Sources: CP staff; XPrize Foundation, Culver City, Calif.
Processes proved at commercial scale to mineralize and sequester carbon dioxide gas in finished concrete have earned their developers, CarbonBuilt and CarbonCure Technologies, top honors in NRG Cosia Carbon Xprize, a six-year global competition centered on managing and monetizing emissions from coal and natural gas combustion.
CarbonBuilt and CarbonCure will receive $7.5 million each to further commercial development of their technologies for ready mixed and manufactured concrete production. They prevailed among eight other finalists—three from the United States, two from Canada, one from China, India, and the United Kingdom—in a competition to see which team could capture the most carbon dioxide in the highest valued product(s). The 10 finalists received $500,000 for reaching the third (2019-2020) of three Carbon Xprize rounds. Launched in 2015 with 47 submissions from teams in seven countries, the $20 million competition progressed under the carbon-minded Xprize Foundation, plus partners NRG Energy Inc., Houston-based power provider, and Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), Calgary. Teams were charged with minimizing their use of energy, water, land, and overall CO2 footprint in the competition rounds.
CarbonBuilt, an entity recently spun off from the University of California, Los Angeles, prevailed on the strength of its Reversa platform, encompassing mix design and curing innovations that reduce the net CO2 factor in a concrete product, slab or structure. Far and away the leader in carbon capture and use methods applicable to concrete, CarbonCure earned its prize through a CO2 injection and mineralization process that has been widely deployed in North American ready mixed and concrete masonry plants.
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