This is a premier team which has been purpose-built from the ground up to compete in, and win, the Musk Foundation’s $100M Carbon Capture XPRIZE. Carbon Removal is aimed at tackling the biggest threat facing humanity: Fighting climate change and rebalancing Earth’s carbon cycle.
We are creating, and even closing, the loop of carbon by-products of human activities. We will do this through leveraging the ocean's natural carbon cycle in order to divert excess carbon to storage, and lock it into permanent, marketable products. We can then look at the ocean's carbon cycle as our "engine" to drive these processes.
Funded by Elon Musk and his foundation, this $100M competition is the largest incentive prize in history, an extraordinary milestone. This team is integrating industrial and biological processes to unlock operational efficiencies which will win them this competition.
The team is sponsored by Texas-based Aerospace and Defense company Kepler Shipyards, and includes teams and activities anchored in the U.S. and Canada in collaboration with highly-qualified personnel spread across the globe.
Kepler ReCapture’s management team consists of Debi-Lee Wilkinson, Team Lead & Physics; Paul Graham, Research & Implementation; Dr. Nathan Going, Biology; Chris Barrett, Engineering; and Dr. Celeste Gale, Chemistry.
This is geo-engineering on a scale that humanity has never attempted, and has only vaguely been considered feasible until now. The problem of cleaning the planet of excess carbon dioxide (CO2) is not going to be solved by one simple solution or one simple path. As humans, we have only a few decades to ReCapture what took humanity hundreds of years to release, lest the survival of the planet and all animal species, including our own, be in jeopardy. As stated on the XPRIZE website, the International Panel on Climate Change has said that 10 Gigatonnes of CO2 need to be scrubbed from the atmosphere by 2050 in order to ensure the balance of our ecosystem. The orders of magnitude this amount represents is not truly understood by many.
Operational and organizational agility is our key to winning this contest. No one can afford to rigidly adhere to any one output product or any one process; there is simply too much carbon to move out of the biosphere. Therefore, the team is utilizing both biological and industrial processes. Although the team is primarily focused on chemical and biological sea water extraction, direct atmospheric capture will also be integrated. We are exploring many functional output streams and marketable products for the captured carbon.
How Can you help?
Check back soon for swag, and Kepler Aquaponics units available for sale, along with Micro-Carbon credits. What does that mean? If you are trying to make a difference, but are stuck in the carbon economy for now, there are still ways you can help! For example, if your yard service has to use fossil fuel powered equipment, you can purchase offsetting credits - just like the big companies do, but on a more personal scale.
Things you can do at home and in your community.
More coming soon!
Carbon Rangers (name TBD)
We are working to save the environment for the next generation, it seems only fitting that they participate in the work. This will be a group for the under 19 community, and will include educational projects, organizational opportunities, and even tools to allow you to help by removing and sequestering CO2 at home!