Elon Musk has offered $100 million as prize money for the best carbon-capturing technology
The American Forests Organization states that trees are a natural “carbon sink” – they pull carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into food. “The carbon from the CO2 becomes part of the plant and is stored as wood,” the organization writes. “Eventually, when the plant or tree dies, the carbon it has been storing is released into the atmosphere.” This makes deforestation one of the biggest causes of carbon dioxide emission.
Tesla chief and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk announced a $100 million prize for the “best” technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions, and many Twitter users had the same thought – plant more trees. 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, according to a Reuters report.
The American Forests Organization states that trees are a natural “carbon sink” – they pull carbon dioxide from the air and convert it into food. “The carbon from the CO2 becomes part of the plant and is stored as wood,” the organization writes. “Eventually, when the plant or tree dies, the carbon it has been storing is released into the atmosphere.” This makes deforestation one of the biggest causes of carbon dioxide emission.
While trees and other plants can remove some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, most climate change experts agree we can’t plant enough, fast enough, to do the job alone.
Nature-based solutions can help, but we will need thousands of solutions in combination
Carbon capture technology has been around for decades and is used to strip carbon out of factory emissions as well as remove carbon that’s already in the air.
But it’s expensive, and until the cost of releasing carbon into the air rises, there’s a little economic incentive to use it. So there is why Elon Musk came up with his prize.
Nideport initiative goes in that regard, since it puts together finance and environmental efforts to help the carbon capture throughout the preservation of the forests.
Nideport plans to protect up to 1 million hectares for a period of 100 years in 10 countries on the 5 continents.
