Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has elaborated on his pledge to offer a $100 million (€82.5 million) reward for the best carbon capture project in a pledge to exit the fossil fuel industry.
The XPrize Foundation's carbon capture technology contest will be funded by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. Credit: Daniel Oberhaus / Flickr
The entrepreneur first announced his intention to offer a cash prize for such technology at the end of January to aid in the removal of carbon from the Earth's atmosphere and oceans, stating he wanted to make a "truly meaningful impact."
Read more: Elon Musk to offer $100m for best carbon capture technology
Carbon capture technology is considered by many climate scientists to be vital in the energy transition and toward achieving many nation's climate goals.
The project has been handed over to the XPrize Foundation and is the largest single climate project of its type in history.
The Foundation, which was formed in 1997, was created to tackle some of the most pressing issues affecting the world, including climate change.
According to XPrize, roughly 6 gigatons of CO2 must be removed from the Earth's atmosphere per year by 2030 and 10 gigatonnes per year by 2050 to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
These sweeping changes to global carbon consumption will also allow the world to meet the guidelines laid out by the Paris Climate Agreement, which dictates the limiting of global temperatures of no more than 1.5°C warmer than pre-Industrial levels.
In a statement made to announce the launch of the competition, Musk said: “This is not a theoretical competition; we want teams that will build real systems that can make a measurable impact and scale to a gigaton level. Whatever it takes. Time is of the essence.”
"The ultimate goal is scalable carbon extraction that is measured based on the ‘fully considered cost per tonne’ which includes the environmental impact."
Musk elaborated his endgame was carbon-negativity, not carbon-neutrality, as simply achieving carbon-neutrality will not be enough to stem the negative effects of climate change.
The competition is to run for four years and invites innovators from across the globe to take part and bring their carbon technologies into the forefront.
The XPrize Foundation states that "solutions will be scientifically evaluated across multiple criteria such as the amount of CO2 removed, life cycle analysis of the removal process, energy efficiency, land footprint and sequestration capabilities."
"Any carbon-negative solution is eligible: nature-based, direct air capture, oceans, mineralisation, or anything else that sequesters CO2 permanently."
Read more: Ecotricity CEO to manufacture "sky mining" diamonds
Fifteen teams will be selected for the competition and each will receive $1 million to develop their ideas. The first-place idea will receive a $50 million (€41.2 million) prize, with second place receiving $20 million (€16.5 million) and third place receiving a $10 million (€8.25 million) bounty.
To be considered, the technology must be able to remove one US tonne of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per day.
Peter H. Diamandis, Founder and Executive Chairman of XPrize, said: “We are challenging engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs to build and demonstrate carbon removal systems that work. “Systems that in sub-scale can demonstrate real, viable carbon removal at 1 tonne per day, and then show us how those systems can scale (cost-effectively) to scale massively to gigatonne scale.
"The goal of this competition is to inspire entrepreneurs and engineers to build carbon dioxide removal solutions, many of which have only been discussed and debated. We want to see them built, tested, and validated. We hope this XPrize will activate the public and private sectors to get involved in the same way that the $10 million Ansari XPrize brought about the commercial spaceflight industry.”
Full details and guidelines for the competition will be revealed on April 22, 2021 - also known as Earth Day - which is when team registration will also begin.
Read more: Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon chief
The fifteen teams who will receive the $1 million in funding will be selected after 18 months.
Also on offer will be 25 $200,000 student scholarships to be distributed for students participating in the project.
Back to Homepage
Back to Energy & Utilities
Back to Technology & Innovation