheric temperature to rise by 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius and sea levels to increase by 18 to 59 centimeters (7 to 23 inches) by the end of this century.