Richard Bran­son

As the op­er­a­tor of three air­lines that fly over every con­ti­nent, the Vir­gin Group is a ma­jor con­sumer of fos­sil fu­els. Rec­og­niz­ing that car­bon emis­sions re­sult­ing from con­sump­tion of these fu­els is dri­ving cat­a­stroph­ic glob­al cli­mate change, my role as leader of the com­pa­ny is to en­sure that Vir­gin pro­vides fi­nan­cial sup­port to non­prof­it groups that are ex­plor­ing re­new­able en­er­gy and seek­ing mar­ket-based so­lu­tions to cli­mate change, like the Car­bon War Room. We are al­so in­vest­ing in this field our­selves: One of our air­lines, Vir­gin Aus­tralia, is work­ing in part­ner­ship with Dy­namo­tive En­er­gy Sys­tems and Re­new­able Oil to de­vel­op an al­ter­na­tive jet fu­el that will en­able our glob­al air­craft fleet to tran­si­tion to clean en­er­gy. This in­no­va­tion will be good for the plan­et and, in the long run, may boost Vir­gin air­lines' prof­itabil­i­ty. Just lis­ten to the ur­gent speech­es from world lead­ers, and you might think that most gov­ern­ments agree that while we have no sus­tain­able, clean al­ter­na­tive to fos­sil fu­els that we can im­ple­ment on a large scale to­day, we need to find one and put it in place quick­ly. This would help us to avoid the worst con­se­quences of cli­mate change, like dy­ing oceans and wide­spread de­ser­ti­fi­ca­tion, which will harm peo­ple around the world, es­pe­cial­ly the poor. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, how­ev­er, gov­ern­ment re­sources are ac­tu­al­ly flow­ing the oth­er way: ac­cord­ing to a re­port from the Na­tion­al Re­sources De­fense Coun­cil, since 2009, glob­al sub­si­dies for fos­sil fu­els have al­most tripled to an es­ti­mat­ed $775 bil­lion this year.

Mean­while, of­fi­cial world­wide sup­port for clean en­er­gy is a pal­try $50 bil­lion. This shame­ful in­vest­ment ra­tio – 15 dirty dol­lars in­vest­ed for every clean one – shows that the per­verse re­la­tion­ship be­tween big gov­ern­ment and big oil has not changed, and is still shap­ing the fu­ture of our plan­et. This means that en­tre­pre­neurs' tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­v­a­tive­ness and their hopes of build­ing our clean en­er­gy fu­ture are be­ing sti­fled. Fos­sil fu­el sub­si­dies drain gov­ern­ment bud­gets, throw­ing up a fis­cal wall that blocks state sup­port for clean en­er­gy while pro­tect­ing the in­ter­ests of the oil in­dus­try. This sit­u­a­tion is well known. The G-20 and dozens of oth­er na­tions have all pledged to phase these sub­si­dies out. But three types re­main com­mon: con­sump­tion sub­si­dies in de­vel­op­ing na­tions, con­sump­tion sub­si­dies in rich de­vel­oped coun­tries and sub­si­dies for fos­sil fu­el pro­duc­ers. The lat­ter two are in­ex­cus­able – rich na­tions have no busi­ness sub­si­diz­ing rich oil, gas and coal com­pa­nies or their own con­sumers. These com­pa­nies use po­lit­i­cal con­tri­bu­tions and armies of lob­by­ists to ca­jole gov­ern­ments to ig­nore the con­se­quences: An eco­nom­ic cri­sis worse than the re­cent re­ces­sion awaits if these na­tions fail to spark growth in ar­eas that can stim­u­late growth and cre­ate jobs. Large oil com­pa­nies like Exxon­Mo­bil, which in 2011 earned more than $40 bil­lion, make no hir­ing or fir­ing de­ci­sions based on gov­ern­ment hand-outs, but start­up green en­er­gy com­pa­nies will hire more en­gi­neers and tech­ni­cians, more mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als and man­agers if gov­ern­ments in­vest in them.

Con­sump­tion sub­si­dies are most com­mon in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries that can least af­ford such in­ef­fi­cien­cy. For poor na­tions, pro­vid­ing fu­el to their cit­i­zens at be­low-mar­ket prices has be­come a crip­pling trap – any at­tempt to change them can cost a politi­cian an elec­tion or cause ri­ots. Yet the In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency says that on­ly about 8 per­cent of sub­sides ac­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit the poor­est 20 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. Gov­ern­ments from In­dia to Nige­ria to In­done­sia need to elim­i­nate fu­el sub­si­dies and im­me­di­ate­ly pro­vide at least half the sav­ings di­rect­ly to their poor con­stituents through de­vel­op­ment pro­grams. Vir­gin will con­tin­ue to de­vel­op al­ter­na­tive fu­els, and even­tu­al­ly we and our com­peti­tors will find so­lu­tions that will scale up and be­come com­pet­i­tive.

But while many busi­ness­es are try­ing to turn the sit­u­a­tion around, gov­ern­ments can make the dif­fer­ence. By tax­ing fos­sil fu­els and sub­si­diz­ing re­new­ables, gov­ern­ments can tilt the play­ing field to­ward a brighter fu­ture. State in­vest­ments in in­no­v­a­tive so­lar, bio and wind en­er­gy providers to­day will give us break­throughs in just a few years. The is­sue is ur­gent. Please urge your con­gres­sion­al or par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tive to­day to press your gov­ern­ment to elim­i­nate fos­sil fu­el sub­si­dies by 2015.

(Richard Bran­son is the founder of the Vir­gin Group and com­pa­nies such as Vir­gin At­lantic, Vir­gin Amer­i­ca, Vir­gin Mo­bile and Vir­gin Ac­tive. He has re­cent­ly pub­lished two books: "Screw Busi­ness as Usu­al" and "Like a Vir­gin." He main­tains a blog at www.vir­gin.com/richard-bran­son/blog. You can fol­low him on Twit­ter at twit­ter.com/richard­bran­son. To learn more about the Vir­gin Group: www.vir­gin.com.)

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