4 Xprize Winning Teams

This week, we’re joined by four of the teams that won the Carbon Removal Xprize Milestone award. On April 22nd, Xprize announced the 15 winners of the second round of their competition for carbon removal solutions. Each of these teams was been awarded $1 million to help them compete for the grand prize of $50 million, or 3 $30 million runner-up slots, which will be awarded three years from now. The grand prize winner may not be one of the 15 Milestone awardees, but these teams are a step ahead of the competition and have already demonstrated an ability to impress the Xprize judges. Of the 15 teams, six are building DAC solutions, three are sequestering CO2 from seawater, three are producing biochar, one is growing algae (stay tuned for more on that), one is utilizing enhanced weathering, and one encourages tree-planting. In the first segment, we spoke with: Steve Oldham, CEO of Captura, which is building plants that will extract co2 from ocean water and… Hans de Neve, CEO of Carbyon which is developing a novel machine design for a DAC system with a small footprint. In the second segment, we heard from two other Milestone-award winners: Jason Vallis, VP of External Relations Planetary which aims to use direct ocean capture to remove co2, reverse ocean acidification, and create renewable fuels and… Dave Hazlebeck, Founder & CEO Global Algae which uses algae farming to capture co2 and make products like polymers and displace farming operations, leading to the regrowth of rainforests. Joining Radhika to talk with these teams are Na’im Merchant and Susan Su.You’ll learn about the CDR approaches these teams are using, what they are working on right now, how the $1 million prize will help them advance towards their goals, and what they think they need to do to win the grand prize in a few years. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit climateworkersanonymous.com