Elon Musk Offers $100 Million for Best Carbon Capture Tech

Elon Musk is using his considerable influence (and wealth) to fight climate change. The “real-life Iron Man” is funding a $100 million prize for the “best carbon capture technology.”

The XPrize competition is “aimed at tackling the biggest threat facing humanity — fighting climate change and rebalancing Earth’s carbon cycle,” and to that end, it’s offering $100 million to whichever team can devise the best solution to pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans.

The global contest will run for four years, and the solution will have to scale to gigaton levels – as XPrize points out, we’ll have to remove 6 gigatons of CO2 per year by 2030, and 10 gigatons per year by 2050 to properly deal with climate change (or forestall the worst aspects of it).

It’s worth pointing out that the U.S. – under President Biden – has reentered the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to limit the Earth’s temperature rise to no more than 1.5˚(C) of pre-industrial levels, so the XPrize competition has succinct timing.

Entries will be graded on amount of CO2 removed, life cycle analysis of the removal process, energy efficiency, land footprint, and sequestration capabilities, and the contest will run through 2025.

Read here for more.