Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Thursday teased his latest philanthropic endeavor: a contest aimed at encouraging more innovative carbon capture technologies.
“I donate $ 100 million for a prize for the best carbon capture technology,” Musk tweetedand added that he will provide details next week.
Musk, who briefly surpassed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world before a rise in Tesla’s share price dropped him a spot, recently asked his Twitter fans for advice on how to make his money to give the best.
“Critical feedback is always much appreciated, as are ways of donating money that really make a difference (much harder than it seems),” Musk tweeted earlier this month.
In 2012, Musk signed the Giving Pledge, an initiative launched by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, which asked signatories to donate at least half of their wealth within their lifetime, and donated primarily to science and engineering. training, research on renewable energy, pediatric research, and research into human space exploration.
According to Forbes in September, Musk has so far donated only $ 100 million – less than 1% of its net worth.
Musk’s proposed carbon capture battle would be an issue that is likely to play an important role in the fight against climate change, especially under the Biden government.
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A study published by Scientific Reports in November concluded that companies and governments urgently ‘need to start developing technologies to remove large-scale greenhouse gases from the atmosphere’, a process known as As carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Earth’s temperatures are already on track for levels that the Paris climate agreement – to which President Joe Biden rejoined on Wednesday – has risen as targets for 2100.
But even if all greenhouse gas emissions had been halted by then, according to the study, at least 33 gigatons of carbon dioxide would have to be sucked out of the atmosphere annually using carbon capture – about the total amount of carbon dioxide in the global fossil fuel industry that in 2018 released (36 gigatons).
The technology is widely accepted as a safe and potentially effective form of geo-engineering compared to other approaches, and Biden in his campaign platform expressed support for it, saying his administration would take steps to develop and deploy sequestration technology to accelerate carbon capture. . “
Specifically, Biden wants to make carbon capture more widely available, cheaper and more scalable, and plans to increase federal investment and tax incentives for technology development.