Elon Musk pledges $100m to fund carbon capture contest

As we previously touched on, the guidelines aren’t yet established, but the tech tycoon will expect the winning invention to remove up to one US ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or ocean per day and to demonstrate the potential of removing gigatons (billions of tons) of emissions in the future. As he frequently states, when it comes to climate change solutions ‘time is of the essence.’

Forever optimistic, the Tesla and Space X CEO isn’t just striving for carbon neutrality either, and instead wishes to push for climate negativity. Essentially, Musk sees goals of reaching net zero by 2030 as a tad unambitious, and instead wants to find ways of removing more carbon from the atmosphere than we even emit. It’s bold, we’ll give him that.

It’s official: Europe is finally more reliant on #renewableenergy than those produced by fossil fuels. What a way to kick-start a decade of climate action! 🔊https://t.co/c95Xu12Xyp#ClimateActionNow #ClimateEmergency #Sustainability #sustainable pic.twitter.com/2MqdyDmyYI

— thred. (@ThredMag) February 3, 2021

As we’ve previously discussed on Thred, carbon capture initiatives continues to be a contentious subject in sustainable solutions circles. Experts often point to the concept as being a costly distraction from stopping emissions from occurring in the first place, and a potential copout for companies adverse to adopting greener practices.

However, the International Energy Agency has produced reports suggesting that carbon capture will have to become an imperative part of our climate reduction efforts going forward, if we’re to minimise the impact of emissions from factories, power plants, transportation and other sources. The government cohort has even gone as far to declare 2030 goals ‘virtually impossible’ to reach by adopting renewable energies alone.

I don’t know about you, but so long as these carbon capture solutions are capable of storing emissions in a benign manner, I’m more than okay with cutting the odd corner for the good of the planet.