Billionaire Elon Musk, the world's second wealthiest person and CEO of Tesla, Inc, is offering a $100 million prize to anyone that can develop the "best" technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions.
"Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon-capture technology," tweeted Musk. "Details next week," he said in a follow-up tweet.
Musk, whose electric vehicle (EV) company is the world leader in clean transportation, has long been a fighter against climate change.
He once assailed our heavy reliance on greenhouse gas-producing fossil fuels as "the dumbest experiment in human history." He also resigned in protest from former president Donald Trump's advisory team after Trump announced on June 1, 2017, he was pulling the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement on climate change.
Musk, whose latest net worth stands at $184 billion, can well afford to give away a "paltry" $100 million. His offer also appears timely.
On Friday, the British Met Office revealed atmospheric CO2 concentrations would exceed 417 parts per million (ppm) -- a 50% increase since the start of widespread industrial activity in the 18th century.
"Reversing this trend and slowing the atmospheric CO2 rise will need global emissions to reduce, and bringing them to a halt will need global emissions to be brought down to net zero," said Richard Betts, head of the climate impacts group at the Met Office and lead researcher for the forecast.
"This needs to happen within about the next 30 years if global warming is to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius."
The International Energy Agency said a sharp rise in the deployment of carbon capture technology is needed if countries are to meet their net-zero emissions targets over the next three decades.
Musk's appeal for developing the best carbon-capture technology is a misnomer, however. Carbon capture tech isn't a standalone system but one-half of a two-part solution to carbon mitigation called "carbon capture & storage (CCS), or carbon capture and sequestration.
CCS is capturing waste CO2, transporting it to a storage site, and depositing it where it will not enter the atmosphere (which means injecting the CO2 deep into the Earth).
Companies have been injecting CO2 into geological formations for several decades for various reasons, such as fracking. On the other hand, the long-term storage of CO2 in geological strata is a relatively new concept.
In 2019 there were only 17 operating CCS projects in the entire world. Together, these projects capture 31.5 metric tons of CO2 per year, of which 3.7 MT is stored geologically.
Experts say CCS applied to a modern conventional power plant might reduce CO2 emissions by up to 90% compared to a plant without CCS.
It is likely Musk will spell out the storage part of carbon capture in his next tweets or on a lengthy blog post. Musk, however, is in sync with one of the top priorities of President Joe Biden.
Biden pledged to accelerate the development of carbon capture technology as part of his broad plan to tackle climate change. An encouraging sign is his appointment of Jennifer Wilcox. She is an expert in carbon removal technologies, and is the principal deputy assistant secretary for fossil energy at the U.S. Department of Energy.
