Incentivizing Energy and Climate Innovation

In a quiet industrial park in suburban Toronto, there is a machine that eats carbon dioxide (CO₂) and spits out fuel. This place, typically associated with its strip malls, ethnic and cultural diversity, and peaceful middle class life, might also soon be known as a hotbed of energy innovation. The project’s code name is “Pond.”

A world away, at a world-class research institute in Bangalore, India, engineers have developed a completely different technology to convert CO₂into industrial chemicals. They are motivated by the desire to begin tackling rising global CO₂ emissions. Their project code name is “Breathe.”

Aside from a healthy obsession with carbon, what these two efforts have in common might surprise you. Rather than collaborating on an international science project or with a company’s ­industrial research and development, both are competing to win a global competition to transform CO₂ from a liability into an asset and, in so doing, create a paradigm shift in the energy space. Both are competitors in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE. And the competition is just getting started.

The XPRIZE Foundation relies on the growing power of exponential technologies and revolutionary science to catalyze radical breakthroughs. This means developments in science and technology such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, big data, and other disruptive forces have the potential to show exponential impact on grand challenges such as sustainable energy and climate change. By offering a suite of incentives in a prize competition, XPRIZE seeks to inspire the world’s scientists, technologists, and innovators to tackle seemingly intractable challenges.

Transforming our energy systems may be the 21st century’s greatest challenge. Articulating a grand challenge does not solve any problems, but a clear and deep articulation of the problem demands an understanding of the complexity and nuance involved in the problem itself and in a vision for defining characteristics of a solution. In our approach to energy innovation, XPRIZE recognizes that the technological, sociopolitical, and economic changes occurring globally present innovators with a rare opportunity to apply truly groundbreaking research to challenges of worldwide importance. We operate at the intersection of audacious and achievable.

The Carbon XPRIZE is a USD 20 ­million global competition to incentivize technologies that convert CO₂ emissions into valuable products. The winning teams will convert the largest quantity of CO₂ from actual flue gas from coal or natural gas power plants into one or more products with the highest net value. The 10 teams that survive the first two elimination rounds (proposal evaluation was in summer of 2016, and lab-scale demonstration from late 2016 through 2017) will use two brand new test centers adjacent to operating power plants in western Canada and the US state of Wyoming to demonstrate their solutions at industrial scale.

The competition is built to showcase new ways to transform CO₂ instead of allowing it to escape into the atmosphere. But the real story here is not the technical challenge, but the teams that invest so much of their passion, creativity, and resources to compete. There are 47 entries in the competition from 38 teams. Seven countries from North America, Europe, and Asia are represented. Each entry brings a different approach to the CO₂conversion problem. Some, like Pond Technologies in Canada, accelerate the natural process of photosynthesis to transform CO₂ into bio­diesel and solid biofuel. Others, like Breathe in India, use a photochemical pathway to transform CO₂ into methanol. Others still, like C2CNF out of George Washington University in the US, use an electrolysis process to produce carbon fiber from a CO₂ feedstock.

Individually, each team is a powerful innovation engine driven by the goal of applying breakthrough chemistries and catalysts to the challenge of CO₂conversion by developing and commercializing industrial solutions. Taken together, this group of XPRIZE competitors is a powerful signal, both inside the clean technology and materials communities and in the broader energy and climate landscape, that innovation can and will have an important role to play in shaping and driving 21st century energy transitions. These teams and their networks of partners and supporters prove that good things are happening in energy innovation, and that it is not too late or too expensive to pursue radical new approaches, and that creative and dedicated teams of individuals can make an impact.

As platform technologies, carbon capture, utilization, and storage have the potential to become major players in climate change mitigation, especially if they can demonstrate a meaningful reduction in existing and growing CO₂ emissions from electricity generation. However, the concept of CO₂ as a material feedstock, and carbon capture and storage generally, are not without challenges. These approaches have been criticized as too expensive and too risky, and conventional wisdom has been that CO₂ as a feedstock can never compete on a cost and energy-intensity basis with fossil hydrocarbon feedstocks. New approaches to carbon capture and storage may alter the energetics, economics, and the broader narrative to the point where CO₂ conversion could be poised for a radical leap forward.

The Carbon XPRIZE is an invitation to take that leap. But outside of this XPRIZE, the promise of low-carbon energy solutions is a call to action to all scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, and creative minds to demonstrate and inspire a path to a better energy future. We have the tools, we have scientific knowledge and capacity, we have the big thinkers, and anyone can now be a part of the solution.

Marcius Extavour is director of technical operations, NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, Energy and Environment Group, XPRIZE. Over the past 15 years, he has applied a background in experimental physics and engineering to complex problems in industry, government, and academia. He has worked with the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, where he held the OSA/SPIE/AAAS Congressional Science and Technology Policy Fellowship, the Canadian electric utility Ontario Power Generation, and more recently the faculty of applied science and engineering at the University of Toronto, where he served as director of Government and Industry Partnerships. He earned a BASc degree in engineering science, and MSc and PhD degrees in quantum optics and atomic physics, all from the University of Toronto.

Paul Bunje is the principal and senior scientist, Energy and Environment group, XPRIZE, where he attempts to bridge the gap between science and society to incentivize solutions to challenges facing our world, including climate change, energy, and the ocean. This work includes leading the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE and the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE. He has served as the founding executive director of the University of California at Los Angeles Center for Climate Change Solutions and as the managing director of the Los Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action and Sustainability. He is also cofounder of Conservation X Labs, an organization that brings innovation to global conservation threats. He earned a BS degree in biology from the University of Southern California and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in evolutionary biology and genetics.