Yesterday, Elon Musk took to Twitter to offer $100 million towards a prize in a contest where the winner creates the "best carbon capture technology".
In a message for his 42 million followers, he wrote: "Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology."
In a follow-up tweet, he said there would be more details on the contest next week.
Per the Independent, carbon capture and storage is a method of removing waste carbon dioxide emissions from the air and slowing down the effects of climate change.
The emission of carbon dioxide at a refinery or a factory is caught at the source and then stored in a bid to take out the damaging byproducts.
The tweet currently has over 371,000 likes, 9,400 quote tweets, and 35,000 retweets.
One person responded to the tweet, suggesting: "One hectare of industrial hemp can absorb 15 tonnes of CO2 per hectare.
"Hemp's rapid growth makes it one of the fastest CO2-to-biomass conversion tools available, more efficient than agro- forestry. It is possible to grow to two crops per year so CO2 absorption can be doubled."
Another said: "100M should buy at least 50k acres. 500 trees an acre is 25M trees. 50lb carbon captured a year per mature tree is 1.25 billion lbs of carbon captured a year. That’s the baseline this tech needs to beat."
A third simply suggested: "Photosynthesis. Real-life proven technology for million years, available everywhere on earth. I’ll send you my bank account number."
One joked: "What if u made a big vacuum cleaner that sucks only carbon and then u put the big vacuum bag that u just filled up in a spaceship and go to space and then let out the gas in space and you do this 10000000 times I will accept cash credit or check thank you."
However, not everyone was willing to play along with the contest, with one critic arguing:
"Wow, you’re donating a small fraction of your wealth... your existence as a billionaire causes worsening mass economic inequality and global warming. $100M is nothing compared to what you’re hoarding.
"You did this to make yourself look good. Elon: he’s not that great."
Per the Independent, this month, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO briefly overtook Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos as the world's richest person.
