Phase
Active
$100M Prize For Carbon Removal
$100 Million
Prize Purse
XPRIZE Carbon Removal is aimed at tackling the biggest threat facing humanity - fighting climate change and rebalancing Earth’s carbon cycle. Funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation, this $100M competition is the largest incentive prize in history, an extraordinary milestone.
Overview
Meet The Teams
Truly Meaningful Impact
The climate math is becoming clear that we will need gigaton-scale carbon removal in the coming decades to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates the need at approximately 10 gigatonnes of net CO2 removal per year by the year 2050 in order to keep global temperature rise under 1.5 or 2C. As governments, companies, investors, and entrepreneurs make plans to meet this challenge, it is clear that we will need a range of carbon removal solutions to be proven through demonstration and deployment to complement work that is already underway. If humanity continues on a business-as-usual path, the global average temperature could increase 6˚(C) by the year 2100.
This four-year global competition invites innovators and teams from anywhere on the planet to create and demonstrate solutions that can pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans, and sequester it durably and sustainably. To win the grand prize, teams must demonstrate a working solution at a scale of at least 1000 tonnes removed per year; model their costs at a scale of 1 million tonnes per year; and show a pathway to achieving a scale of gigatonnes per year in future.
Any carbon negative solution is eligible: nature-based, direct air capture, oceans, mineralization, or anything else that achieves net negative emissions, sequesters CO2 durably, and show a sustainable path to achieving low cost at gigatonne scale.
Thank you to our early innovators, and sponsors, who knew Carbon Removal would become an XPRIZE: Chuck Brady, Jeff Holden, Tylee Potter, Jon Vein, Paresh Ghelani, Eric Hirshberg, Dave Asprey, Thomas Ermacora, Ryan Duffy, Harry Kloor and Thomas Middleditch.
How to Register
How to Win
Prize Purse
$50 million paid to the single Grand Prize Winner
$30 million to be distributed among up to 3 runners up
WE WANT TEAMS TO BUILD REAL SYSTEMS THAT CAN MAKE A MEASURABLE IMPACT AT A GIGATON LEVEL. WHATEVER IT TAKES. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE.
Elon Musk
Co-founder and CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company
WE HOPE TO PUSH THIS CRITICAL FIELD FORWARD IN THE SAME WAY THAT THE ANSARI XPRIZE MOVED COMMERCIAL SPACEFLIGHT.
Peter H. Diamandis, MD
Founder and Executive Chairman, XPRIZE
IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO USE HUMAN CREATIVITY, INNOVATION, AND COMPETITION TO REWRITE OUR HISTORY AND CREATE A BETTER FUTURE FOR ALL OF US ON THIS PLANET WE CALL HOME.
ANOUSHEH ANSARI
CEO of XPRIZE