Posted inCulture & SocietyCulture & SocietyEnergyEnergyEuropeGCCIndustriesMiddle EastTechnology

Virgin’s Branson promotes $4m UAE environment prize

In a YouTube video, Richard Branson calls on ‘people with great ideas’ to help ‘transform the world’ by entering the Zayed Future Energy Prize

UK billionaire Richard Branson has called on “people with great ideas” to enter the UAE’s global environment award.

The founder of Virgin Group is the first of a series of well known personalities to produce a video promoting the $4m Zayed Future Energy Prize.

Click here to watch the video

“We need budding scientists, budding technicians, people with great ideas to try and see if they can stand out from the crowd,” Branson says in the video that will be aired in schools.

Winners will receive an “incredibly generous prize that will then enable you to put your idea into practice”.

“It could transform your life and it could also transform the world,” Branson, who is a prize judge, says.

More than 40,000 people have viewed the video since it was posted on YouTube six weeks ago.

Organisers of the prize also intend to release a video with Iceland President Ólafur Ragnar Grimsson and others.

The prize aims to cultivate ideas for clean energy and also includes honours for small and medium sized businesses, large corporations, individuals, research institutes and non-governmental organisations already working on or adopting clean-energy and energy-efficiency measures.

Registration for the prize closes July 14. Winners will be announced during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in January 2014.

Click here to watch the video

Follow us on

For all the latest business news from the UAE and Gulf countries, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, like us on Facebook and subscribe to our YouTube page, which is updated daily.