Elon Musk Offers $ 100 Million for Best Carbon Capture Innovation

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is donating $ 100 million to the winner of the new four-year X Prize Foundation's global carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology competition.

The prize will be awarded to the best project plan to remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans and store that carbon in a safe and economical way.

“This is not a theoretical competition; we need teams that will build real systems that can have measurable impact and scale to gigatons, ”Musk said.

The 49-year-old entrepreneur, who has also invested in interplanetary travel with his company SpaceX, recently became the richest person in the world, promoting electric vehicles as a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and slow global warming.

The competition will last four years, starting on April 22, 2021 (Earth Day) and running until Earth Day 2025.

Fifteen teams will be selected to participate in the competition within 18 months. Each of them will receive $ 1 million, and 25 individual scholarships of $ 200,000 will be awarded to student teams. The winner of the main prize will receive $ 50 million, the second place will receive $ 20 million, and the third place will receive $ 10 million.

To win, teams must create technology that can remove one ton (2,200 lb or 1,000 kg) of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per day. They will also have to demonstrate how innovation can be scaled up to ultimately remove gigatons of carbon dioxide, the X Prize said.

Modern carbon capture technologies focus on the removal of CO₂ from power plants or metallurgical plants. The method captures only about 0.1% of the world's total emissions.

The competition aims to stimulate innovation that can reverse some of the damage already done to the environment. In other words, to achieve "net emissions".
This is not the first time Musk has partnered with the X Prize to find innovative solutions to global problems.