Bezos Earth Fund Announces Ideation Prize to Accelerate Greenhouse Gas Removal Technology

WASHINGTON, January 10, 2024 — The Bezos Earth Fund today announced a $1 million ideation prize to generate creative ideas and solutions to remove greenhouse gas emissions from our atmosphere.

"We know we must prioritize cutting greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, we must harness technology to begin removing these gases from the atmosphere entirely," said Bezos Earth Fund President and CEO Dr. Andrew Steer. "This is not an 'either-or' but a 'both-and' imperative."

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, investing in the technology to remove greenhouse gases (e.g. carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, etc.) from our atmosphere is both vital and complementary to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and expanding natural solutions to removal. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that several billion tons, or gigatons, of greenhouse gases will need to be removed from the atmosphere each year (up to two times the annual emissions of the United States) by mid-century to achieve Paris Agreement objectives. Yet fewer than 1 million tons of carbon dioxide have been removed using technology to date.

Given the immense challenge of scaling greenhouse gas removal to gigaton level, the Bezos Earth Fund is launching a broad commitment to accelerate technological solutions in this space. The initiative includes development of a global roadmap in collaboration with an entire ecosystem of players to outline the milestones necessary to remove approximately 10 gigatons per year by 2050, bridging silos across science and technology, markets and finance, socio-behavioral aspects and communities, and policy and regulation.

To inform the early stages of this endeavor and catalyze new technological advances, the Bezos Earth Fund $1M Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Removal Ideation Prize is calling on innovators, scientists, engineers, and environmental enthusiasts — whether new to this space or with decades of experience – to help us illuminate and innovate on ideas that will accelerate our race to scale technological GHG removal solutions. Additional details include:

• The first phase will award incentive prizes to up to 50 compelling one-page proposals that present an innovative solution to a major GHG removal challenge, with an early submission deadline of February 1, 2024.
• Finalists will have the option to submit for the second phase, where up to 12 submissions will receive one-year grants of up to $50,000 to validate and experiment with the proposed solution on the path to accelerating it to scale.
• Details and the submission form can be found on the Experiment platform here.

Additionally, the Bezos Earth Fund, along with partners including the Department of Energy, will convene leading experts for a workshop on scaling greenhouse gas removal on February 6 and 7, 2024 (register here). We welcome stakeholder input via this form.

“To create a strategic and aligned vision and execute on it, we need a diversity of expertise, innovative ideas, and passionate people ready to work together to tackle greenhouse gas emissions — from land to air to ocean,” said Dr. Noël Bakhtian, Director of Tech Acceleration at the Bezos Earth Fund. “This prize aims to create an inclusive opportunity to generate the big ideas needed to benefit people and planet.”

You can learn more about the ideation prize and how to enter here.