On Thursday, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk teased his new philanthropy effort: a challenge aimed at promoting more innovative carbon capture technologies.
“Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology,” Elon Musk tweeted, adding that he will have “details next week.”
Musk, who had briefly passed Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world until a slide in Tesla’s stock price lowered him back to the position, recently asked his Twitter followers for advice on how best to give away his wealth.
“Critical feedback is always super appreciated, as well as ways to donate money that really make a difference (way harder than it seems),” Elon Musk tweeted earlier this month.
In 2012, Elon Musk signed the Giving Pledge campaign, an initiative initiated by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, which requires the signatories to donate at least half of their income over their lifetimes, with an emphasis on science and engineering education, green energy research, pediatric research, and human space exploration.
But Forbes’ estimate in September showed that Musk has so far contributed just $100 million – less than 1% of its net worth.
Still, Elon Musk’s proposed carbon capture contest will shift toward a cause that is likely to play a major role in going ahead in the fight against climate change, particularly under the Biden administration.
The study released Research Papers in November concluded that businesses and governments desperately need to ‘start the production of solutions for the large-scale elimination of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere,’ a method known as carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Earth’s temperatures are now on track to blast past thresholds that the Paris climate agreement, joined by President Joe Biden on Wednesday, set as targets for 2100.
But even though all greenhouse gas emissions ceased by then, according to the report, at least 33 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide will have to be pumped out of the atmosphere per year through carbon capture-about the total volume of carbon dioxide released by the global fossil fuel industry in 2018. (36 gigatonnes).
Technology is being widely accepted as a secure and potentially successful method of geoengineering relative to other methods, and Biden argued in his campaign platform that his administration will take measures to “accelerate the development and deployment of carbon capture sequestration technology.”
Specifically, Biden aims to make carbon capture more readily accessible, cheaper and flexible, and intends to expand government funding and tax incentives for technology growth.
Also Read: Elon Musk becomes world’s richest person as wealth tops $185billion
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