Heard of the best carbon capture technology? Apparently, Elon Musk will donate $100 million to any individual or company that helps build this technology, which will definitely help in its development. We know that the space desperately needs it, and coming from the world’s richest man, this seems to be a wonderful opportunity for scientists. How can you win the prize?
While musk hasn’t revealed the details of the prize yet, he did mention that he wanted to lower the price of air-carbon capture so that it could help directly facilitate the feasibility of rocket fuel. Currently, there is no correct way of making an electric rocket but he hopes it will be possible in the near future. He hopes that it would be possible to utilise solar power to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and combine it with water to build oxygen and rocket fuel for spaceships.
Apparently, three startups are already working on the technology that might make this hypothesis come true. These are,
- Climeworks (Switzerland)
- Carbon Engineering (Canada)
- Global Thermostat (The USA)
These three companies have already spent around $10 million through their pilot plants. It will take a long time to see some success stemming out of this dream but Musk is determined that the day will come soon enough. Do you know how much it costs to secure one ton of carbon through direct air capture? It can go up to $600!
Musk details two ways of bringing down the cost per tonne:
- Invest 100s of millions of dollars to build huge plants.
- Increasing the pace to work out this hypothesis. The Government can fund research laboratories. Other billionaires can also announce cash prizes that empowers scientists and researchers to be more active to avail of the opporunity.
This is not the first time a billionaire or millionaire has announced a cash price to use the CO2 from the environment for the greater good. In 2015, the CarbonXPrize was initiated. It currently has 10 finalists and the winners will be announced by the end of 2021!
Does this seem like an exciting opportunity? Do you envision the world going fully electrical in the next couple of years?
Source: NDTV
