 Hi everyone, thanks for joining us today. We're going to go ahead and get started. We are going to allow people to keep joining as we start going through the slides here, but welcome. We're really excited to have you on our webinar today. We're just going to give a little bit of an overview about XPRIZE, who we are as the team running the competition, so you get a chance to meet us all and then run through some slides about the competition and then really dig into Q&A sessions. So feel free to put your questions into the Q&A box all throughout. We will start answering some things over typing while we're going, but then we'll do a live session for the rest of the webinar. So just to kick it off here, let me introduce the team. We have four people on the screen here who are really behind the XPRIZE Carbon Removal. We also are the team that ran the NRG-COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, so you might recognize a few of us if you were involved with that at all. My name is Nikki Batchelor. I am the Prize Director. I do a lot of our operations work and partnerships. Marcus Exdevore, he's our VP of Energy and Climate at XPRIZE. You've probably seen him giving some talks or interviews out there in the world. Michael Leitch is our technical lead. He will be going through a lot of the details of the competition today and Rupa Dandamoudi is our team relation specialist. She will be here answering questions, helping walk you through the registration process and other things that you might need. So just to quickly give you a little background on XPRIZE, we are a nonprofit based in Los Angeles. We've been around for about 20 years. We work across a number of different topic areas and our mission is really to empower humanity to achieve breakthroughs and we do that through the mechanism of prizes. So most of our work is really around incentive prize competitions. We kind of put a number out there into the world as an incentive to get innovators to really work on tackling challenges in these different domains, exploration environment and human equity. Most of the work that this team here does is in the environment space but we have other active competitions in different areas so you can check those all out on our website. And you can see, you know, if you're interested in other things too, you can see how you might be able to enter those competitions and challenges along the way. And we also have kind of an alumni network for folks that have been competing in prizes in the past and to keep them connected and kind of involved with XPRIZE as well. So yeah, lots of different programs going. I think we have this next slide here which is just some numbers around how many prizes we've launched and awarded, how much money we've really dealt with over the years and I think it's significant here to note that the XPRIZE private removal is definitely the largest competition we've ever run. It's also really the largest private prize competition in history so we're excited about that. Also with the opportunity that brings to have an impact on climate change. So that's why we're all here and we are going to dig into the details of that competition. Just so you have a sense of kind of the big picture here, it's a four-year competition. We will be awarding money over the course of the four years. We've really tried to front load some significant funding in the first year of the competition and we will talk quite a bit about that today so that people understand kind of what you need to do to prepare your submissions. The first funding that's available is the five million dollars in student awards. That is for student teams that are competing in the competition with carbon removal solutions. There's also an additional kind of funding pool available for MRB and reporting tool solutions so that's kind of also to advance the space of carbon removal but you know kind of supportive infrastructure so not the direct carbon removal solution itself. So Mike will talk a bit about that coming up and then the next kind of funding will be in April of 2022 so not that far away. We'll be giving away the first 15 million dollars in milestone awards. We're really excited about this because we want to ensure that really promising demonstrations actually have funding to move forward. Million-dollar awards are pretty significant. X-Price hasn't awarded that large of funding for milestone awards in the past but we want to make sure that we really get some great carbon removal demos off the ground. The judges will be kind of looking at all the submissions that come in for that and being you know their their top 15 based on the evaluation criteria that we'll talk about in a little bit and then we kind of go into a period where teams get to develop their solutions and dig into their technologies and ideas over the next couple of years and then come back together and submit their final data and progress for consideration for the grand prizes which are 80 million dollars remaining. We will have one large grand prize winner for 15 million dollars and then up to three runners up with the remaining 30 million that is some discretion with the judges. So let's dig into what it what it takes to compete in the prize. Oh just quickly a small note on some of the impact programs that we are making sure you know we're building out a platform really around this prize. This list will continue to grow and expand. I actually think we have a new one to add that was just launched but quickly the Airminers Creative Destruction Lab Launchpad Accelerator is a great resource for teams who are in the really early stages. They've developed a six-week program for teams to really work through their ideas and have access to resources in the carbon removal space. Airminers is an amazing community online that really connects on Slack but they have resources across every topic you could possibly find carbon removal, funding opportunities, job postings, all kinds of things so if you're not familiar with that and a part of it definitely send it for the community and check out the launchpad to see if it is a good fit for you. And then the Circular Carbon Network is another initiative that we started at X Prize during our last energy pussy of Carbon X Prize where we're really gathering market intelligence on carbon tech, carbon removal, everything in between and trying to help profile all the companies in the space. We've been tracking the growth and the number of startups related to carbon over the last five plus years and you know we've tried to assemble network of investors that are interested in this space and we have a deal hub where we profile active fundraising deals so if you are trying to raise money for your company which I imagine most of you are