Carbon X Prize: Transforming CO₂ into Valuable Products

(Carbon X Prize) The $20 million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE is a global competition to develop breakthrough technologies that will convert CO₂ emissions from power plants and industrial facilities into valuable products like building materials, alternative fuels and other items that we use every day.

The NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE inspires development of new and emerging CO₂ conversion technologies to help solve climate change.

We are living in an age of innovation, an unprecedented era of technological progress and prosperity driven by energy.
However, most of this energy comes from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and natural gas that account for a majority of global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. We know that CO₂ emissions are a leading contributor to climate change, and the world will need a portfolio of solutions to address it.

The winning team will convert the most CO₂ into products with the highest value as determined by:
1. How much CO₂ they convert

Carbon dioxide is more abundant in our atmosphere now than at any time in human history, threatening the likelihood of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. Carbon is a fundamental ingredient in so much of our modern lives, what if we were able to mine the sky and use the CO₂ in the air? What if everything around you could be made out of thin air?

Companies and entrepreneurs working on carbon capture and utilization, also known as CCUS, are attempting to do just that. By collecting CO₂ from industrial exhaust, and even ambient air, carbontech innovators are able to use these versatile molecules to make any number of useful, valuable products. ‘What useful, valuable products??’ you may be asking yourself. The answers may surprise you.

VODKA
Yes, you read that right! You can make high-end vodka out of thin air. Brooklyn-based Air Co. makes pure and sustainable vodka out of thin air. The team uses solar power to capture excess carbon from the air, which is distilled and filtered to produce ethanol, the base ingredient for all alcoholic drinks.

LOW-CARBON FUEL
Fuel, the primary source of man-made GHG emissions, can actually be made from CO₂ and provide an energy source for the future. Breathe creates a fuel that runs on 15% methanol. They believe a methanol economy can help reach India’s goals to lower carbon emissions overall by 33 - 35% by 2030. The prototype car pictured was designed and made by Impossible Labs.

To begin paying off our accumulated carbon dioxide debt, we’re going to need to find novel, innovative approaches to capturing, and ultimately utilizing, the CO₂ already abundant in our atmosphere. The potential uses for carbon dioxide in our economy are only limited by our ingenuity and imagination.

Excerpt from TechCrunch: The entire $100 million prize pool is up for grabs with this competition, which will seek solutions that can “pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans and lock it away permanently in an environmentally benign way.” That’s an ambitious goal, and one that seeks methods for carbon extraction which have a net negative effect on the overall global balance of the element’s presence. Xprize aims to award up to 15 finalists $1 million each, along with three top winners, with $50 million to the Grand Prize victor, and $20 million and $10 million respectively for second and third place. Twenty-five student scholarships valued at $250,000 each will also be up for grabs specifically for student team entrants.

To qualify for victory, solutions must be able to extract one ton of CO2 per day, and be viable in a scaled, validated model at time of presentation, with the ability to scale it to “gigaton levels” in commercially viable ways in the future. Those are big goals for new technologies, but the competition’s stakes are high: Musk has frequently referred to climate change as an existential threat to humanity, and carbon capture is one key means to combat it. READ MORE