On Earth Day, 2021, Peter H. Diamandis and Elon Musk launched the largest incentive prize in history — $100M to develop carbon removal technologies at scale. Now, nearly a year later, XPRIZE is gearing up to announce 15 Milestone Award Winners based on teams’ progress in creating and demonstrating sustainable solutions for carbon dioxide removal.
Since launch, teams from across the globe have signed up for the competition, submitting their ideas for how to help mitigate climate change. In total, a whopping 1,133 teams joined the competition, making this group the largest collection of innovators working to solve humanity’s biggest problem.
Out of hundreds of proposals and data packets we received on February 1, 2022 from teams interested in competing for the $1M the Milestone Awards, 287 were complete, in-scope, and passed the initial screening by the Expert Reviewers. Although each and every team is still eligible to win the Grand Prize in 2025, these 287 are eligible to compete for the Milestone Awards. The submission requirements for the Milestone Awards were certainly rigorous and extensive. Teams were required to demonstrate a working carbon removal solution, estimate cost at full scale, and make a case and a plan for scaling and deploying their solutions at megatin and gigaton per year capacity - the scale relevant to move the needle on climate change. The 15 winners will come from this pool of 287 qualified competitors, as determined by the competition’s third-party judges.
XPRIZE Carbon Removal Announces the Top 60 list
We’re proud to announce the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Top 60. These teams were the cream of the crop and submitted significantly robust and promising milestone submissions. As not all teams will win $1M during this stage in the prize, we wanted to give special recognition to these teams to commend them on their work so far during the competition.
Visit the map on the prize page to learn more about any and all of the 1,133 teams and the Top 60. Navigate through the competitors by filtering through their solution type (air, land, oceans, and rocks) or level of achievement (sign up, qualified competitors, Top 60, student winners). You can also find teams near you to cheer on and support.
As for the $50M grand prize and $30M runner-up awards that will be announced on Earth Day, 2025, registration is still open until 2024 to anyone and everyone who is interested to compete. In fact, after the announcement of the Milestone Winners, the competition resets entirely! The submission requirements, expectations, and eligibility for the Grand Prize round will be different next time. To win, teams must submit proof of a working carbon removal project at a scale of at least 1000 tons per year.
Who will win their share of the $15 million Milestone Awards? Find out Earth Day, April 22, 2022.