definitely put your information up on the Circular Carbon Network and submit your deal to the deal hub so that we send it out to our network of investors. Okay over to Mike. Hi everyone can you hear me? Great my mute button was buried behind question window for a moment so I apologize for the short delay. Welcome everybody so I'm going to be talking about some of the technical nuances of the X Prize carbon removal. Please feel free to continue asking questions in the Q&A box and we'll have we should have plenty of time to address those at the end of the session here. So first of all if you haven't already I would encourage you to go to our website XPrize.org and download the guidelines. The guidelines explain all of this stuff that I'm about to talk about in great detail but first and foremost what is in scope for this competition. The whole point of this competition is to reward projects that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in a durable way and beyond that almost anything is in scope. The important points are that the solutions must be carbon negative that's on a cradle to grave basis so the whole the whole project the whole if you draw a box around the whole project it really does need to be carbon negative. The carbon dioxide that sequestered needs to be sequestered durably in order to count and and really the solution any anything under the sun is is is open is open to compete in the competition. We talk about these technologies in these kind of four tranches or four tracks but it's important to remember that everybody's competing with everybody in this competition so when you register for the competition you're going to be asked you know which do you identify with air ocean land or rocks but that isn't really putting people into into any specified tracks that's just for us to help keep track of who is joining and what kind of projects are entering the competition and we use those four tracks just to help us talk about different nuances between the different types of technology that we expect to see but frankly we would love to see other ideas that are combinations or blending ideas from these different tracks or maybe there's other solutions that we haven't even thought of that nobody's seen before that folks might want to get off the ground and enter into the competition you can go to the next slide rupa so what are we actually asking you to do we're asking teams to do three things specifically first of all build and run a working demonstration now over the course of the next four years we're asking for different demonstrations at different sort of scales or levels of maturity for lack of a better word in phase one of the competition we only require a proof of concept and what we mean by proof of concept is outlined in more detail in the prize guidelines but in phase two of the competition in order to be eligible for the grand prize money we want to see projects that are removing a net a net rate of co2 reduction of a thousand tons per year that's metric tons and that's a thousand tons per year the second thing we will ask or we're asking teams to do is present a fully considered cost of their solution in dollars per ton that's metric tons at a scale of one megaton per year so we don't require demonstrations at this scale certainly but we want to see we want to see teams outline a scenario where their solution is removing at that large scale of one megaton per year and give us an idea of what that would cost and finally teams need to make a case for how there's technology or how their solution is going to scale up to a gigaton and beyond because that's really what it's all about and that's what we need to get to you as a society over the next few years is removing at that massive scale of gigaton per year next slide Rupa in terms of how the teams will be evaluated and judged and ultimately how the award decisions are made we're going to be looking at at each of those three things that I just described so first of all on your demonstration what was the performance of the demonstration demonstrated solution we're going to be looking at things very holistically in phase one of the competition it's actually up to each team to secure their own verification so we want to see each team find a credible third party to look at their technology and sort of and sort of certify that it works as intended but in the second round of the competition for the full-scale solutions we will be we'll be sending a team of experts into the field to verify each of the finalists the second thing that you're going to be evaluated on is the sustainability of your solution and the scalability of your solution so so this aligns with that that idea of massive gigaton scale development of the technologies and we're going to be interested in the durability of the carbon dioxide that's being sequestered we're going to be interested in in assessing the net negativity making sure that the systems as a whole are in fat net net negative and then we're going to be looking at those factors that might prevent solutions from reaching that massive gigaton scale third and finally we are going to be looking at the cost so so looking at that cost calculation like I said that's going to be for a hypothetical solution at a megaton scale and and you know basically looking at that cost and and lower cost solutions are going to do better in the competition next slide please so how is this all rolling out this fall we will be accepting proposals from student teams and and by the end of this year we're going to be distributing um up to five million dollars in grants to student teams so those submissions are due on October 1st we're going to talk about the student teams at the end of this presentation um but it's important to note that at this point in time we don't require any physical demonstration so it really is just for a proposal um about how students are going to compete in the rest of the X-Prize carbon removal in February of 2022 that's next February we'll be asking for milestone submissions and using these milestone submissions will be awarding 15 million dollars um that's 15 prizes of one million dollars each to the best milestone submissions at that point in time we are looking for demonstrations of the key components of your solution that can be at any scale or any size but we want to kind of see that proof of concept and we're also going to be asking for a technical proposal for how you're going to build that solution out into a fully realized 1000 ton per year system over the next few years we'll also be asking for a cost model and some rationale around sustainability and like I said we'll be giving the best proposals uh one million dollars and we have 15 of those awards to give out we then have a couple of