On January 21, 2021, Elon Musk tweeted that he will be “donating $100 million towards a prize for the best carbon capture technology.” – including an accompanying tweet reading, “details will come next week.”
Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2021
The Tesla and SpaceX boss recently surpassed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in becoming the world’s richest person.
According to a person familiar with Musk’s plan, the award money will be connected to the Xprize Foundation. It’s a non-profit organization that incentivizes innovation by hosting competitions aimed at encouraging technological development.
Carbon capture is short for “carbon capture, utilization, and storage or sequestration.” It’s the process of removing waste carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere (or capturing it from factories before it’s released into the air) to either store or reuse. The main goal is to reduce the harmful byproduct in the environment to mitigate climate change.
Excess CO2 gas causes global warming because it blocks heat from escaping the Earth’s atmosphere. Human activity has increased atmospheric CO2 by 47% since the Industrial Revolution. According to NASA, it’s “the most important long-lived ‘forcing’ of climate change.”
Ahmed F. Ghoniem, an MIT professor who has a research interest in CO2 capture technologies, said:
[The use of a contest to drive innovation in carbon capture technology is] certainly an excellent idea. [Innovation in carbon capture technology is needed for] reducing the cost and complexity of the technology and improving the overall efficiency.
Carbon capture isn’t a new pursuit. Twenty-one large-scale CCUS commercial projects have popped up around the globe over the past two decades. The first one was established in 1972! Meanwhile, there are plans for 30 more projects since 2017.
https://twitter.com/IEA/status/1352620794824830979?s=20
However, for the most part, carbon capture has been a disappointment. But things are starting to turn around. The International Energy Agency said:
The story of CCUS has largely been one of unmet expectations: its potential to mitigate climate change has been recognized for decades, but deployment has been slow and so has had only a limited impact on global CO2 emissions. [But that could be changing.] There are clear signs that CCUS may be gaining traction.
The main factor holding the technology back is the high upfront cost. But many companies recently have found a way around this by collecting emissions and converting them into other more valuable uses.
LanzaTech captures waste gas emissions and turns them into useable ethanol fuel using a bioreactor. The company also created a spin-off called LanzaJet that converts ethanol to ethylene, making PEP for fibers used to make clothes and polyethylene for bottles.
Climeworks is another excellent example. It’s a Swiss startup that uses filters to capture carbon dioxide from the air directly and sells it to fertilizer manufacturers or soda-making companies who use it to add bubbles to their beverage.
Carbon Engineering is a third good example. It’s a Canadian company that removes CO2 from the atmosphere and processes it to create new synthetic fuels.
The greenhouse gas is harmful in the sky, but it’s actually an ingredient found in many standard products. Hopefully, with awards like Musk’s $100 million, inventors will develop all kinds of efficient and innovative ways to make fair use of a bad thing.
