Since the Industrial revolution, humanity has extracted and burned enormous amounts of carbon in the form of oil, coal or natural gas. The greenhouse gases released in the process are dramatically changing the lives of people around the world. Weather extremes and their effects, such as droughts, floods or wildfires, are on the rise. They destroy livelihoods and threaten people's health, lives and well-being. The global community agrees: global warming must be limited to less than two degrees Celsius compared to the level before the beginning of industrial era. That is why countries like Germany have formulated goals and steps on how they want to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases in the coming years and decades. And indeed, there is progress. Emissions are falling - but so far far too slowly.
Climate experts agree: reducing CO2 emissions in itself will not be enough. We must also remove enormous amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and thus reverse past emissions. Innovators from all over the world have already shown that this is technically possible. However, these methods are immensely expensive, often energy-intensive and frequently fail to scale.
That's why we invited innovators to join this future-relevant challenge at the beginning of 2022 - to develop a solution in the fight against climate change that removes CO2 from the atmosphere in the long term, is scalable and can be implemented in an economic business model.