Flanked by climate campaigners former US Vice President Al Gore and British ex-diplomat Crispin Tickell, Branson said he hoped the prize would spur innovative and creative thought to save mankind from self-destruction.
The prize will initially only be open for five years, with ideas assessed by a panel of judges including Branson, Gore and Tickell as well as US climate scientist James Hansen, Briton James Lovelock and Australian environmentalist Tim Flannery.
The winner will have to come up with a way of removing one billion tonnes of carbon gases a year from the atmosphere for 10 years, with $5 million of the prize being paid at the start and the remaining $20 million at the end.
The Ansari X-Prize showed what is possible. It enabled Virgin SpaceShip One and space travel for everybody (atleast those who could afford!). This will hopefully create something similar.
The prize denotes the best things about business. The drive, the incentives, the entrepreneurship, the targets, innovation and the ability to solve the greatest problems facing man.
Branson sometime back announced that he would invest almost $3 billion of his profits from the transportation business into companies like Virgin Fuels which can solve the earth’s problems and make money too.
BBC provides a graphic to show the present options in carbon capture.
1. CO2 pumped into disused coal fields displaces methane which can be used as fuel
2. CO2 can be pumped into and stored safely in saline aquifers
3. CO2 pumped into oil fields helps maintain pressure, making extraction easier