Creating water from thin air

Rights to the Intellectual Property created through the challenge will be governed by the terms and conditions of the Competitor's Agreement. The Competitor’s Agreement is a legally binding contract that contains the requirements of the competition. All competing teams must sign this in order to compete.

All investment for design, development and research needs to be arranged by the teams. XPRIZE will not cover or reimburse for any of these costs.

Yes, however it must adhere to the Competition Guidelines and the Rules & Regulations of the challenge.

There are theoretical limits to extracting water from the atmosphere for different geographical regions of the world. Teams will need to generate the maximum amount of water by pushing the limits of technology. Please refer to the competition scorecard in the Competition Guidelines for more details.

Water is a key element of life on our planet. More than 71% of the Earth’s surface is covered with water, yet over 780 million people in 43 countries are facing water scarcity due to lack of availability, uneven distribution and access and contamination. By 2025, an estimated 1.8 billion people will be living in areas with absolute water scarcity, with 2/3 of the global population living under water stressed conditions.

While opportunities exist to augment currently available fresh water resources, including desalination and wastewater treatment, these approaches have been environmentally destructive and expensive thus far.

With over 3 quadrillion gallons of water in the atmosphere, or enough to meet the needs of every person on the planet for a year, atmospheric extraction could revolutionize access to fresh water, generating fresh water where it is currently unavailable or inaccessible.

The Water Abundance XPRIZE is a two-year competition, comprised of a 5-month team registration period, 7 months for solution development for first round of testing, and 12 months to complete the final phases of Round 2 testing, judging and award.

Yes. Once you have expressed an interest in competing and completed an online profile, you will have access to our online XPRIZE Forum where people (or groups) will post their skills or the skills they are looking for to complete their team. There, you will find opportunities to collaborate and be part of this unique competition.

Water is an indispensable part of our survival and future. It is essential for agriculture, healthcare, industry, households and sanitation; we cannot think of our future without water. With growing population across our planet, the water tables across the world are falling rapidly, which is leading to a serious water crisis. The winning technology will create decentralized access to water, giving people the power to access fresh water, whenever and wherever they need it.

The technologies will be tested at the locations that will allow standardized weather conditions for all teams. In the first round of the test, teams will have an option to propose their choice of testing location to be approved by the Judges Panel. For the second round of testing, the testing locations will be decided by the Judges Panel.

The testing will take place in two rounds:

Round 1: Teams will create a prototype that can extract water from the atmosphere. Prototypes will be tested through a live online demonstration. The top five (5) Teams chosen based on the Round 1 Score Card will then move to Round 2.

Round 2: All Teams chosen from Round 1 will submit revised solutions to be tested at locations specified by the Judging Panel. One Grand Prize Winner will be announced in August 2018 based on overall score by the Judging Panel.

For details about testing and scorecards, please refer to the Competition Guidelines.

Our non-renewable sources of energy are depleting rapidly and will soon be exhausted. If we are dependent on a non-renewable source of energy, we will not achieve a sustainable solution. Additionally, use of a non-renewable source of energy might also lead to increase in the cost of generating water, making it difficult for scale and global adoption. A renewable source of energy will ensure that this solution is sustainable and accessible to everyone.

There are four ways you can get involved:

1) Form or be part of a team.

2) Sign up to follow the competition and monitor the progress of the teams.

3) Spread the word about the competition so people who are interested have an opportunity to compete and participate.

4) Become a resource to teams if you have something that would be helpful for them as they embark on this quest.

There are a few technologies that exist in the market that can extract water from atmosphere. However, these technologies are either very slow or very expensive. There is also a serious lack of private investment for innovation in this space. Through the Water Abundance XPRIZE, we are incentivizing teams around the world to come up with a disruptive, scalable solution that transforms fresh water access, catalyses the market and pushes existing technologies.