The accidental environmentalist

We celebrate the achievements of small, unknown, off-grid pioneers on these pages. But billionaires are people too! Here are a few who are doing their bit for the planet, and making a few gazillion on the side. Do they feel guilty at the contradiction between their wasteful businesses and the priorities of climate change? I doubt it.

Richard Branson started his business life with a single record store in Notting Hill that offered waterbeds for stoned people to lie on while listening to music, and launched Virgin Fuels in 2006, to aid of research into renewable energy.

His transport business will provide up to £1.5bn to renewable energy over the next decade. Spent £16m on bio-ethanol plants in American, and has committed more than £150m to similar projects over the next three years.

John Doerr, a Californian venture capitalist, helped launch both Amazon and Google. Launched a venture called “Greentech” in 1999. His firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, has injected more than £100m to a dozen “green” companies over the past two years. He says replacing fossil fuels will create “the mother of all markets.” He’s backing Ion America, which develops fuel-cell technology for off-the-grid electricity.

Tulsi Tanti is an Indian entrepreneur whose Suzlon Energy, worth £4bn, is the most valuable wind-energy company in the world. Supplier of 2,000 megawatts of wind turbine capacity globally. Started as a small-time textile manufacturer in his native Gujarat, and now owns the world’s largest wind farm. In 1995 Tulsi discovered that his textile business in Surat was not taking off, largely because of the severe shortage of a primary resource – power. That was when the idea of developing wind energy took shape.

India now has 4,500 megawatts of installed wind generators, accounting for about 3.4% of total electricity-generation capacity. Suzlon has built about one-third of them. Worries that plague the industry elsewhere–about birds, noise and ugliness–have, so far, left India unruffled. Wind farms are even becoming tourist destinations, claims Mr Tanti, though acquiring the land for them is a headache.

Ted Turner,The patriarch of cable news is no longer in the media business. America”s largest individual landowner, he founded the Turner Endangered Species Fund in aid of biodiversity and conservation. Also created DT Solar, building industrial-scale solar panel plants. Outdoorsman “Mouth of the South” getting richer with real estate, food. Owns 2 million acres in 12 states, plus some ground in Argentina. Owns 50,000 bison; restaurant chain, Ted’s Montana Grill, serves bison burgers at 51 locations. Has given more than $1.5 billion to charity, including gifts to the United Nations Foundation, Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Turner Foundation.

Luciano Benetton made our brains hurt by yoking cheap and cheerful knitwear with images of birth and death, Aids, prisoners on death row and babies trailing umbilical cords.

He made and sold knitwear, of all uninteresting commodities – but in colours and colour combinations that dazzled and fascinated. For years and years he ran an advertising campaign that was no more than a series of portraits of people wearing Benetton jumpers – yet the scandals they caused multiplied their publicity value.

Rubens Ometto Silveira Mello, described by Forbes as the first ethanol tycoon. Boss of Cosan, the world”s largest grower and producer of sugarcane, and second largest producer of renewable fuel.

Vincent Tchenguiz wants to make a billion from the environment. His company, Consensus spends more than £20m a month on its environmental portfolio, which spans more than 200 companies, joint ventures and funds. It covers everything from the advent of technologies to the planting of trees.

‘This is not for charity,’ he says. ‘The effects are positive for the environment, but I am running a business.

‘The environment can be leveraged in the same way as real estate. Solar parks and solar roof tops, wind farms and forestry can be sold and leased back in the same way and carbon can be traded as easily – if not more easily – as any building. It is just that the market for such assets is not yet fully developed.’

Zac Goldsmith is usually thought of as “only” worth several hundred mllion, Zac Goldsmith family trusts, in fact have recently become valued at over one billion as a result of shrewd investments. Goldsmith is now a Tory candidate but still owns the Ecologist magazine and focuses all his energies on delivering an environmentalist message. He has been helping set the Conservative party’s green policies, and may resign if the Tories fail to keep to the blue-green line.