years I'm sorry but you can go back we have a couple of years for teams to develop their their large-scale solutions uh one back please no the other way sorry gang a little bit of technical difficulty but I'll just keep I'll keep on my speech so in in 20 by 2024 we require teams to have their solutions built out at that thousand ton per year scale and we will be awarding up to 30 teams site visits and that that means we're going to be coming into the field and we'll be bringing our experts with us to do uh to do our due diligence on up to 30 solutions and of those 30 we will be in our those 30 teams will be invited to submit into the final round of the competition for consideration for the grand prizes um that and the grand prizes will be awarded in 2025 so um uh that's kind of the broad arc of the competition now we're going to we're I just wanted to to talk about the student competition a little bit because that's the first major mile milestone so first of all who is eligible to submit for the student awards um student teams can be formed out of existing research groups or student clubs student teams can also be independently incorporated so there isn't a requirement that you sort of live on campus um as it were uh you you could choose to um you know collaborate with with students at other institutions or um and and you know you may opt to incorporate independently but student teams must be student led and composed of uh of at least 50 percent students now when we say students we are talking about young people and I know there's a lot of uh there's a lot of mature learners out there and you know I'm one of them and uh you know I consider myself a lifelong learner but we are targeting younger people specifically with these student awards and so we're asking for for students who are 35 or younger and currently enrolled in the educational institution for the 2021 2022 academic year or recently graduated um from from school in the 20 you know in 2021 we are asking student teams to identify an academic advisor or a business leader who will act as a formal mentor to the team and we are asking for a letter of support from an academic institution so even if you are independently incorporated we want to see some association with an academic institution next slide please um as I mentioned we're going to be giving out up to five million dollars this fall we have uh we actually have two categories of awards that we'll be giving out awards up to 250 000 dollars a piece for student teams who are going to compete in the x-price carbon removal so those proposals we're actually looking for proposals where where students are going to build out carbon removal solutions and compete alongside everyone else in the prize and and these awards are really just intended to be seed money for that we're also giving out awards of up to a hundred thousand dollars for student teams who are developing measurement reporting and verification technologies and our definition of those technologies is pretty broad again you can look at the guidelines online but any any kind of technology that helps further the cause of carbon removal is eligible for these awards of up to a hundred thousand dollars and as I mentioned those proposals are due on October 1st so how do you register for all this visit our website at x-price.org slash carbon removal um there you'll find uh two things you'll find the guidelines which I would encourage you to download and read very carefully you'll also find a a link to the prize operations platform which Roop is going to talk talk about and that's where you register uh for the competition okay thanks Mike so as Mike mentioned the prize operations platform is where you register to compete that's the main hub for x-price carbon removal and all our challenges and prizes um this is where all your team information is stored it's where you will submit your um you know upload your submissions um and it's also going to be used by our judges to view your submissions so the way you do that and the way you register for the competition is on our main website you go to the register now button click that and that should take you to pop.xprice.org you're going to need to um select don't have an x-price account register if you if you don't and then you'll need to confirm your email um and you know then you'll have an account once you're able to log in you're going to be requested to fill in a user profile this is how you will access pop um from now on and it's just your basic information none of this is used for um anything beyond you know setting up your profile so you'll fill out this form and select x-price carbon removal from the interests category and once you do that you're in so once you get into pop you go to the prizes page and select x-price carbon removal which is highlighted here and you click create a team that's where you'll um be required to you know complete the registration activities once you're logged in you'll see um under activities you'll see everything that kind of remains for you to complete so for registration it's completing the team registration form uh making the payment and signing the competitors agreement so the registration form um that's going to be a form that's going to ask you a bunch of questions um you know like you see here this is the beginning of the form um just want to really stress that none of this information is used for judging or evaluation um anything like that we've got a number of concerned emails um that they need to change uh something they wrote or updated this is really just for us to get a lay of the land on you know the competitor landscape who's who's interested who's competing that sort of thing so it's not used for anything you know that will um help you or hurt you um the next step after the form and payment is signing the competitors agreement this is sort of the legally binding document for competitors in x-price competitions um I really make sure you take a careful look at it and it also contains some information that you know you could answer some of your questions as well so if you need technical support you email pop support at xprice.org so you can also use the pop portal to find other team members so say you are someone who doesn't have a team once you have the pop account you can log in um you know go to the competition's page and then select teams that's where you can kind of search for a team that you already know of or you can search for teams who are accepting new team members looking for skills like material science chemical engineering that sort of thing um you're looking for teams that are fully registered to join so once you kind of filter through all that all the teams that meet those criteria will show up and you can click one of them and select