WHO would have thought that saving the planet could be such a lucrative business? Al Gore, the former US vice-president turned environmental campaigner, has made more than £50m in just seven years from his books, speeches and shrewd investments in technology and green ventures.

Gore, 59, a failed presidential candidate, has already reinvented himself from the nearly man of American politics into the first global green celebrity. This week he will pick up the Nobel peace prize in Oslo before flying to Bali to take centre stage at the United Nations climate change conference.

Today Gore commands between £50,000 and £85,000 a speech, holds stock options in Google worth £15m and has made as much as £4m from advances on his book deals. He is also advising a US venture capital company on how to invest a $600m green technology fund.

He has come a long way since losing the 2000 presidential election to George W Bush when, according to official documents, Gore was worth just £1m. His biggest assets were his two homes in Nashville, Tennessee, and Arlington, Virginia, valued at £375,000, and £500,000 invested in oil company shares.

Background

• UN chief to return to Bali climate talks

• Al Gore: free of diplomatic niceties

• Al Gore lambasts US climate obstructions

• Scorching decade claims eight hottest years

2007: worst year for the environment

As UN climate talks go down to the wire, scientists across the world says 2007 was a 'year of worsts' for the planet

• This decade breaks records in table of world's hottest years

Background

• US rejects Bali climate change guidelines

• UN chief: act now on climate or face oblivion

• Al Gore calls for climate ‘mobilisation’

• Carbon emissions are 'higher than claimed'

• A convenient £50m for green Gore

Multimedia

• Video: protests in Bali

• Video: Going green with God

• The environment - 2007 in pictures

Background

• Carbon stand-off puts climate talks at risk

• US 'must change lifestyle' for planet's sake

• Woodman, spare that high-carbon tree

• Act now or prepare for disaster

US laws will sap Europe’s energy

There is a serious danger that the politics of the American cornfield are again threatening trade and development

Background

• Water shortages 'likely trigger for wars'

• Global crisis reveals big cracks in policies

• UN climate circus rolls in on CO2 cloud

• Carbon Trust not meeting the challenge

We’re not doomed yet

Should we really be listening to the views of one man just because they are eye-catchingly more dramatic than the consensus?

Background

• Brown’s bid to seal fate of carrier bags

• Opec ponders wealth of alternatives

• Climate change panel verdict: the future is bleak

• A global warning for UN chief

But rather than dwell on his disappointment, Gore threw himself into the world of business.

Joel Hyatt, who chaired the democratic finance committee during the 2000 election and is now Gore’s business partner, said: “Al’s bouncing back from that experience has been quite extraordinary. It’s hard to move on from something like that but the fact he did is an incredible testament to his character.”

Gore began by joining Google as an adviser in 2001. At the time it was a relatively new and rising internet search engine. In March 2003 he joined the board of Apple, where he holds stock options that are now valued at about £3m. According to Hyatt, his interest in technology is long-standing. “Al has always had a real mind for gadgets and technology. He is a real geek in that regard.”

Gore has also invested a significant proportion of his wealth in Current TV, a cable channel on which viewers can broadcast their own video clips. It has 38m subscribers in the US and is now being shown in 8m homes in Britain.

At the same time Gore’s interest in green issues was coming to the fore, and his rise as a climate-change celebrity has proved highly lucrative.

Since the release of his documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has given 150 speeches a year.

His spokesman emphasised, however, that Gore waives his lecture fees for charities and schools and gives a proportion of his income to the Alliance for Climate Protection, of which he is chairman.

A contract for one of his speaking arrangements, released by the University of California under freedom of information requirements, reveals that Gore demands first class travel and accommodation and £500 a day for meals, phone calls and other expenses.

The contract stipulates that Gore’s car from the airport should be “a sedan, not a sports utility vehicle”.

Gore has written nine books, with advances worth between £3m and £4.5m, and has another planned for next year.

In 2003 he sold MetWest, an asset management firm he had started two years earlier, picking up a payout rumoured to be another £15m. In April 2004 he used the money to co-found Generation Investment Management, a London-based company that specialises in “sustainable” investments.

Today it manages more than £500m of assets, ranging from Novo Nordisk, a Danish drug maker, to Whole Foods Market, an organic retailer.

This month Gore joined the board of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, venture capitalists whose investment helped fuel the dotcom boom and fund companies such as Amazon. Kleiner is now going green and has started a £300m fund for technologies that aim to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

It has already invested in 26 companies that make everything from electric cars to microbes that scrub oil wells.

Visit the UN's webpage on the Bali summit

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