In total, Elon Musk has set aside $ 100 million from his companies Tesla and Spacex for “Carbon Removal Xprize”. The money will go to student innovations linked to capturing the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere, with the reservation that it can be stored for at least 100 years.

195 teams from 44 countries participated in the Student Awards, and now five million dollars have been distributed between 23 of the projects. It reports Interesting Engineering.

Five had to settle for 100,000 dollars, just over 906,000 kronor – while the other 18 have received 250,000 dollars each, corresponding to about 2,257,000 kronor.

The latter category includes Blue Symbiosis from Tasmania University. They want to use the gas and oil industry’s infrastructure in the form of drilling platforms as a base for seagrass cultivations. The plant captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the CO2 can then be taken out of the cycle by using the seagrass for building materials, for example in the form of bricks.

Another example comes from Oxford University. They want to use cyanobacteria to capture carbon dioxide, and these have been modified so that they can collect three times as much CO2 as other bacteria. There is still $ 95 million left in Elon Musk’s piggy bank.