“Is Elon Musk really Iron Man?”
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is paying $100 million (about KRW 111.8 billion) to a contest that competes with technology that captures carbon in the air practically. His attempts are being evaluated as more radical in that global countries’ carbon policy stance is neutral.
In a statement, Musk said, “We have to go to cut, not carbon neutral. “This is not a theoretical competition,” he said. “We want a team to build a 1 gigaton level carbon capture technology system.”
The criterion of 1 gigaton of carbon was met by the scientific community’s demand to eliminate 6 gigatons of carbon annually by 2030 and 10 gigatons by 2050. According to the goal of the Paris Convention, the temperature of the earth should not rise more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, but the current forecast is that the temperature will rise more than 6 degrees from the current level in 2100.
The four-year competition, held from March 2021 to 2025, was awarded to Musk and the Musk Foundation of $100 million. It should be possible to build a system at a level that is feasible, not just technology disclosure. To win the competition, you need to demonstrate a rigorous and proven scale model of your carbon removal solution. It must also be verified that the solution is capable of economically scaling to gigaton levels.
The team that takes the first place in this competition is awarded $50 million (about KRW 56 billion), and the second and third place are awarded $20 million and $10 million respectively.