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$ 100 million - Elon Musk launches competition for climate protection ideas

2021-01-22T13:22:51.741Z


So far there are few details apart from a brief announcement on Twitter: Elon Musk has awarded a prize for the best technology for binding the greenhouse gas CO₂. There are already possible approaches to this.


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Elon Musk

Photo: Ringo HW Chiu / dpa

Elon Musk likes to hit one on Twitter.

And many, many of his currently 42.7 million followers love him for it.

Now the entrepreneur has announced that he will be donating a prize for the best technology for binding carbon dioxide.

For that he wants to take 100 million dollars in hand.

Much more is not yet known.

He will comment on the details in the coming week, Musk tweeted.

Now the boss of Tesla and SpaceX is currently the richest man in the world.

And with assets of more than 188 billion euros - at least that was what the “Bloomberg Billionaires Index” last said - 100 million dollars in prize money is possibly quite easy to get over and money well spent from a PR perspective alone.

Remember: Musk's Tesla company put 100 million euros in Brandenburg as security for possible dismantling costs in order to prevent a construction stop for their factory.

Still, the question arises: What could the competition Musk envisaged actually bring?

First of all, it is not uncommon for private individuals or institutions to invest money in solving certain scientific or technical problems.

Inducement Prize Contest, or IPC for short, is the technical term.

And although of course it wasn't called that back then, there are centuries-old examples of it.

For example, Spain, the Netherlands and Great Britain offered several prizes for seafarers at the great time for determining the longitude of a ship on the oceans precisely and easily.

Current examples are the competitions of the X-Prize Foundation, which was founded in 1995 by aerospace engineer Peter Diamandis and which works with other sponsors.

The tenders are about doing something for the good of mankind with technical breakthroughs that are as radical as possible: developing reusable spacecraft, cleaning oil-polluted water or better mapping the bottom of the oceans - these were just some of the tasks.

By no means always the competitions lead to a countable success, often there is

the

also not a solution to a problem.

But what can succeed: to create awareness for certain topics, to encourage professional and private inventors to initiate partnerships.

Musk's competition would ideally do something comparable.

Not only technical questions are important

In principle, there are numerous approaches to how the greenhouse gas CO₂ can be removed from the air.

This is about much more than technical simulation games. Many emission scenarios for achieving global climate targets are already based on the fact that carbon dioxide is captured and permanently stored outside the atmosphere.

For example, it is currently possible to separate CO₂ when it is generated, for example in power plants, and store it in underground storage facilities.

The corresponding CCS technology has been used in Norway, for example.

But it is not undisputed and at best it could buy time in the fight against global warming, nothing more.

Musk, who is revered as a technology visionary by his followers and who is definitely not afraid of high-flying solutions in the truest sense of the word, could be on a bigger throw.

Perhaps the technology of »Direct Air Capture« is suitable for this.

The CO₂ is removed from the air - with a very high expenditure of energy - and can then be stored.

Such systems are already in use on a small scale at several locations.

However, the technology has so far been quite inefficient and has resulted in high costs for avoiding CO2.

The water and energy requirements of the systems are also a critical factor. However, there may be approaches for innovations here.

There are also other processes for binding CO2 that could be further optimized.

This includes the large-scale scattering of rock flour on arable land.

When basalt rock is weathered, so-called carbonates are supposed to be formed, in which carbon dioxide from the air is bound.

The rock dust could even improve fertility and crop yields, they say.

However, really large amounts of crushed rock and a sophisticated global logistics chain are necessary to achieve effects beyond a few test fields.

Here too there could be fruitful suggestions.

Another option for binding CO2 would be the radical reforestation of forests on areas that are not needed for agriculture or human settlements.

However, researchers argue about the exact potential of such gigantic efforts - and also point out the important role the protection of existing forests has compared to new plantings.

The targeted stimulation of the growth of algae in the sea could also help to bind CO₂ in a targeted manner - but this is extremely difficult to manage.

Some researchers propose to scatter large volcanic ash into the sea for this.

Other colleagues, on the other hand, are flirting with genetically modifying land plants, using traditional breeding or methods such as the Crispr gene scissors, so that they store significantly more carbon than before.

In addition to technical issues, almost all of the approaches proposed so far also pose ethical and legal challenges.

To come back to the matter of volcanic ash and algae: You can't just dump anything into the sea, even if you have good intentions with it.

This is what it says in the 1972 London Convention, an international treaty.

It would be important that a competition also includes such non-technical aspects.

Whichever suggestions will ultimately prevail - Elon Musk will probably report it on Twitter.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All tech articles on 2021-01-22

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