There's $20 million on the table if anyone can come up with a solution to one of the world's greatest crises.
On Tuesday, the nonprofit XPRIZE — known for awarding millions in prize money in public contests — announced its latest challenge.
XPRIZE will award the $20 million purse to the team or individual that can pull carbon from the atmosphere and turn it into useful goods.
Carbon can be turned into "everything from liquid fuels, including algae-based fuels, to building materials like cement," explains Paul Bunje, senior scientist and principal at XPRIZE. "And it's also just a huge basket of advanced materials: carbon nanotubes, carbon fiber, graphene, even polymers for fabrics."
The $20 million purse is split between two solutions: one for pollution caused by gas and one for pollution caused by coal.
Entrants need only visit the XPRIZE website to register in the contest. Over the next four and a half years, XPRIZE will winnow the field down with real-world tests of the proposed solutions.
Major companies already exist in the space, including Carbon Engineering and Global Thermostat. In fact, both companies entered Richard Branson's 2007 Virgin Earth Challenge to solve the exact problem XPRIZE is tackling today. However, Branson has yet to award any winners with the $25 million in prize money.
The popularity of carbon capture gives Bunje high hopes for the entrant pool, which he suspects will exceed the 78 teams who entered into July's Ocean Health XPRIZE.
Plus that purse should make the public more interested, too.
"We want to turn the conversation away from one of despair and frustration," Bunje says, "and start enabling people to see that there are real people doing extraordinary things."
