Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson together with former US vice-president Al Gore launched (February 2007) a reward for scientists to find a way
of extracting greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
The so-called Earth Challenge Prize rewards are valued at $25 million in total.A 2006 study, led by James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for
Space Studies, N.Y. who is a member of the new Branson/Gore reward committee, along with scientists from other organizations concludes that,
because of a rapid warming trend over the past 30 years, the Earth is now reaching and passing through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period,
which has lasted nearly 12,000 years.

Sir Richard's wife Joan had come up with the idea of the prize after he mentioned that Gaia Theory inventor James Lovelock had suggested
the world may already have crossed a "tipping point". He said "My wife Joan is a down-to-earth, practical Glaswegian. When I told her that
Lovelock believed we may already be doomed, she responded by saying
'There are a lot of brilliant minds out there. Surely one of them would be able to come up with a solution'."
Overseeing the innovations are James Hansen, the noted climate scientist and head of the Nasa Institute for Space Studies, the inventor of Gaia
theory James Lovelock, UK environmentalist Sir Crispin Tickell and Australian mammologist and palaeontologist Tim Flannery.

Al Gore, joins the Virgin boss saying: "It's a challenge to the moral imagination of humankind to actually accept the reality of the situation we
are now facing. We're not used to thinking of a planetary emergency, and there's nothing in our prior history as a species that equips us to imagine
that we, as human beings, could actually be in the process of destroying the habitability of the planet for ourselves."
His recent film, An Inconvenient Truth, focused on global warming. Carbon capture and storage is already a key area of research.

Source: World Institute
The World Coal Institute says that carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies allow emissions of carbon dioxide to be 'captured' and
'stored' – preventing them from entering the atmosphere. CCS presents one of the most promising options for large-scale reductions in CO2 emissions
from energy use.
CO2 capture is possible from fossil fuel power stations or from other large CO2 sources, such as the chemical, steel or cement industries or
from natural gas production. CO2 can be stored in geological formations such as saline aquifers or expired oil and gas reservoirs.
The technologies for geological CCS are all proven and there are a number of large-scale CCS projects in operation today. Current projects include
Sleipner in Norway, Weyburn in Canada and In Salah in Algeria.
Further projects are under development around the world, the largest of which is Gorgon in Australia, a joint initiative between ChevronTexaco,
Shell and ExxonMobil. The Gorgon Project will store around 2-3 Mt of CO2 per year and plans to be operational by 2010.

Primary sourec - Finfacts.com

You may be able to switch your home energy supplies to a greener energy option than your current one, and it need not
cost you a lot more; use an impartial online price comparison tool. Selecting results by green plan. The results are
displayed in a table to make comparisons easy.
Switching data is updated regularly and can give you a comprehensive guide to the suppliers prices for your area.
You the Consumer has the power to choose on a variety of utilities and financial products. See our site map for more options.