apply to team and it's not really a formal application it's actually applying to you know get in contact with the team lead so there you'll put in you know hey I'm so-and-so I have a PhD in materials engineering and I've been working in such-and-such area for however long and I'm really interested in you know your approach to your solution um looks like you're accepting new team members I'd love to join can we talk further provide your email any other information you want and then the team lead can accept to contact you so the team lead will make uh get a message like this and go in and see your message and they can accept or reject it so I just want to point out some really important resources uh that that uh Mike had also mentioned earlier first things first is really download the competition guidelines if you're interested download them look at the requirements um see you know where your solution might fit or maybe it doesn't fit um read the FAQ uh there's an FAQ section here I just got a couple questions today with exact answers to their questions in the FAQ so I linked them right back to it because we try to you know update these regularly these are based on some of the most common questions we've been getting through POP or through our carbon removal email you can also view our past webinars and look for a schedule of upcoming webinars on the upcoming events and webinars page and then lastly contact us at carbon removal at xprise.org if you have other questions so some upcoming events to get on your radar we have a matchmaking session we had our first matchmaking session um about about a month ago and um it was pretty well received it got to hear from some teams that are looking for new team members um these sessions are also going to allow you a chance to kind of network with them in breakout sessions and that sort of thing so we've um sent out in our last newsletter a link to apply to pitch um and also an RSVP link to join the webinar you can also access that here under our events page um so that's coming up next week so a week from uh today I believe yeah um so the team Q&A webinars that are we are holding such as today's um those are going to be bi-weekly so those are going to be a regular thing from now on um because I think you know there's going to be lots of questions uh to come and so we want to keep keep this regular to provide teams a chance to ask us um IRL the next webinar we have is for students that's preparing a winning carbon x carbon preparing a winning x prize garbant removal student project application we're going to have past carbon x prize judges on um to just kind of talk about their experience um evaluating uh you know submissions and applications and things like that that's coming up on august 24th and then the next team Q&A webinar is september 1st at 9am so again how to contact us we've got substantive questions about the competition carbon removal at x prize dot org and for tech support issues like you're locked out of your account or you need to make changes um pop support at x prize dot org is the best place to look so let's get into the Q&A okay feel free to type any questions into the Q&A box um note that we've we've typed answers to a few of the questions that came in during the during the presentation and um we can answer some of these live okay uh question from Ramona um you're having trouble with the pop portal whenever you try to sign in your profile it keeps redirecting to the sign in sign up page um first thing I would say is contact the pop portal looks like you've sent an email but have no reply um contact carbon removal at x prize dot org and in the subject line say pop access issues I'll just need your team name and the email associated with the account and I can make sure that you get help with that okay okay so there's a question here from Christopher around biomass solutions and Christopher says the final rules say that biomass based solutions cannot utilize old growth forests or reduce total standing biomass which is understandable and appropriate are there any best practices suggested for obtaining lignin based woody biomass in a way that the judges would consider to be sustainable so this is a very good question um obviously the issue around uh ecosystem preservation and sort of doing no harm is uh is something that that we really tried to emphasize in the prize design in the prize guidelines fundamentally it is up to each team to make the case around the sustainability of their practices and specifically I think we're we're um you know in the guidelines we we we spoke about not reducing total standing biomass I think I think we're also um very uh very aware or the judges are going to be very aware of the effects of these projects on overall total biodiversity um but those two statements are very broad and I think very nuanced depending on where you are developing your project and so I don't have a firm answer for you but I think it um it would be best uh to consult some of the sustainability uh organizations in the area of the world where you're competing in and make sure that you reference those standards in your in your submission okay question from Ramona cost calculations are they included for phase one or does it apply to phase one and student awards as well so we're going to be asking for cost calculations from teams in both phase one and phase two of the competition and again those cost calculations are on are going to be on a hypothetical basis of a of a megaton scale project we are not going to be asking the student teams to be submitting cost calculations as a part of the student proposal that's due on October 1st so the first cost calculations will be due in February so Igor asks we plan uh in the project for students to launch an installation of a scale of of uh one-tenth scale which will capture CO2 in the amount of 100 tons is this normal for your conditions in the future the main project will scale to a gigaton so I would encourage you to uh to certainly submit to the student competition um but keep in mind that the uh the student awards are specifically intended for teams who will uh who will have a legitimate um uh a legitimate plan for competing in the main competition the target for the main competition is a thousand tons per year so I think um if if uh if you are able to present a case for the the rapid scale up from 100 tons per year to a thousand tons per year then then that might be compelling but uh but we really are targeting um uh projects at that thousand that that will reach the thousand ton per year scale um by 2025 so um having said that I don't think there's any harm in submitting and and seeing what happens remember that this is a competition and so uh so you know it's uh X prizes are awarded on the