Virgin Earth Challenge
Competition for permanent removal of greenhouse gases
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Key Takeaways
- The Virgin Earth Challenge was a competition offering a $25 million prize for whoever could demonstrate a commercially viable design which results in the permanent removal of greenhouse gases out of the Earth's atmosphere to contribute materially in global warming avoidance.
- Among more than 2600 applications, 11 finalists were announced on 2 November 2011.
- The prize was never awarded.
- Al Gore had withdrawn from the jury earlier and commented that he was not part of the decision to discontinue the contest.
- 67 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ).
The Virgin Earth Challenge was a competition offering a $25 million prize for whoever could demonstrate a commercially viable design which results in the permanent removal of greenhouse gases out of the Earth's atmosphere to contribute materially in global warming avoidance. The prize was conceived by Richard Branson, and was announced in London on 9 February 2007 by Branson and former US Vice President Al Gore.
Among more than 2600 applications, 11 finalists were announced on 2 November 2011. These were Biochar Solutions, from the US; Biorecro, Sweden; Black Carbon, Denmark; Carbon Engineering, Canada; Climeworks, Switzerland; COAWAY, US; Full Circle Biochar, US; Global Thermostat, US; Kilimanjaro Energy, US; Smartstones – Olivine Foundation, Netherlands, and The Savory Institute, US.
The prize was never awarded. In 2019, Virgin took the prize website offline after having kept the 11 finalists in suspension for eight years. Al Gore had withdrawn from the jury earlier and commented that he was not part of the decision to discontinue the contest.
The challenge
The Prize was to be awarded to "a commercially viable design which, achieves or appears capable of achieving the net removal of significant volumes of anthropogenic, atmospheric GHGs each year for at least 10 years", with significant volumes specified as "should be scalable to a significant size in order to meet the informal removal target of 1 billion tonnes of carbon-equivalent per year". One tonne of carbon-equivalent (C) equals 3.67 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2). (Because of the relationship between their atomic weights, more precisely 44/12.) At present, fossil fuel emissions are around 6.3 gigatons of carbon.
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