Elon Musk to offer $100 million prize for ‘best’ carbon capture tech

(Reuters) – Tesla Inc chief and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday took to Twitter to vow a $100 million prize for improvement of the “greatest” know-how to seize carbon dioxide emissions.

Capturing planet-warming emissions is changing into a crucial a part of many plans to maintain local weather change in test, however little or no progress has been made on the know-how to this point, with efforts centered on reducing emissions moderately than taking carbon out of the air.

The Worldwide Vitality Company stated late final 12 months {that a} sharp rise within the deployment of carbon seize know-how was wanted if nations are to satisfy net-zero emissions targets.

“Am donating $100M in the direction of a prize for greatest carbon seize know-how,” Musk wrote in a tweet, adopted by a second tweet that promised “Particulars subsequent week.”

Tesla officers didn’t instantly reply to a request for extra info.

Musk, who co-founded and bought Web funds firm PayPal Holdings Inc, now leads a few of the most futuristic firms on the planet.

Moreover Tesla, he heads rocket firm SpaceX and Neuralink, a startup that’s creating ultra-high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to attach the human mind to computer systems.

Newly-sworn-in U.S. President Joe Biden has pledged to speed up the event of carbon seize know-how as a part of his sweeping plan to deal with local weather change. On Thursday, he named Jennifer Wilcox, an knowledgeable in carbon elimination applied sciences, because the principal deputy assistant secretary for fossil vitality on the U.S. Division of Vitality.