Sir Richard Branson is the eccentric founder of the Virgin Group that includes companies like Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Virgin Music.

Two years ago, Branson was a “climate change skeptic” who didn’t really believe that global warming was happening or was as severe an issue as others made it out to be.

All of that changed when he had a two hour breakfast with Al Gore.

Since then, Branson has become one of the most high profile faces spending, putting significant amounts of money toward solving global warming.

The first real push came last year when Branson committed to donate “all profits from his transportation businesses over 10 years to combat global warming“.

Since then, Branson has founded Virgin Fuel to invest in clean energy sources.

Branson’s most recent initiative was launched last week when he announced the Virgin Earth Challenge. The basic idea here is very simple. Branson will give out a prize of $25M to anyone who can come up with a solution to remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

If anyone would understand these sorts of prizes, it would be Branson; Branson funded the creation of SpaceShipOne — the winner of the Ansari X Prize, a $10M prize for the first person to create a commercially viable space ship. Branson has since gone on to found Virgin Galactic to sell commercial space trips. So, Branson clearly understands the motivational impact that these sorts of prizes can have, the publicity that they can bring,
and most importantly, the economic rewards of developing a commercial solution.

Hats off to Branson for putting his money behind this initiative. It will be very interesting to see if the Virgin Earth Challenge creates the same type and level of competition as the X Prize did with several different teams competing for the prize.