basis of uh performance but they're also awarded on the basis of performance relative to the the other competitors in the uh in in the in the competition okay um question from Richard will X Prize be giving a recommended recommended list of third party verification firms for the 15 million milestone thanks for that question Richard um we will not be issuing a comprehensive list uh we may have a few firms that we may uh we may uh name as as examples of good firms but what we will be doing is issuing uh more specific guidelines on what exactly we are looking for in uh third party verification and what the requirements of that verification are and very broadly um we require the third party verifiers to be third party that is to say independent and also qualified um and having some expertise in the field um but but beyond that uh we aren't going to be um we aren't going to be saying you know you must use this firm or that firm or you know pick from the list um we want to keep it open for all teams to uh to um find independent verifiers that that suit their project oh yeah so Jeff asks this almost the same question I hope I answer this question already will there be more information on what is needed for third party verification yes we're working on that guidance and we'll be issuing it soon okay uh question from Marnie are demonstration pilots that have industry sponsorship eligible and have and have started before April 2022 um are they round one eligible yeah good question the answer is yes um anyone is uh is invite anyone is invited to submit to both rounds of the competition um both both phases of the competition are open um which open enrollment essentially so you can you can register at any time before uh that phase deadline um and uh folks who are already working in the carbon removal space and already building uh building projects or building plants are are eligible and and uh you know in fact have a little bit of a head start so um so we certainly encourage folks who are new to the space to get get get right to work and don't waste a moment and folks that are already working in that space um you know certainly keep on building things out and um and uh you know we encourage you to orient your your uh plans around uh the requirements the competition okay okay a question from Debbie where uh what is the expected availability for the phase one milestone million dollar award guidelines uh oh I think she's asking when we're going to give sort of submission guidance on um the milestone when we're thinking about that right so we will be um we will be publishing a uh submission uh template for um for each phase of the competition so we expect the submission template for the student awards to be um to be published in the next few weeks and we'll be following up very shortly thereafter with a submission template for the first phase of the main competition so um the best way to find out about that is to make sure you're registered for the competition which means you'll be on our mailing list and um you'll be notified by the POP the prize operations platform system once those submission uh guidelines are are uploaded and and when the submissions are are you know are open so John asked a really good question he says most gigaton scale carbon removal techniques are unproven and require extensive r&d to address unknown outcomes how do you deal with the unknowns in your assessment slash judgment one of our objectives at the x prize foundation is to design competitions that are formulated around uh demonstrations that are that are actually measurable and so that's what we've tried to do here by challenging people to um to demonstrate uh carbon dioxide removal projects you know at a very significant scale in a short period of time um that we can actually you know you kind of like show up and look and see and measure and assess and um and and on that on that basis um that's that's kind of the the core of the of the x prize assessment so so the the the the biggest challenge is actually getting the job done as it were but you make a very good point about the gig the gigaton scalability how um how those assessments uh rely on a lot of assumptions and you'll see when we publish the um submission guidelines that the um this the the questions that we ask teams to address in the submission are oriented at that and I think everybody understands and we know that the the judges that that we are recruiting for this competition understand that there's um there is a great deal of uncertainty and um and uh you know we'll be we'll be asking the teams to speak to that uncertainty but the judges are are always thinking about that when when they when they convene to choose a winner so thanks for the question okay question from benjamin um if two teams have a similar solution would you defer to the more robust team for the milestone award so um I mean I think the answer is essentially yes it it we do expect several teams to be bringing similar concepts to the competition and as I mentioned before the core challenge of this competition is the demonstration so really it is about the performance of that demonstration that will be the main determining factor it's not the only factor but the main determining factor uh in in who's chosen to be the winner okay oh here's a good question from wolfgang I am looking for a team he says I prepared a little presentation to explain my approach would you like me to present my google slides okay this is a great question rupa do you want to talk about our our uh matchmaking webinars yeah I get uh many emails asking for us to review their decks or you know and and we're excited that there's so many people excited about this topic but we are limited in what we can review individually and we're not really in a place to do that we're really here to operate this prize and help you in any way we can um so wolfgang I'm not sure if you're on our mailing list or you've gotten the newsletter but we do have a matchmaking session next week next um Thursday I believe and we are going to be hearing from teams that are registered um you know to present their solutions their idea and what kind of team members they're looking for so um if you haven't gotten the newsletter contact me um at carbonerobladexprize.org and I can send you more information about the matchmaking session so that's kind of really the only place where we're going to be allowing teams to present to each other okay okay so uh here's a question about the phase one demonstration or the phase one demonstration requirements does phase one require a demonstration or just a proof of concept so um the the phase one demonstration uh we we want to see demonstrations of the key component of each solution so what that means is um the the the phase one