Calgary company partners with Elon Musk’s XPRIZE

CALGARY – A Calgary company is partnering with the XPRIZE Foundation to help interested Albertans enter a massive technology competition.

Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation are putting up a $100-million prize for the best tech that removes carbon dioxide and reduces the impact of climate change.

The initiative is called the Avatar Carbon Removal Accelerator and it’s a partnership between Avatar Innovations, the University of Calgary, and XPRIZE.

“What we want for the partnership with XPRIZE to build out these emerging technology companies, in partnership with some of the world’s largest energy companies, right here in Calgary. So we’re going to build out a cohort of Canadian entrance with support from the University of Calgary,” explained Avatar CEO and co-founder Kevin Krauser.

The collaboration will offer teams access to industry customers, partners, and investors, plus workspace and facilities in the newly-created Energy Transition Centre in downtown Calgary.

The project will offer teams the opportunity to collaborate with U of C researchers in the institution’s labs and testing facilities.

“There’s a lot of similarities between carbon capture technologies and carbon removal technologies. So let’s unlock the horsepower we have here at the University of Calgary who has more than a billion dollars worth of carbon technology testing the research facilities, alongside the world’s largest energy player to understand industrial scale,” he said.

“That’s one of the reasons I think Calgary has a real good, very good shot at entering this, and potentially winning it.”

XPRIZE is a four-year contest with the big prize set to be awarded in 2025.

To win, teams must demonstrate a working solution at a scale of at least 1,000 tonnes removed per year as well as model their costs at a scale of 1 million tonnes per year and eventually gigatonnes in the longer term.