Concern for Carbon Capturing: Why Elon Musk’s partner with XPRIZE is beneficial

Between the U.S. and Great Britain, an average of less than 10% are familiar with carbon capturing — the process of capturing extra carbon dioxide from our atmosphere — according to a study done by the Nature Climate Change journal. Of that ten percent, skepticism was commonly about lowering concern rather than reducing emissions, in a way giving companies permission to not care about their carbon emissions. 

But humanity is past having an option about how to handle solve our environmental problems — we need to be doing as much as we possibly can to help save our planet.

Following this idea, Elon Musk partnered with the XPRIZE Foundation to help find solutions to improve the processes of carbon capturing we currently have in use.

In February, Musk announced that he would be awarding $100 million to companies that can develop carbon-capturing technology which work on the gigaton scale, removing 10 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2050. These creations can be machinery or natural, or a mixture of both. Musk is encouraging people on a large scale to help with carbon capturing, a gesture many should considering following, even if it’s on a smaller one.

The brutal truth is that carbon-capturing is one of the only options left to reduce air pollution and climate change to the levels of the pre-industrial age. With all of the different forms that have already been experimented with or theorized about, there’s a ton of different ways that we could go about getting back to a carbon-neutral state.

Yes, all of natural ways of carbon sequestration — storing excess carbon dioxide underground — have cons, because it doesn’t permanently remove the carbon. However, combining technology created specifically for the task with some of these forms of natural carbon-capturing could make them more beneficial, helping us reach our goal of getting to carbon-negative faster.

One way of carbon sequestration is direct air carbon-capture, practically a vacuum that sucks in the carbon from the air and stores it away. Some companies like Carbon Engineering gain profit based off of selling the carbon to companies that use it to create products. This method seems great in theory, but in order for it to be scaled up enough for it to return us to the carbon-negative state, it would take up to one fourth of the world’s energy. This is obviously a beyond massive amount, however, there may be a way to avoid this with a similar concept.

The Electroswing Adsorption Systems is similar to a battery, using electrode plates to attract carbon particles in the air and then disposing them in whatever way you may please, like planting it into the soil. This process isn’t extremely reliant on energy and uses much less of it, though the price could be high — providing a viable option for carbon-capturing, helping our planet.

Considering all the options so far, my favorite is embodied carbon in construction materials. The cement industry is one of the biggest forms of carbon pollution, making up about 8% of it worldwide. With this technique, we could not only create better buildings, but it would also put us back on track to be not only carbon-neutral, but carbon-negative — which is really what we should be aiming for. Essentially, with a new form of cement we could capture carbon into buildings using a mineralization technique. Newly constructed buildings could literally pull the carbon out of the air and lock it away for good.

Combining this with other carbon-capturing methods like the Electroswing System could be extremely effective and basically create a market out of carbon, which is exactly the goal of another XPRIZE contest that started in 2015. 

All of these methods of carbon-capturing and sequestration are things that I‘m really excited about and hope to see put into play in the near future. Using these all together and passing laws to limit carbon emissions is crucial in terms of restoring out planet to how it was before industrialization, and I hope to see these used soon because we only have a small amount of time before we pass the point of no return.