demonstration doesn't necessarily need to to show complete end-to-end carbon removal it doesn't necessarily need to be carbon negative at that at that scale at that time but we do want demo we want to see teams demonstrate uh systems that provide the judge's confidence in the efficacy of the overall solution so um so I I think the answer is yes a demonstration is required but when we say proof of concept we don't necessarily mean like a tiny version of the full carbon dioxide removal solution um so so take another look at the guidelines and read those very carefully because we tried to you know the the the the way we described that phase one demo was very very specific and very intentional so I hope that answers your question so James asks does the X-Prize organization really believe that CO2 removal will solve the root cause of global warming or is it just one step in the big picture or one of the tools in the toolbox man what a question who wants to take that rufa niki I mean I think it's one solution in the toolbox it has yeah yeah there's there's no way this one prize can can can solve the entire global warming problem um but we're a question oh sorry everybody didn't mean no that's that's that was the gist we we get asked this question a lot and and you know a lot of folks um are quick to point out that that uh you know we shouldn't just focus on carbon dioxide removal but we should also focus on emissions reduction and I think that's a really uh important point to to mention that we agree with that perspective however the science is clear and it's becoming clearer year after year that we will need massive scale carbon dioxide removal in addition to emissions reduction and that's why this competition was scoped as it was not as a not as a um you know a monolithic solution but as um an extremely important solution that that that needs to be taken in consideration with everything else at our disposal how is that for an answer it works for me um yeah and I think you know in in the future we hope to you know work on challenges of different areas and you know that sort of thing but for now this is our this is our big focus um bill let's see bill um I've looked at the seed links and they all seem to be focused on a solution that will make money I do not feel they will be interested unless the solution makes money however the best solution may not I have filled out some of the forms and was not acknowledged um that they were even received um so the the the competition does not require uh teams to make money or even break even or make a profit you know that's that's really not a requirement of the competition in the cost calculations we are going to be asking teams to to outline their costs in addition to any opportunities they might have to to make revenue but that's um it's it's not expected that teams have to make money um bill I'm not entirely sure what you mean when you say seed links um so so feel free to uh to expand on that question maybe you can send us a direct message in the chat and we can um we can make sure that uh that you're on the on the right path here okay so there's a question from Igor a few questions down that who asks can an insurance company function as a verifier please let us know who can be the verifier and so to answer that question I was going to type in an answer but but I'll answer it live um the uh basically the answer is stay tuned we are working on the guidelines for uh for more more details on exactly who the verifiers can and can't be and and exactly what's required in that verification um we we aren't going to require uh verifiers be anything you know um and an insurance company uh who who has expertise in the solution that you're promoting um might well be qualified to um to provide verification services for you but um but it really kind of depends on what you're doing and who uh who the verifier is so Ramona asks uh from my understanding algae cultivation is mainly considered as as capture slash sequestration technology in one can this technology be considered only as sequestration in this proposal the capture will be done by um direct air capture um if there are any uh algae folks I'm sorry I said algae it might be algae I don't I always get those too confused um we really hope to see some algae demonstrations in this competition um the challenge with algae of course is the durability requirement we do require the co2 that's captured and sequestered be durably sequestered for at least 100 years I think there's a number of ways um that you can use algae as an intermediate towards durable sequestration but algae in itself will obviously decompose and return to the atmosphere so I think that's the core challenge there um and uh uh but but it's certainly um we would love to see you uh find a sequestration solution that involves algae for sure okay is third party lca verification needed or encouraged um so in the first phase of the competition the all of the life cycle assessment and all of the cost assessment will be done by the teams and self reported um we aren't going to require any third party review of the uh of the of the uh documents that you submit to the first phase of the competition um but the judges will be scrutinizing those numbers um if you have third party verification um I think that's uh that that provides credibility to your case and so so that's a really great point and I'm going to discuss this with the team and we may include that as a as an optional an optional element of the submission I hadn't really thought about that before but in the second round of the competition there will be third party verification of the overall system in addition to uh the lca and some elements of the cost calculation so so in in the second round of the competition the bar will be much higher for um both verification and for for the the due diligence that enterprise does on all the systems question from man um it looks like you want to change what you selected um originally on the registration form um it's sort of hard to go back and change that our tech teams you know received a lot of individual requests like this um as I said before it does not make a difference in terms of your um how you'll be evaluated um it's really just kind of data that we use to read the group as a whole so I don't know if that changes your um you know your if you still want to change it um if you do contact pop support at xprice.org and um see if they can help you change it okay so um bill has uh typed in a follow-up to his question about the the seed links referencing some of some of these other services like decompression, launch pad, ocean solutions, etc. Nikki would you like to just speak about some of those other uh some of those other programs? Yeah I see a clarification lower