X Prize Finalists have YCNCC Connections

Three companies with ties to the Yale Center for Natural Carbon Capture have been named as finalists in a global competition to develop the most promising carbon dioxide (CO₂) removal technology.

Next year, XPrize Carbon Removal will award $50 million to a grand prize winner in the competition, plus another $30 million that will be distributed among as many as three runners up. The competition is funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation.

More than 1,300 companies from 88 countries entered the competition when it began three years ago. There are 20 finalists remaining — and they include three Yale-related companies:

• Ebb Carbon, a company that created a system for storing atmospheric carbon dioxide in seawater while reducing ocean acidity. The company was co-founded by Matthew Eisaman, a professor of Earth and planetary sciences in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS).
• Lithos Carbon, a company that accelerates the Earth’s natural carbon cycle by deploying enhanced rock weathering (ERW) in agriculture to permanently remove CO₂ from the air and improve crop yields and soil health for farmers. Lithos uses organic-grade volcanic basalt dust and state-of-the-art science to measure CO₂ removal. Noah Planavsky, an associate professor of Earth and planetary sciences in FAS, is a co-founder of the company.
• Mati Carbon, a company that removes carbon from the atmosphere through the use of basalt-based enhanced rock weathering in rice paddy farms, while adding key nutrients to the soil. Planavsky co-invented Mati Carbon’s isotope dilution technology and is a scientific advisor for the company.

The finalists have been tasked with removing 1,000 net metric tons of CO₂ during the final year of the competition. Contest judges also will consider the finalists’ potential for removing carbon on a megaton scale in the years ahead — and the gigatonne scale (a gigatonne is one billion metric tons) by 2050.

The competition ends next April.