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👏 Just yesterday, the XPRIZE announced its top 20 finalists for its $100m carbon dioxide removal (hashtag#CDR) competition, hand-selected from over 1,300 applicants. The finalist pool is a great example of the diversity of the CDR industry:
✨ Technology: the 20 finalists are spread across the entire spectrum of land, air, sea, and rock, highlighting the plethora of approaches available to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
🌎 Geography: finalists come from regions like China, India, Kenya, and Oman, reflecting the Global South’s growing role in CDR. In Q1 2024, Latin America had more CDR purchases than the rest of the world combined.
🏛️ The XPrize finalists represent the cutting-edge of CDR. The reality, however, is that many of these companies would struggle to receive policy support today, given the lack of tech-neutral and geographically open policy.
🔦 Time to highlight a few countries that are leading the way with inclusive policy.
FOR GEOGRAPHIC OPENNESS:
🇨🇭 Switzerland has already decided that it will procure the majority of its CDR needs from abroad: 5Mt (out of 7Mt) by 2050. And it has signed an impressive 12 bilateral agreements under the UNFCCC’s Article 6 to achieve this.
🇯🇵 Japan’s GX Emission Trading System is the first ETS to allow the inclusion of foreign CDR projects, as long as there is a minimum of 20% Japanese ownership.
FOR TECH OPENNESS:
🇺🇲 The United States U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) CDR Public Procurement Prize focuses on high-quality criteria instead of picking specific CDR approaches upfront, allowing for a broad range of innovation.
🇪🇺 The European Union’s Carbon Removal Certification Framework (hashtag#CRCF) adopted technology-neutral definitions that keep the door open for any future approaches that meet the QUALITY criteria it uses.
📣 Let’s hope that policy will follow these examples. The XPrize finalists are a good reminder of why we need to keep advocating for geographic and tech openness. We will not reach gigatons unless we leverage all options available all over the planet.
🥂 Congrats once again to the 20 finalists: Airhive, Heirloom, Octavia Carbon, Project Hajar, Skyrenu technologies, Arca, Lithos Carbon, Mati Carbon, Silicate, UNDO, Yuanchu, Climate Robotics, MASH Makes, NetZero, Takachar, Vaulted Deep, Captura, Ebb Carbon, Kelp Blue, Planetary and to the organisers of the XPrize Nikki Batchelor, Roopa Dandamudi, Michael Leitch, and Kelsey Miller.
👀 Check out this link for more info on the Top 20 finalists: https://lnkd.in/dpeJuSS4
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