down from bell about um really just trying to ask what organizations would give a team seed money if they don't expect to make money down the road I mean that's a really important question and I think something that all teams will need to grapple with in some way so you know there is the competition that we are running and the funding that's on the table for that but then teams also are on their own to really fundraise for kind of early R&D funding to advance their technologies and solutions and so you know your strategy could take one of many forms a lot of people are trying to come up with some sort of business model to build into their proposal where you might be able to pitch traditional investors who are looking for that um for some teams that might not be possible or you know the direction you're going and so in that case maybe you're looking more for academic or grant funding from organizations that are really trying to fund research in this field so it kind of depends what category you fall into um some of the programs that we've mentioned you know like the circular carbon network where profiling deals to investors um that are you know currently raising money and you know keep in mind you are pitching to investors and private capital there you know so people will be looking for returns in that case there are other funding opportunities that are available though through places like the Department of Energy um and the equivalents in other countries um we I think are going to work towards trying to compile some of those references for people down the line just so you know that's a little bit easier to access but um then there are the other programs like Airminers Launchpad and then I think maybe you were trying to reference Ocean Visions New Launchpad which is also another kind of early-stage support program for ocean-based solutions I don't know if there is funding attached with that at the end so you definitely need to look at the accelerator program specifically but some of them do offer funding opportunities kind of at the end of completing the program and others are more just mentorship and you know program development customer discovery that kind of thing so all of it's valuable but it kind of depends on the specific um portfolio of support that you need to get your solution to the next level okay thanks Nikki um so question from Brett would DAC Tech which enables both carbon rule and emission reduction rank higher because emissions reduction counts as a co-benefit yeah that's a that's a really great question so it's important to remember that the eligible solutions must be carbon negative on a cradle to grave basis excuse me and they and the the carbon that's sequestered must be sourced from the air or the surface layer of the ocean so so um as long as you're doing that you're eligible now if you're also reducing emissions uh elsewhere um that certainly is an interesting co-benefit that um we would love to see you make a case for in your submission now uh whether it's um whether those solutions will be ranked more more favorably uh is is really hard to say because it depends on the the effectiveness of the system as a whole so I can't I can't say that it would be treated preferentially in any way it really wouldn't be um but it would be uh taken taken into consideration alongside all of the other requirements the competition that are outlined in the guidelines great question question question from Benjamin are we free to sell our sequestered carbon dioxide in this project to companies to offset some of our costs as long as they are still sequestered yeah I think the answer is yes as long as the carbon remains uh jurably sequestered um you know and that carries with it an obligation to uh to to you know ensure and verify that the carbon remains sequestered for for a hundred years um but the uh but the answer is yes and we don't have any uh requirements or limitations really for how teams might um either raise funds or or make money through through these through these projects so you're absolutely um absolutely able to and encouraged to come up with unique business models to to help further your solutions so Dawson asks about how if teams don't have to make money how will you measure scalability from a solution that makes money versus a company that needs government help this is kind of like a tricky question isn't it um uh the objective of this competition is to highlight high quality low cost solutions um if solutions can in fact be profitable that's a that's a win as long as it's also high quality and and you know legitimately removing carbon um so so I mean that's our that was our perspective when we designed and scoped out the prize and that's the perspective that the judges will be making their award decisions on so you know that's maybe not a not a not a direct answer to the question but I hope that kind of gets gets at the answer there's no requirement to make money but certainly it's an advantage if you can okay question oh you are asked a question about intellectual property here the question is there have been developed unique projects and technologies that are unpattended we would like to share them with others but through that unfair and dishonest people can later patent inventions and prohibit their use what's the solution well um I I it's I I can't really speak to patent law because I'm not a patent lawyer if you have a specific piece of technology that you think needs needs uh intellectual property protection I would encourage you to speak to an IP lawyer an intellectual property lawyer about that um uh I think to answer the question is if you publish uh the technology openly in most cases as far as I'm aware it should not be able to be patented if if a technology is already public public knowledge um but I would I would definitely suggest you um you seek professional opinion on on that question okay Ramon asked does a student team need third party verification to so remember that the student teams are the the intention for the student awards is that there's to see teams that will compete in phase one and phase two of x-price carbon removal so third party verification isn't required at the time of the student submission but it will be required in the later phases of the competition the requirements for the students to submit to phase one and phase two are exactly the same as every other team in the competition okay Milan I'm sorry if I mispronounced your name Milan asks since we have only sequestration and transformation portion of the process can it be coupled with an already existing capture process to complete the whole loop um the answer is yes um we want to see demonstrations that show the full process but you are welcome to partner with other organizations or in