 Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We're going to go ahead and get started if you more people might trickle in, but we're really glad you're able to make it. My name is Nikki Batchelor. I am the Prize Director for the X Prize Carbine Removal. I'm joined with Rupa Danden Moody and Michael Leach, who are also on our team. Mike leads a lot of our technical work. You'll be kind of going through all the details of what's required for your demonstration in the competition. Rupa will be handling all of our team relations, so she's here to be answering questions and helping you get through the registration process. We will just jump right into it because we want to leave a lot of time for questions today, make sure everybody has time to kind of ask all the detailed things that we might not get to exactly in the slides, but just to set things up. I just want to make sure everybody knows who X Prize is. We are a nonprofit based in Los Angeles. Our work is really around solving global grand challenges. We work across several different domains. This team here has actually been with X Prize for a handful of years. We've all worked on the NRG-COSIA carbon X Prize together, which we just awarded earlier this year. That was a $20 million competition around carbon utilization. So definitely some overlap with what we're doing now. But we've learned some things and we're going to continue to grow at the scope and impact with this new prize. So with that, I think we'll just kind of continue on here. So just to mention quickly, the other domains that X Prize works in are exploration environment and human equity. So we have a handful of active prizes right now across those domains. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. You can see all of our competitions on the website. I don't want to dwell on that too much today. And then just for reference, this is kind of just a snapshot of all the prizes that we have awarded in the past to date. How many have been launched, how many prizes we have in development, and all the cumulative prizes that we're handling. So you'll see that this is definitely the largest competition we've ever run. We're very excited to have this size prize first to incentivize new innovation around carbon removal. So we'll just kind of go into the details of the competition here. Just the high level what we're trying to do is increase the supply really of new carbon removal solutions. We want through the competition to leverage that platform to demonstrate the viability of new durable, low cost scalable, sustainable carbon removal solutions. That's a mouthful, but we're going to dig into what all of those words mean specifically and the criteria and a few slides. At a high level here is the timeline that we're talking about for the competition. So it's a four year prize. We are really trying to hit the ground running though you'll see that we are trying to give out the first $20 million in the first year. That's pretty significant for XPRIZE. We have done milestone awards in the past, but the dollar value here is definitely much higher. We are trying to make sure we can get some seed funding out into the field for teams who have really promising ideas so that they have some capital to get started on demonstrating their ideas. So you'll see that we have kind of two different milestone points here. The first one is around our student awards. So we are accepting registrations for student based teams and we will be giving away five up to $5 million and student awards this fall. And then next spring we will be giving away the rest of the $15 million in milestone awards for the most promising 15 teams. So those will be $1 million awards. And then the rest of the money is saved to the final year of the competition when we complete all of the demonstrations and get to do all the fun stuff around demonstrations and measurement and verification and judging. So we'll go into that in a little bit more detail. And then we just wanted to mention quickly, you know, we consider the prize to be a platform to work with other partners who can really help catalyze the work of the teams, expand the impact more than what we could just do at XPRIZE. We are working closely with Airminers on their new launch pad accelerator. They are partnering also with Creative Destruction Lab there. So if you have a new idea, you're kind of just getting started, you should definitely look at this program. It's an early stage accelerator. It's a six week program. They're running a cohort every quarter. So they're, I think recruiting right now for their second group of teams. So this is just, you know, really support for founders to help think about establishing their team, your business strategy, roadmap for your technology customer discovery, some of the early questions that you should really be thinking about as you kind of start to form a new, a new startup. And then the other program here is Circular Carbon Network. That's actually an initiative that we created through XPRIZE and we gather market intelligence across kind of the carbon landscape. So check that out. We have a bunch of indices where we compile all of the data for new startups working in the space. We profile all those companies and we've also been building a network of investors. So if you are fundraising, we have something called Deal Hub and we can profile your fundraising deal there so you can easily kind of submit your details and it can be profiled to that network of investors. We've added these links and details into the newsletter that goes out to everyone who is registered for the competition on the prize operations portal. And so if you're getting that newsletter, you can also click these links easily at the bottom of that under the team resources section. And I think with that I'll hand it over to Mike. Hi everyone. So I'm going to just spend some time talking in a bit more detail about what you need to do to compete. So like Nicky described, you know, we're all about carbon removal and we take