Carbon War Room chief says business can cut emissions in half with current technology, but investors must realise the opportunity.

Better access to funding will enable businesses and entrepreneurs to be the driving force behind solutions to climate change and cutting carbon emissions, the head of ‘catalytic initiative’ at the Carbon War Room said yesterday.

Financiers have large sums available to invest, but there is a disconnect with entrepreneurs, Jigar Shah, chief executive of the Carbon War Room, told BusinessGreen in an interview at the Creating Climate Wealth summit in London yesterday.

“Most of the banks we’re talking to are mostly claiming they have far more dry power than they have opportunities to invest [although] they all want to invest money,” Shah said, adding that companies looking for investment are often unclear what investors want and vice versa.

“My experience is, most people who invest money are completely confused when it comes to understanding what to invest in,” he added. “If you’re an entrepreneur and convincing your spouse to spend your entire life savings on something that looks good on a spreadsheet, you should know what the banks will fund and what they won’t fund before you embark on your journey; otherwise, you might be pissing all your money down the drain.”

The Carbon War Room was co-founded by Richard Branson two years ago to find market-based solutions to climate problems and double the current flows of capital into green business activities to reach the $500bn that analysts believe is required to ensure emissions peak by 2020.

Ultimately, its aim is to reduce the 768g of CO2 it took to produce $1 of GDP in 2007 to just 6g of CO2. While this may seem an ambitious goal, Shah insists business can halve the world’s emissions using current technology, acting within existing policy frameworks and despite the global economic slowdown.

“The analysis does not lie – this is the largest wealth-creation opportunity on the planet,” Shah said. “There are technologies that exist today that could be scaled much faster than they have already been scaled.

“[But] there needs to be somebody who has literally bet their life’s fortune on trying to solve this problem. If you don’t have a level of urgency… then we’re not going to solve the problem,” he added. White papers and policy papers are meaningless unless someone’s prepared to bet their life savings.”

Creating successful companies not only generates innovative products and services, but also captures the imagination and encourages more entrepreneurial activity, Shah said.

“Green jobs don’t inspire anybody – what inspires people are green entrepreneurs. What inspires people is Google and Yahoo and Amazon, not their chief marketing officers,” he said, adding that governments should publicise their country’s leading green companies rather than the number of jobs they have created.

“The problem is people keep talking about green jobs, but what they really want to talk about is green business, green entrepreneurs, green initiatives,” Shah said. “Those are the things that get people jazzed up and excited.”

Ultimately, Shah hopes the War Room will prove successful enough that it is no longer needed.

“I hope we don’t exist in five years’ time,” he said. “Right now, the vast majority of people we talk to say we’re a sideshow to the green investment bank, a price on carbon, etc. Hopefully, in five years nobody will believe this is a sideshow and people … will be focused on entrepreneurs and business as a force for good.”