fact other teams in the competition to make that happen so over the next few years I really hope that that you know you might be able to find a partner who can provide the capture uh solution that complements your sequestration technology um but he asks is documented history considered third party we want to see evidence that uh demonstrations are are currently running um I think documentation history is part of a good verification but um but not the only part um so I think that definitely helps um you know and verification reports that have already been uh a published can certainly help your case there um that's a good question I I think um uh I'll take that into consideration certainly and we'll um we'll incorporate that feedback in the uh verification uh guidelines that are due to come out later this summer okay here's a question about um can we make uh can we make another person the leader for a team who's not signed the competitor agreement so I think this question is about um who needs to sign the competitor agreement on behalf of a team and can that team leader change over time Nikki Rufa can you speak to that um usually it's sort of you know who signs the competitor agreement sometimes if it's a university um or you know some other organization or company that's where the you know winnings will go um so they they have to match um I would like to get back to you on that because I think um most of the time we've had the team leads be the people that sign the competitor agreement so um I will obviously type a contact you can send to me uh contact email you can reach me at so somebody asks about um protecting the IP of a team when adding new members um it's a really good question and IP is is certainly a sensitive topic um the answer is that each team kind of has to manage their own team members and manage their own intellectual property themselves and so if you if you as a team decide you need to to you know have confidential confidentiality provisions confidentiality agreements signed amongst yourselves you can do that we don't have any requirements or or even any guidance there what I can say is that x prize goes to great lengths to protect your IP and does not disclose IP broadly beyond the um the the staff and the judges who are managing the competition so you know we'll we will protect any intellectual property that you that you submit to us but you're kind of on your own in terms of protecting your own IP amongst your yourselves and your members um so joseph asks actually a good a good follow up to that question which is um if there are intellectual property implications would the judges and evaluators from x prize be open to signing non-disclosure agreements so the uh the competitor agreement that you sign when you register for the competition does include uh confidentiality and non-disclosure provisions and uh all of the uh staff at x prize and all of the judges and all of the independent contractors that we hire to run the competition um will sign uh strong confidentiality agreements if there are specific concerns around uh IP that that require uh you know additional agreements um that's something that I think we would have to evaluate on a case-by-case basis but we're of the opinion that the confidentiality provisions uh written into the competitor agreement are are very strong okay how can I get a mentor's support this is a question from Igor um there are cultural language and financial differences uh and that our aim is an effective project becomes successful and does not fail because of communication problems how can I get a mentor's support um Rupa Nikki do you have any ideas uh on this well Mike I'm thinking maybe the most recent student energy webinar that we did might be a good resource um I think there was uh some lessons learned from finalist teams on the carpet the energy cocia carbon x prize that were based out of universities and they kind of talked about their experiences um working within the university system looking for mentors and coaches to work with um and also some advice from the student energy team on guides that they've put together uh so I think that we can put the link to that reporting in here for you to look at um but you know in general we encourage folks to get mentors you know in across a number of different fields so looking for industrial partners and people who are already working on you know similar things within the industry reaching out to them trying to see if you can create some sort of partnership or mentorship um and then you know advisors within universities and um maybe in the accelerator world if you're really looking for a lot of mentorship I would strongly encourage like applying to a program where that's more structured that you'll get support and access to a network um so some of the ones that we mentioned earlier would definitely be a good place to start and the air miners community as well you can um definitely put um kind of calls out into that community for what your needs are and you might get some some bites back that way um here's a question are student teams allowed to cooperate with each other um yes we'd love to see teams cooperate with each other um there's it's a competition but certainly we'd love to see uh teams get together and share ideas and share expertise we've also seen over the years that some teams decide to merge or perform or um uh conduct partnerships over the years because you might realize that you are really strong in one area but you're kind of missing the other piece of the puzzle so I think we actually had um some conversation about that in the chat earlier you know someone who has one piece of their carbon removal solution looking for the other piece so we don't expect that everybody has everything right off the bat and we are trying to create a community here where folks can find each other so we definitely encourage encourage um cooperation and cooperation and yeah if you really you know are putting your word out there we think that people people will bite and you can search through the pop platform for other teams that are looking for team members and try and you know sort by different skill sets and you know um carbon removal pathways or things like that to to narrow in on maybe what I'm looking for okay well I think we are actually at the bottom of the Q&A list yeah and uh we're at the top of the hour um we're we're a little bit over time but um but thank you all for joining us this afternoon uh Rupa do you want to play us out yeah I think um please join us for some of the um upcoming events check our events page for what webinars are next um we'll be putting the recording for this up soon and um stay tuned for our newsletter for other updates but yeah hope to see you on the next one thanks all