Elon Musk announces $ 100 million award for new carbon capture technology

Things we already know: The world is getting uncomfortably hot due to humanity’s insistence on burning fossil fuels. Elon Musk is currently the richest man on the planet. Yet for being among the richest people on the planet, Musk’s philanthropic record over the years has been paltry compared to Jeff Bezos. So, yes, it was a bit of a surprise on Thursday when the CEO of Tesla took to Twitter to announce that he was planning to donate $ 100 million as a prize for a winning carbon capture system. .

Details on Musk’s upcoming carbon capture competition have not been released but are expected to arrive. “next week. This is not the first time that a company has solicited public support for carbon capture technology, which seeks to extract this element from the atmosphere and move it away to help slow the pace of change. human induced climate. In 2018, X-Prize held a similar competition and awarded five finalist teams a share of its $ 20 million grand prize. But with a $ 100 million purse at stake, Musk’s competition will not only offer five times the funding for the X-Prize, but also be his largest philanthropic investment to date (10 times the amount of his second plus. big donations, so far). Of course, this is far from the first effort to collect and convert atmospheric CO2 into consumer products. EFPL recently developed a capture system for the semi-finals which converts 90% of vehicle emissions to liquid CO2, researchers at Oxford have found a way to turn it into jet fuel while others have turned greenhouse gas into diamonds.