263: going green in the Caribbean

This is an intriguing little article, found in the New Zealand Herald newspaper today. Apparently, Richard Branson, best known as the founder of the Virgin brand, is planning to develop the world's greenest resort on tiny Mosquito Island, one of the British Virgin Islands. The resort will be powered by wind and solar energy, food will be sourced from an organic orchard, and beach buggies will run on biofuels. This could easily be dismissed as a rich man's pet project, were it not for the fact that Branson sounds serious about using it to demonstrate much broader potential. His vision, as captured in the article, is for the entire Caribbean region to be powered by renewables, and he's establishing a new consulting group to advise local governments wishing to move in this direction. All very interesting and definitely worth watching (ideally from a hammock on Mosquito Island...). (Photo from NZ Herald.)