Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk sparked his latest philanthropic venture on Thursday: a contest aimed at encouraging more innovative carbon capture technologies.
“I’m donating $ 100 million to the award for best carbon capture technology,” Musk tweeted, adding that it would provide “details next week”.
Musk, who briefly overtook Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, as the richest man in the world before a fall in Tesla’s share price made him fall back, recently asked his Twitter followers for advice on how best to distribute your money.
“Critical feedback is always highly appreciated, as are the ways of donating money that really make a difference (much harder than it looks),” Musk tweeted earlier this month.
In 2012, Musk signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative launched by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett that asks signers to donate at least half of their wealth during their lives, and donated mainly to science and engineering education, renewable energy research, research pediatric and human space exploration research.
But a Forbes estimate in September revealed that Musk has donated only $ 100 million so far – less than 1% of his net worth.
Still, Musk’s proposed carbon capture contest would move towards a cause that is likely to play an important role in combating climate change in the future, especially under the Biden government.
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A study published in Scientific Reports in November concluded that companies and governments urgently need to “start developing technologies for large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere,” a process known as carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Earth temperatures are already on track to exceed the levels that the Paris climate agreement – to which President Joe Biden returned on Wednesday – set targets for 2100
But even if all greenhouse gas emissions stopped by then, according to the study, at least 33 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would need to be sucked out of the atmosphere each year using carbon capture – roughly the total amount of carbon dioxide. global fossil carbon. fuel industry issued in 2018 (36 gigatonnes).
The technology is becoming widely accepted as a safe and potentially effective form of geoengineering compared to other approaches, and Biden expressed support for it on his campaign platform, saying that his administration would take steps to “accelerate the development and deployment of carbon capture sequestration. “
Specifically, Biden wants to make carbon capture more widely available, cheaper and scalable and plans to increase federal investments and tax incentives for technology development.
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