Things we already know: the world is getting uncomfortably hot due to the urge of mankind to burn fossil fuels. Elon Musk is currently the richest man on the planet. But because he was among the richest people on the planet, Musk’s philanthropic record over the years was slim compared to Jeff Bezos. So, yes, it came as a bit of a surprise on Thursday when Tesla’s CEO announced on Twitter that he plans to donate $ 100 million as a prize for a winning carbon capture system.
I donate $ 100 million for a prize for the best carbon capture technology
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 21 January 2021
Details of Musk’s upcoming carbon capture competition have not been announced, but are expected to arrive. “Next week. This is not the first time that a company has sought the public’s help with carbon capture technology, which seeks to remove this element from the atmosphere and squirm away to slow down the rate of climate change by humans. In 2018, X-Prize held a similar competition and awarded five finalists a share of its $ 20 million grand prize. But with a $ 100 million wallet at stake, Musk’s competition not only offers five times the X-prize funding, it will also be his largest philanthropic investment to date (ten times the amount of his second largest donations, so far). Of course, this is by no means the first attempt to collect and convert atmospheric CO2 into consumer products. The EFPL recently developed a semis capture system that converts 90 percent of the vehicle’s emissions into liquid CO2, and Oxford researchers devised a way to turn it into jet fuel, while others converted the greenhouse gas into diamonds.