Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, now the world’s richest person with a net worth north of $180 billion, announced on Twitter that he planned to give away $100 million as prize for the “best carbon capture technology.”
He added in a subsequent tweet that he would provide more details next week, so it is not yet clear how such a contest will work.
Capturing planet-warming emissions is becoming a critical part of many plans to keep climate change in check, but very little progress has been made on the technology to date, with efforts focused on cutting emissions rather than taking carbon out of the air.