15 carbon removal projects score $1M each in climate Xprize milestone

The first group of big winners of the $100 million Xprize competition for carbon reduction were announced. 15 companies are getting $1M today to keep the lights on, even though the majority of the Musk money won't be given away until 2025.

The Musk Foundation is funding the Carbon removal Xprize, which aims to reward novel methods to pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans.

Xprize isn't looking for profitability, but rather demonstrating and executing on an idea, which means things are a bit more early stage. The last year saw the reviewers winnowing down an original pool of more than a thousand applicants to a top 60 and eventually 15.

Here is a very basic summary of each, in the order listed on the Xprize site.

• Calcite: Using “the natural carbon absorbing properties of Calcium Hydroxide” to pull it from the air at scale
• Carbyon: “A fast swing process by means of a rotating drum” containing an engineered material to capture CO2
• Heirloom + Carbfix: Sequestering carbon in naturally occurring minerals and fluids through efficient exposure
• Project Hajar: Mineralization using 44.01’s peridotite injection process
• Sustaera: “Direct air capture 2.0” with improved modularity and cheaper chemical reaction pathways
• Verdox + Carbfix (yes, they’re listed twice): “Electroswing adsorption” to fix CO2 with 70% less energy
• Bioeconomy Institute at ISU: Uses Pyrolysis to refix outgoing plant-based carbon (with bio-oil byproduct)
• Global Algae: Algae farms that naturally capture CO2 from the air
• NetZero: Also pyrolysis (helpful video explainer here)
• PlantVillage: Helps farmers in Africa to adapt to climate change
• Takachar: Mobile “oxygen-lean torrefaction” to convert waste biomass to fuel, fertilizer etc
• Captura: Extracting CO2 directly from seawater by means unspecified
• Marine Permaculture: “Deepwater-irrigated, open-ocean seaweed mariculture.” Kelp farms!
• Planetary: Turns mine waste into a “mild, nontoxic antacid” that helps restore natural ocean pH
• Carbin Minerals: Using mine tailings for a mineralization process

The competition begins now that the milestone winners have been announced. The registration will remain open until the end of the year in which the teams will have to demonstrate the removal of 1,000 tons of carbon per year. The winners of Earth Day will be announced on Earth Day 2025.

If you're on a student team that's eligible for a $250K scholarship, ask your advisor or lab lead if it's worth it. We will check back in a couple years when there are some good players in the field.