By Tyler Harbottle

December 21, 2009

Richard Branson has announced his intention to partner with the City of Vancouver and Mayor Gregor Robertson to battle carbon emissions.

There appears to be no boundaries to Richard Branson’s business genius, his innovative thinking, nor his philanthropic ventures.

He generates an unsurpassed excitement and intrigue around nearly every venture he sets his mind to.  Through the multitude of Virgin brands (now numbering more than 200), Branson coordinates an extensive network of visionaries. In scope and in scale, Branson has a truly global reach.

The common thread, intricately woven throughout each initiative, is Branson’s extraordinary ability to identify and harness the power and passion of entrepreneurship.  This conviction – this well established ideology – runs strong throughout the organization, but, arguably, where it runs strongest is in the various philanthropic ventures of the Virgin family.  Branson sees market and profit driven incentive as powerful impetus for change and has conceived several successful non-profit enterprises in that vein.  Branson’s philanthropy has tackled the most pressing issues of our time – the mega-problems of the world; poverty, hunger, disease, environmental degradation, and, of course, climate change.

Under the Virgin Unite brand (a non-profit), Branson has launched the Carbon War Room - a climate change solutions initiative which harnesses “the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change.”

The Carbon War Room:

“Our global industrial and energy systems are built on carbon-based technologies and unsustainable resource demands that threaten to destroy our society and our planet. Massive loss of wealth, expanding poverty and suffering, disastrous climate change, water scarcity, and deforestation are the end results of this broken system.

This business-as-usual system represents the greatest threat to the security and prosperity of humanity – a threat that transcends race, ethnicity, national borders, and ideology.” — Carbon War Room

With this particular initiative in mind, Branson identified Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson as a leader and an entrepreneurial catalyst for change.  The two met at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and have since agreed to develop a common battle plan.

Robertson, a visionary in his own right, has pioneered a one-of-a-kind economic development plan: Vancouver Green Capital.

“The “Vancouver Green Capital” brand is at the heart of the creation of a robust, long-term economic strategy that will guide the City’s pursuit of economic opportunities around the world…Green companies are those that understand that their bottom lines include people and planet, as well as profit. Some of the world’s biggest and most progressive companies have understood that “green” is no longer a “nice-to-have”: it’s integral to doing business.” — Vancouver Green Capital

Through this initiative, and in seeking to become the world’s greenest city by 2020, Robertson hopes to attract the great environmental entrepreneurs of the world and, like Branson, harness the spirit of innovation to realize positive change.

Branson’s Carbon War Room initiative and Mayor Robertson’s Green Capital development plan are mutually complimentary; both leaders have realized the important role that a committed network of innovators, small, medium, and large businesses, individuals, entrepreneurs, institutions, and governments will play in the development of a greener future.

This grand battle plan starts at the city level.  In fact, it starts with Vancouver.  Branson and Robertson will officially launch the initiative at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games.  Robertson hopes to capture the “robust business development” of the Olympics and capitalize on the international attention sure to be paid to Vancouver during the games.

A key focus in this effort to cut global emissions, as identified by the Carbon War Room’s Vancouver Operation (.pdf), will be accelerating the market for energy efficient buildings and energy efficiency upgrades.

“The building sector represents the largest opportunity for non-disruptive cost-effective change. Redesigning and retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency and sustainability could readily eliminate 5 billion tons of CO2e, or 10% of current emissions, per year by 2020 – while creating millions of new jobs.” — Carbon War Room, The Vancouver Operation

Branson is actively seeking out new business models that can adequately address fundamental barriers in the market for energy efficiency.  The Carbon War Room identifies “high upfront costs for consumers, inconvenience of retrofits, lack of consumer information, and the principal-agent problem” as prevailing market failures.  Conquering these challenges and building a successful model of “attractive financing and incentives for energy efficiency” will be the primary battle ground for this War on Carbon and the pioneers and innovators who lead the charge will be handsomely rewarded.

So who are the soldiers in this war? Who are the innovators and pioneers? What business models are out there that successfully circumvent the identified barriers to change?

Enter Greenscape Capital Group. A publicly traded (symbol GRN on the TSX venture exchange), Vancouver based environmental start-up,  Greenscape Capital fits the Branson/Robertson initiative perfectly.

Greenscape owns and operates Green.Switch Capital, whose innovative business model is designed specifically to overcome the number one barrier to realizing vast energy savings: upfront capital costs.  Green.Swtich covers the bill for the assessment and installation of energy efficiency upgrades and derives its profit from a percentage of the energy savings over time.

This is precisely the type of eco-innovation that Branson’s Carbon War Room initiative will need if it is to achieve its goal:

Branson is seeking to retrofit 10 million buildings worldwide by 2013 and achieve a 5 billion ton reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020 through energy efficiency measures alone.  By starting with Vancouver, already North America’s greenest city, Branson hopes to lead the way for others to follow.

“We must defeat this enemy. We know we have the technologies, the tactics, and the people to do it. What we need is fewer pronouncements and more leadership.” — Richard Branson, New York Times Op-Ed

It seems as though Branson has found his leadership in Gregor Robertson and if Greenscape Capital Group is any indication of the eco-entrepreneurial spirit of Vancouver, he has also found the perfect stage to wage his global war on carbon.