Elon Musk's initial headline-grabbing plan to award $100 million for the best direct carbon capture and storage technology unveiled last month was updated this week with the aim to remove 10 gigatons (2.2 trillion pounds) of CO2 per year from the atmosphere by 2050.
Details of Musk's ambitious plan to help mitigate global warming were revealed Monday by the X Prize Foundation, or XPRIZE, which has been tasked by Musk to run the global competition. The non-profit XPRIZE designs and hosts public competitions intended to encourage technological developments that benefit humanity.
XPRIZE said Musk's innovation prize will be awarded for the best carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology that can remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere or oceans, and store that CO2 in a safe, cost-effective way.
Musk's competition will run for four years and will launch this April 22 (Earth Day). It will remain active until Earth Day 2025.
"We want to make a truly meaningful impact. carbon negativity, not neutrality," said Musk, in a written statement released by XPRIZE.
"This is not a theoretical competition; we want teams that will build real systems that can make a measurable impact and scale to a gigaton level. Whatever it takes. Time is of the essence."
According to Musk, the goal of the prize "is scalable carbon extraction that is measured based on the 'fully considered cost per ton' which includes the environmental impact."
XPRIZE said the goal of the global contest is to inspire the innovation of technology that can be scaled-up so it can remove 10 gigatons of CO2 per year by 2050.
"The world needs to develop the capacity to remove up to 10 billion tons of (CO2) by around the year 2050 to avoid global warming of more than 1.5 or 2 [degrees Celsius]," said Marcius Extavour, executive director of climate, energy and environment prizes for XPRIZE to CNBC.
"In order to get to that capacity (10 billion tons of (CO2 removal per year), we are likely going to need hundreds of different companies or projects, using several different methods of removing (CO2)."
The XPRIZE rules say a team must develop technology that can remove one ton (2,000 pounds) of CO2 out of the atmosphere per day. The winning team will also have to demonstrate how their technological innovation can be scaled up to remove gigatons of CO2 annually.
XPRIZE said the main metric for the competition is fully considered cost per ton, inclusive of whatever considerations are necessary for environmental benefit, permanence, any value-added products.
It will distribute the $100 million in prize money in phases. After 18 months, or by August 2022, the top 15 teams will get $1 million and 25 student teams will each get $200,000 as "Milestone Awards." The money will help teams fund the full technological build out.
After four years, the first-place winner will get $50 million, the second-place winner will get $20 million and the third-place winner will get $10 million.
Musk launched the $100 million prize with a tweet on Jan. 21 saying, "Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon-capture technology. Details next week," he said in a follow-up tweet.
