A Chinese Team is Aiming to “Turn Carbon into Dollars” in Wyoming

A team based out of Suzhou is one of ten groups short-listed for the NRG Cosia Carbon XPRIZE, a carbon capture contest that will award $7.5 million USD to each of its two eventual co-champions.

It was announced earlier this week that, led by Dr Wayne Song and Dr Li Yuehui, the C4X team will spend the next two years working at a coal-fueled power plant in the town of Gillette, Wyoming attempting to turn carbon emissions into bio-foamed plastics and other useful by-products.

They’ll be working alongside four other international teams in the US, while another five organizations will battle it out at a natural gas-fired plant in Alberta, Canada, each with their own designs for capturing carbon.

From a recent piece by Fast Company on the competition:

“We give the teams literally the pipes coming out of the power plants, and they can bring whatever technology they’re developing to plug into that source,” says Marcius Extavour, XPRIZE senior director of Energy and Resources and the lead on the Carbon XPRIZE competition. Teams will be judged on how much CO2 they convert, and the net value of their innovations.

You can watch a video introducing the contest and its finalists below, and watch Dr Song talking about the dangers of carbon emissions and China’s particular role in this crisis, plus find out more about C4X and the competition, on the Carbon XPRIZE website here.

Cover photo: Lu Liu for Carbon XPRIZE

You might also like:

Chinese Towers in the News for Reducing Smog, Posing Security Threats

Photo of the Day: Sponge Cities

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Engine