Abby L. Harvey
GHG Monitor
10/2/2015
NRG Energy and Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) have teamed up with nonprofit public competition organization XPRIZE to launch a $20 million carbon utilization innovation competition. The NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, which is open to the public, consists of two competition tracks, one that will test developmental technologies on emissions from a coal-fired power plant and one that will use emissions from a natural gas-fired power plant. Registration for teams interested in competing is open through March 2016.
“The $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE will challenge the world to reimagine what we can do with CO2 emissions by incentivizing and accelerating the development of technologies that convert CO2 into valuable products. These technologies have the potential to transform how the world approaches CO2 mitigation, and reduce the cost of managing CO2,” the competition announcement says.
Two winning projects, one in each track, will receive a grand prize of $7.5 million. The remaining $5 million in prize money is a “milestone purse,” or an interim award, of $500,000 each for five projects from each track that make it to the final round of testing.
The competition will consist of three rounds. The first will last six months, from March 2016 to September 2016. All registered teams are invited to participate in the first round, which will consist of the submission of a technical and business viability assessment. At the close of round one, 15 teams in each track will advance.
Round two will consist of a 12-month pilot scale competition, running from September 2016 to September 2017. During this time, teams will demonstrate their technologies in a controlled environment using simulated power plant flue gas. At the close of round two, five teams from each track will be selected to move on to round three. These teams will also receive $500,000 as in interim award.
Round three will begin in September 2017 and run 29 months until February 2020. This round will consist of a demonstration-scale competition, during which teams will have access to two test centers adjacent to existing power plants, and will prove their technologies using actual power plant flue gas. Following the close of round three, teams will be scored on CO2 conversion levels and the net value of their product. A grand prize winner in each track will be selected following scoring in March 2020.
Interested teams can register on the XPRIZE website.
