Elon Musk throws more weight behind carbon storage
A brainchild of business magnate Elon Musk, a partnership was announced April 26 to help support fledgling companies interested in competing for a $100mn carbon removal competition.
Musk’s XPRIZE teamed up with AirMiners, which is exploring so-called carbon mining from the air, and Creative Destruction Lab, a non-profit teaching vehicle that grew out of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, to support startups interested in competing for the multi-million-dollar prize.
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The AirMiners Launchpad is a six-week programme that helps project proponents on the path towards gigatonne scale carbon removal. It helps innovators establish their team, develop business strategy, roadmap their tech, and connect to the broader carbon removal network.
XPRIZE is a four-year global competition vetting ways to pull CO2 from the atmosphere or the oceans and sequester it in a sustainable way.
“To win the grand prize, teams must demonstrate a working solution at a scale of at least 1,000 tonnes removed per year; model their costs at a scale of 1 million tonnes per year; and show a pathway to achieving a scale of gigatonnes per year in the future,” the rules state.
Nikki Batchelor, the prize director for the XPRIZE carbon removal programme, said many projects that would qualify for the $100mn prize are still in the nascent stage.
Project partners said support now could lead to the scalable projects of the future that can make a meaningful impact on arresting climate change.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) warned in December that carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) needed to be deployed at a much faster pace for countries to meet their climate goals. It can handle emissions from many industries and can be used to make natural gas-derived hydrogen clean.
Musk's Tesla is a pioneer in electrifying vehicle transport, and electrification is touted as a key way to decarbonise other industries. But CCUS is a potential solution for areas that are not easily made clean with renewable power supply alone.