Ten Teams from Five Countries Advance to Finals of $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE

Finalists Reimagine Carbon and Will Demonstrate CO2
Conversion Tech Under Real-World Conditions

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–XPRIZE,
the world’s leader in designing and managing incentive competitions to
solve humanity’s grand challenges, today announced the 10 teams
advancing to the final round in the $20M
NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE. This four-and-a-half-year global
competition challenges teams to transform the way the world addresses
carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions through breakthrough circular
carbon technologies that convert carbon dioxide emissions from power
plants into valuable products.

The 10 finalists, each taking home an equal share of a $5 million
milestone prize, were revealed today at Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s Future
of Energy Summit in New York City.

Ranging from carbon capture entrepreneurs and start-ups to academic
institutions and companies that have been tackling the challenge for
more than a decade, the finalists hail from five countries and have
already demonstrated conversion of CO2 into a wide variety of
products, such as enhanced concrete, liquid fuels, plastics and carbon
fiber. The universe of potential CO2-based products crosses a
variety of energy sectors, industrial processes and consumer products.
Each finalist team passed a first round evaluation based on the amount
of CO2 converted into products, as well as the economic
value, market size and CO2 uptake potential of those products.

“These teams are showing us amazing examples of carbon conversion and
literally reimagining carbon. The diversity of technologies on display
is an inspiring vision of a new carbon economy,” said Dr. Marcius
Extavour, XPRIZE senior director of Energy and Resources and prize lead.
“We are trying to reduce CO2 emissions by converting them
into useful materials, and do so in an economically sustainable way.”

The NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE finalists were chosen from a field of 27
semifinalists by an independent judging
panel of eight international energy, sustainability and CO2
experts. The competition is divided into two parallel tracks with five
teams competing in each:

The Wyoming Track includes five teams that will demonstrate
conversion of CO2 emissions at a coal-fired power plant in
Gillette, WY:

• Breathe
  (Bangalore, India) – Led by Dr. Sebastian Peter, the team is producing
  methanol, a common fuel and petrochemical feedstock, using a novel
  catalyst.
• C4X
  (Suzhou, China) – Led by Dr. Wayne Song and Dr. Yuehui Li, the team is
  producing chemicals and bio-composite foamed plastics.
• Carbon
  Capture Machine (Aberdeen, Scotland) – Led by Dr. Mohammed
  Imbabi, the team is producing solid carbonates with applications to
  building materials.
• CarbonCure
  (Dartmouth, Canada) – Led by Jennifer Wagner, the team is producing
  stronger, greener concrete.
• Carbon
  Upcycling UCLA (Los Angeles, CA, USA) – Led by Dr.
  Gaurav Sant, the team is producing building materials that absorb CO2
  during the production process to replace concrete.

The Alberta Track includes five teams that will demonstrate
conversion of CO2 emissions at a natural gas-fired power
plant in Alberta, Canada:

• C2CNT
  (Ashburn, VA, USA) – Led by Dr. Stuart Licht, the team is producing
  carbon nanotubes.
• Carbicrete
  (Montreal, Canada) – Led by Dr. Mehrdad Mahoutian, the team is
  producing cement-free, carbon-negative concrete that uses waste from
  steel production as an alternative to traditional cement.
• Carbon
  Upcycling Technologies (Calgary, Canada) – Led by Apoorv
  Sinha, the team is producing enhanced graphitic nanoparticles and
  graphene derivatives with applications in polymers, concrete, epoxies,
  batteries and pharmaceuticals.
• CERT
  (Toronto, Canada) – Led by Dr. Alex Ip of the Sargent Group at the
  University of Toronto, the team is producing building blocks of
  industrial chemicals.
• Newlight
  (Huntington Beach, CA, USA) – Led by Mark Herrema, the team uses
  biological systems to produce bioplastics.

To win a place in the finals, the semifinalist teams had to demonstrate
their technologies at pilot scale at a location of their choosing. Over
the course of a 10-month period, semifinalist teams were challenged to
meet minimum technical requirements and were first audited by
independent verification partner Southern Research. Teams were then
evaluated by the judges based on how much CO2 the team
converted into products; the economic value, market size, and CO2 uptake
potential of those products; the overall CO2 footprint of
their process; as well as energy efficiency, materials use, land use,
and water use.

In the finals, teams must demonstrate at a scale that is at least 10
times greater than the semifinals requirements at one of two
purpose-built industrial test sites. Teams competing in the Wyoming
track will test their technologies at the Wyoming
Integrated Test Center (ITC), a cutting-edge carbon research
facility in Gillette, WY, USA, co-located with the Dry Fork Station coal
power plant. Teams competing in the Alberta track will test their
technologies at the Alberta
Carbon Conversion Technology Centre, a new carbon conversion
research hub co-located with the Shepard Energy Centre natural gas power
plant in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

“We’re excited to support these teams as they scale up and start
demonstrating under real-world conditions at the industrial test
centers. This is the final, most ambitious stage of this prize
competition,” added Extavour.

The NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE is a part of XPRIZE’s growing portfolio of
Energy and Resources prizes and long-term vision for accelerating
revolutionary energy technologies to help move the world towards a
clean, abundant energy future.

For the latest information about the competition structure, important
dates, and the finalist
teams please visit carbon.xprize.org.

About XPRIZE

XPRIZE, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is the global leader in designing and
implementing innovative competition models to solve the world’s grandest
challenges. XPRIZE utilizes a unique combination of gamification,
crowd-sourcing, incentive prize theory and exponential technologies as a
formula to make 10x (vs. 10%) impact in the grand challenge domains
facing our world. XPRIZE’s philosophy is that—under the right
circumstances—igniting rapid experimentation from a variety of diverse
lenses is the most efficient and effective method to driving exponential
impact and solutions to grand challenges. Active competitions include
the Lunar XPRIZE, the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, the $15M Global
Learning XPRIZE, the $10M ANA Avatar XPRIZE, the $7M Shell Ocean
Discovery XPRIZE, the $7M Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE,
the $5M IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, the $1.75M Water Abundance XPRIZE and the
$1M Anu and Naveen Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE. For more information,
visit www.xprize.org.

About NRG

NRG is the leading integrated power company in the U.S., built on the
strength of our diverse competitive electric generation portfolio and
leading retail electricity platform. A Fortune 500 company, NRG creates
value through best in class operations, reliable and efficient electric
generation, and a retail platform serving residential and commercial
businesses. Working with electricity customers, large and small, we
implement sustainable solutions for producing and managing energy,
developing smarter energy choices and delivering exceptional service as
our retail electricity providers serve almost three million residential
and commercial customers throughout the country. More information is
available at www.nrg.com.
Connect with NRG Energy on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @nrgenergy.

About COSIA

Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA) is a unique alliance of
oil sands producers focused on accelerating environmental performance in
Canada’s oil sands. COSIA enables collaboration and innovation between
big thinkers from industry, government, academia and the wider public to
improve measurement, accountability and performance in the oil sands
across our environmental priority areas of greenhouse gases, land, water
and tailings. COSIA members search the world for solutions to our
toughest problems. And we have some of the best minds on the planet
working on technologies to enable responsible and sustainable
development. To date, COSIA has shared 981 distinct environmental
technologies and innovations that cost over $1.4 billion to develop.
Visit us at www.cosia.ca.

Contacts

XPRIZE
Jackie Wei, 310-741-4918
[email protected]