The Largest Prize in History
In February 2021, Elon Musk announced a $100 million donation to XPRIZE to fund the world's largest carbon removal competition. The prize dwarfs any previous innovation competition in terms of dollar value and reflects the scale of the challenge it addresses: pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at a scale that could meaningfully affect climate change.
The competition officially launched in April 2021 as the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, with a four-year timeline and a final judging period culminating in 2025.
The Challenge: What Teams Must Demonstrate
The XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition is deliberately technology-agnostic. Teams may pursue any approach — from industrial engineering to biology — as long as they meet the core requirements:
- Remove carbon: Demonstrate a solution that removes CO₂ from the atmosphere or oceans.
- Model to gigaton scale: Show a credible path to removing at least 1 gigaton of CO₂ per year if deployed fully.
- Permanent sequestration: The removed carbon must be stored durably — at least 100 years.
- Low cost pathway: Teams must show a realistic route to under $300 per tonne removed, with a long-term goal of under $100 per tonne.
- Full lifecycle analysis: Accounting for all energy use and emissions associated with the removal process itself.
Prize Structure
| Prize Tier | Amount | Criteria |
|---|---|---|
| Grand Prize | $50 million | Best overall solution meeting all requirements |
| Second Place | $20 million | Runner-up with verified demonstration |
| Third Place | $10 million | Third-place with verified demonstration |
| Student Teams | $5 million | Distributed among promising student-led teams |
| Milestone Prizes | $15 million | Awarded to top teams at year 18 months |
Carbon Removal Approaches in the Competition
The competition attracted teams using a remarkable diversity of approaches, demonstrating the breadth of possible solutions:
Direct Air Capture (DAC)
Industrial machines that pull CO₂ directly from ambient air using chemical sorbents or liquid solutions. The captured CO₂ can be injected underground, mineralized in rock, or used in products. DAC is currently expensive but costs are falling with scale.
Ocean-Based Removal
Approaches include ocean alkalinity enhancement (adding minerals to seawater to increase CO₂ absorption), seaweed cultivation and sinking, and electrolytic processes that remove CO₂ from seawater. The ocean already absorbs roughly a quarter of annual human CO₂ emissions; these approaches aim to enhance that capacity.
Enhanced Weathering
Spreading finely crushed silicate rocks (such as basalt) on agricultural fields. Rain causes these rocks to react with CO₂, locking it into stable mineral carbonates. This approach has co-benefits for soil fertility.
Biomass with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS)
Growing biomass that absorbs CO₂ as it grows, then burning it for energy while capturing the resulting CO₂ and storing it underground. Controversial due to land use competition but potentially scalable.
Biochar
Converting biomass to charcoal through pyrolysis and incorporating it into soil. Biochar is stable for centuries and also improves soil health.
Why This Prize Model Works for Climate
Carbon removal faces a fundamental market failure: the atmosphere is a global commons, and there is currently no price signal that rewards pulling CO₂ out of it at scale. Government carbon markets exist but are fragmented and often too low to drive investment in expensive new technologies.
The XPRIZE model sidesteps this by creating direct financial reward for demonstration. A team that proves their technology works on paper and at small scale wins real money — enough to attract serious investment and talent. The prize doesn't solve deployment at scale, but it pulls promising technologies through the critical early demonstration phase.
What Comes After the Prize?
Prize wins are a beginning, not an end. For carbon removal to matter at a civilizational level, the winning technologies need to scale from tonnes to gigatons. That requires policy support — carbon pricing, procurement commitments, regulatory certainty — and sustained private investment. The XPRIZE competition is designed to produce credible, demonstrated technologies that make that next stage of investment easier to justify.
In a very real sense, the $100 million prize is not just about removing carbon. It is about proving that the innovation prize model can accelerate solutions to the world's hardest problems — the same principle that drove the first XPRIZE into space over two decades ago.