Branson’s big idea for emissions problem

He’s been criticised for creating a few emissions of his own, but Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has come up with an interesting idea to turbocharge the uptake of clean energy.

Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson.

High-carbon-emitting companies should be forced to pay a clean energy dividend, Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has proposed.

Speaking on the second day of the online Impact X net zero forum, Sir Richard suggested such a scheme could be both politically palatable and ultimately beneficial to the companies themselves.

“It is difficult to persuade governments in Australia to levy a carbon tax, but maybe something like a clean energy dividend, where every company puts aside a certain amount of money to invest in clean energy (projects), depending on how much carbon they’re emitting,” he said.

Companies would “have the chance of getting their money back through their investments,” Sir Richard said.

“If every company was asked to do that, enormous amounts of money would be invested in Australia trying to create a clean energy revolution.”

The Virgin boss was not quizzed about the carbon emissions of his nascent space tourism venture, but was asked if he was feeling optimistic about humanity’s ability to solve the climate problem.

“I’m a born optimist. Maybe this year we’ve seen a global turning point. People are realising the world is facing a catastrophe,” he said.

The 71 year old said coal was “the number one problem the world has” and coal-fired power was doing “tremendous damage”.

“A good government in Australia would try to work out a way of creating jobs for all those people in the coal industry,” he said.

Those new jobs would offer a “better life than they currently have going down a coal mine,” he added.

(Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson. Picture: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP

Atlassian CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes. Picture: Toby Zerna

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, who was speaking as part of the same forum, said mining was often demonised along with fossil fuels, but the two should be separate.

“Mining is necessary,” he said. “Australia can profit from iron ore, steel, copper, zinc, rare earth metals, silver … we have everything the world needs to build these renewable technologies. Our mining industry will do fantastically well if we transition it away from fossil fuels.”

But that was also a challenge to the economy requiring governments to be “honest” with workers, Mr Cannon-Brookes said.

“We have to be honest and say we are going to take action to move away from those technologies. The globe is going to move there if we don’t,” he said.

Originally published as Branson’s big idea for emissions problem