The Virgin Earth Challenge

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Launched by Richard Branson in February 2007, the Virgin Earth Challenge (VEC) is a $25 million initiative for the successful commercialisation of taking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and keeping them out with no countervailing impacts.

The leading organisations bring expertise and solutions from a wide range of areas which includes air capture, biochar, bio-energy with carbon capture and storage, enhanced weathering on land, and land management. It is hoped that by finding different ways of collaborating with these organisations, VEC will provide them with new levels of support whilst advancing the entire concept of carbon negativity and recycling, as well as achieving further traction in the climate change debate.

At the 2011, Global Clean Energy Congress in Calgary, Virgin Earth Challenge announced a group of leading organisations that it will be working with to take the challenge forward.

After a diligent technical review process covering more than 2,600 submissions, the VEC has identified 11 leading organisations as its current shortlist.

The 11 fiinalists are:

• Biochar Solutions, U.S. biocharsolutions.com
• Biorecro, Sweden biorecro.com
• Black Carbon, Denmark Carbon Engineering, Canada
• Climeworks with ETH Zurich, Switzerland climeworks.com
• Coaway, U.S.
• Full Circle Biochar, U.S. fullcirclebiochar.com
• Global Thermostat, U.S. globalthermostat.com
• Kilimanjaro Energy, U.S. kilimanjaroenergy.com
• Smart Stones, Netherlands smartstones.nl
• The Savory Institute, U.S. savoryinstitute.com