$75,000 Prize Offered for Carbon-Busting Innovations

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Have you got a great idea to tackle climate change? Forum for the Future has just launched a global hunt for the best innovations to tackle climate change with a $75,000 prize to help bring the best idea to market.

It's critical that we harness the power of innovation to create a low carbon economy, and we want to overcome the barriers that can prevent great ideas delivering their full potential — lack of funding and visibility to potential investors.

Many of the ideas for new products and services will come from small organizations and individuals, and it will be essential to connect them to businesses with the resources and experience to maximize their potential.  At Forum for the Future, we want to find ideas that are below the radar — being developed by think tanks, academic institutions or individual entrepreneurs — and identify those that can be taken to scale quickly and make a real difference.

So, we have teamed up with the Financial Times and HP to launch the FT Climate Change Challenge. The competition will seek out practical ideas which have demonstrated they will work but need some help growing to scale.

The ideas can be anything from technical advances in reducing emissions to social innovations helping people become more resilient to climate change.

To make sure we select the best ideas, an eminent panel of global business leaders, innovators and climate change experts will select the short-list of entries. The panel includes Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, the Nobel prize-winning chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, Virgin Group Chairman Sir Richard Branson and Hewlett Packard CEO Mark Hurd.

We will then ask readers of the FT to use their business acumen to vote for the scheme which will have the biggest impact. The winner will receive a $75,000 prize, sponsored by HP, to develop their idea.

By showcasing some of the world's best innovations, we intend to show that there are solutions to climate change, that money can be made from them, thereby encouraging yet more in the way of creative responses.

We want to spread news of this competition as widely as possible, so if you know of any organization, website or innovator that might be interested, please spread the word.

And if you have a great idea to tackle climate change, we want to hear from you.

For more information, visit http://www.ft.com/indepth/climatechallenge

Peter Madden is the chief executive of Forum for the Future, leading 70 staff as they find practical ways that private and public organizations can deliver a sustainable future.