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 human being on the planet. However, being among the richest people on the planet, Musk’s philanthropic background over the years has been insignificant compared to Jeff Bezos. So yes, it came as a surprise on Thursday when Tesla’s CEO logged on to Twitter to announce that he plans to donate $ 100 million as a prize for a winning carbon capture system.
I’m donating $ 100 million to the award for best carbon capture technology
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2021
Details on Musk’s next carbon capture competition have not been released, but they should arrive “next week. ”This is not the first time that a company has sought public help with carbon capture technology, which aims to extract this element from the atmosphere and remove it to help decrease the rate of human-induced climate change. In 2018, the X-Prize held a similar competition and awarded five finalist teams a share of their $ 20 million grand prize. But with a $ 100 million grant at stake, the Musk competition will not only offer five times the funding as an X-Prize, but will also constitute its biggest philanthropic investment to date (10 times the value of its second largest donation so far) . Of course, this is far from the first effort to collect and convert atmospheric CO2 into consumer products. EFPL recently developed a semi-capture system that converts 90 percent of vehicle emissions into liquid CO2. Oxford researchers have found a way to turn it into jet fuel while others have turned greenhouse gas into diamonds.