Elon Musk desires your concepts about the best way to struggle local weather change — and he is keen to pay prime greenback for them.
The billionaire SpaceX and Tesla chief and his Musk Basis are funding a brand new Carbon Removing X Prize to the tune of $100 million — the richest incentive prize in historical past, based on X Prize officers.
The aim of the four-year contest is to nurture the event of expertise that pulls sufficient heat-trapping carbon dioxide out of the air to take Earth off its disastrous warming trajectory.
Associated: What is climate change, and how is it affecting Earth?
“We need to make a really significant influence. Carbon negativity, not neutrality,” Musk stated in a statement released by the X Prize Foundation. “This isn’t a theoretical competitors; we would like groups that can construct actual methods that may make a measurable influence and scale to a gigaton stage. No matter it takes. Time is of the essence.”
Anyone all over the world can enter the newly introduced competitors, the existence of which Musk teased last month. Full pointers will probably be launched on Earth Day (April 22) — the identical day that registration begins — and the competition will run by way of Earth Day 2025, X Prize officers stated. You’ll be able to study extra concerning the prize here.
The primary large chunk of the $100 million will probably be doled out in October 2022 — $1 million every to the highest 15 groups, as determined by a panel of judges. Across the similar time, 25 scholarships value $200,000 apiece will probably be awarded to scholar groups within the competitors, X Prize officers stated.
The general winner of the competitors will get the grand prize of $50 million, and second and third place will internet $20 million and $10 million, respectively.
“The aim of this competitors is to encourage entrepreneurs and engineers to construct the carbon dioxide elimination options, a lot of which have solely been mentioned and debated,” X Prize founder and govt chairman Peter Diamandis stated in the identical assertion.
“We need to see them constructed, examined and validated,” he added. “We hope this X Prize will activate the private and non-private sectors to get entangled in the identical means that the $10 million Ansari X Prize brought about the commercial spaceflight industry.”
The Ansari X Prize, which supplied $10 million to the primary personal group that would fly a crewed car to area twice inside a two-week span, was received in October 2004 by the staff behind SpaceShipOne. Shortly thereafter, Richard Branson licensed SpaceShipOne’s expertise and constructed his area tourism firm, Virgin Galactic, round it. (Virgin Galactic’s six-passenger suborbital spaceliner is named SpaceShipTwo.)
Mike Wall is the creator of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e-book concerning the seek for alien life. Comply with him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Comply with us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Fb.
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