The world's biggest companies cite many reasons for cutting their climate pollution: It's good PR, it's even the law in many places, and not doing so contributes to the risk of global catastrophe. Here's one you don't hear so much. By blowing their carbon dioxide skyward, power plants are venting raw material and, by extension, a ridiculous amount of money. Waste is being wasted. All that carbon and oxygen must be good for something.
That's the premise of the XPrize Foundation's new Carbon Prize, a $20 million competition over five years to identify "high-value products" that can be made from captured power-plant CO2 emissions. The competition formally opened Tuesday with a six-month period for teams to register their projects that might involve biofuels, fabrics, pharmaceuticals, and building materials. Within prescribed limits, it doesn't matter what's made, as long as the CO2 is captured and turned into something people or businesses want to buy.
