Branson: My Big Plan to Make the Caribbean 'Green'

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Feb. 13 (Bloomberg) –- Virgin Group Founder and Chairman Sir Richard Branson discusses his renewable energy project to turn the Caribbean “green.” He speaks to Trish Regan on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart.” (Source: Bloomberg)

It is headed up by the man who used to be the president of costa rica.

He's a formidable person to run it.

The idea is to work with the 21 industries that put out the most carbon in the world, the airline industry, the shipping industry, cities, etc., and to try to get a gig a ton out of the industries without savaging the industries.

To sit down with these various companies and come up with imaginative ways to get to the top.

How is the caribbean involved?

How are these countries involved?

There are hundreds of thousands of islands around the world.

Islands will be effected if you turn the clock forward 100 years.

Therefore, what we are doing is working with these islands to try to show them how they can get rid of 75% or 85% of their carbon output.

How they can live in the islands and lower the electricity bills.

The heads of states and various islands -- they went away excited.

This is an example of creative entrepreneurship.

What's the business opportunity in something like this?

The carbon war room, it's the satisfaction of helping the world get on the right track.

For business people, there are enormous opportunities.

They, alongside others are pitched to do these bigger islands around the world.

The cost of solar has collapsed.

Wind is very competitive now.

The more projects that can happen, the more price will come down.

Someone who is living in the caribbean, they pay and enormous amount at the moment but it has to get shipped to these various islands.

There is an incentive.

There is one thing to do this on your island but it's another thing to do it in say the country of columbia or other islands.

How do you implement it on a biggers gail?

-- on a bigger scale.

We started in aruba as an experiment.

It's going extremely well.

Abi got this wrong, but they are getting close to 50% clean energy.

It's actually not that difficult.

Putting solar panels down and pumping the sun-based fuel into the grid, it's not that difficult a challenge to do.

The important thing is people willing to fund it together with people who are willing to do it and just get on with it.

How much have you gotten funding for this?

We had 400 million dollars committed by the people who came to our islands last week.

That should be sufficient to get the ball rolling in a major way.

I doubt much more money than that will be needed.

That's without any of the government putting their hands in it as well.

Rex will have more of my interview with sir richard branson in the next hour.



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