Development
Elon Musk Offers $100 Million Prize for Carbon Capture Technologies By Charlie Osborne for Between the Lines ELON MUSK INTENDS TO OFFER $100 million to a successful project resulting in viable carbon capture technologies. Musk, the CEO of Tesla & SpaceX and an entrepreneur who briefly took over from Amazon's Jeff Bezos as the world's richest person earlier this month, made the pledge in a tweet on A direct air capture machine (or at least an artist’s rendering). Carbon Thursday. Engineering The concrete details of the "prize" for the "best" offering are due to be announced made in terms of technology designed to contribute next week. to the effort. "Am donating $100M towards a prize for best The concept, as explored by Vox (www.vox.com/ carbon capture technology," Musk said, which energy-and-environment /2019/9/4/20829431/climatesuggests that more than this amount may be on change-carbon-capture-utilization-sequestration-ccu-ccs), offer, overall. could involve burying carbon in saline aquifers or Carbon capture is a concept focused on air scrubbing, but for technologies in this area to the capture of carbon dioxide emissions be developed, potential profit in the eyes of the produced by manufacturing, vehicles, and investor needs to be a factor. As such, carbon food production, among other industries. capture technology could focus on carbon capture A human population of billions, deforestation, and utilization (CCU), in which carbon dioxide is the destruction of natural habitats, a lack of care used, in some way, to develop products or services. toward our oceans, and the transformation of land The creation of effective carbon capture for housing and the rearing of livestock have all technologies -- alongside environment recovery contributed to the problem of global warming. initiatives -- could help countries meet their Global warming is expected to create climate obligations in the Paris Agreement, an international refugees, diminish water and food supplies, treaty on fighting climate change. trigger extreme weather events, and cause sea Hours after becoming America's latest president, levels to rise. Joe Biden signed an executive order returning the Rolling back and attempting to tackle the damage US to the accord, after former US President Trump we have already caused to our environment are withdrew the United States from the agreement in ways to try and reduce the levels of carbon in the 2017. atmosphere, and to date, little progress has been www.zdnet.com/article/musk-offers-100-millionprize-for-carbon-capture-technologies 46
January-February 2021
DAWN
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