the demonstration of carbon removal very seriously, but anyone who can show us that they are removing carbon is in scope. We've worked really hard to try and keep this competition as broad as possible. And so the, the, the number one rule is that any carbon negative solution that removes CO2 from the air or oceans and sequesters it in a durable way is in scope. Now, we talk about things in terms of these four categories air oceans, lands, and rocks, but we're totally open to hybrid ideas, other ideas that that maybe nobody's tried before. You know, the field is really open for, for anyone who can, you know, who can, who can rise to the challenge and remove carbon to to to come up and compete. Out of scope are things that do not actually remove CO2. So I know there are lots of folks who are interested in addressing other other GHGs greenhouse gases. We're really focused on CO2 we'd love to see solutions that might have a co benefit and and reduce other greenhouse gases as well but we're really focused on, you know, you kind of have to remove carbon as a as a, as a, you know, as the price of admission. We're also not interested in in in solutions that would source their CO2 from an already sequestered source like fossil fuels or the deep ocean. Solutions really need do need to be carbon negative. So CO2 avoiding or CO2 offsetting solutions while important as well are are not in scope for this competition. And obviously solutions which emit more CO2 than they remove would not be considered carbon negative. And the last real important criteria is this idea of durable sequestration. And so solutions that cannot demonstrate to see question durable sequestration of CO2 are not are not in scope so technologies for example that produce pure CO2. You know, that's kind of an we see that as kind of an intermediary and teams will have to sequester that CO2 in a durable way so if you're a say a direct air capture team and you produce a pure stream of CO2 we really want to see you join forces with with perhaps another team who who has a sequestration technology that can sequester your CO2 durably. So we're really interested in that full end to end technology and you have to do all those steps, both the capture and the durable sequestration in order to win the prize money. So, what are we exactly asking you to do. The first and most important thing is to build and run a working demonstration for phase one in order to win the milestone money. We require a proof of concept demonstration so we want to see something working but it doesn't need to be full scale, it doesn't need to be full scope. It might just be a portion of the solution, but we will also be asking for a detailed proposal for how you're going to build out that solution into a fully operational concept over the next couple of years. And for phase two for the grand prize. We really need to see a full scale operating CDR solution. Our target is 1000 tons per year of CO2 removal. And, and you kind of just have to do it you know that's that's really the crux of this competition. Now we'll also be asking teams to submit a fairly detailed cost calculation for for a scaled up version of the technology so we're looking for cost estimates for what your solution will cost at a scale of one megaton per year. I don't know about that obviously but we are hoping that the demonstrations can kind of inform some of these calculations and test some of the assumptions. And then finally teams have to make a case that their solutions are scalable to a gigaton and beyond, as everybody knows the, the, the scale of the problem we're trying to address and in terms of addressing climate change really will rely on gigaton scale carbon removal. We're interested in rewarding technologies, which can clearly demonstrate the potential to scale to that gigaton scale and beyond. In terms of how you'll be evaluated and judged. It really follows the same, the maps very closely on to what I just described so first of all you'll be evaluated and judged on your operational performance, you know does your equipment work. Is it the scale that we asked for, are you able to sustain operations and then is your technology independently verified this is one of the core core values of XPRIZE is that everything needs to be rigorously and scientifically validated. The second, the second phase of evaluation I suppose is on that question of sustainability, you know. First of all, is this is the sequestered CO2 sequestered durably. Is the technology in fact neck negative, and does the technology have any sort of scale or rate limiting factors that might hinder its scalability to gigaton and beyond. And then finally teams will be ranked by their calculated cost. So judges are really going to look at all all of this information. The, you know, it really starts with the demonstration, and then, and then and then ends with that, that assessment of cost. So, this is the schedule, Nikki alluded to this earlier and here it is again in a little bit more detail the, the, the submission and demonstration timelines. The student award submissions are due on October 1. I'll talk about the student awards in a little bit more detail in just a moment. Milestone submissions are due on February 1 of next year. That will require evidence of a working demonstration, as well as a fairly detailed technical proposal. And then we kind of take a couple years off off, I mean, we take a couple years to let you develop your solutions, and we come back in February of 2024 and see what you've accomplished. So by February 2024, we really want to see eligible teams demonstrate carbon removal at a, at a scale of at least 1000 tons per year sustaining operations and just, and just doing it, you know, this is not a competition of ideas. This is not a competition of, you know, well, you know, I will do this in the future. X prizes pay for performance. And in this case, we want to see you actually removing CO2 in a sustainable way. And that leads to the main events. The grand prize submission will be, oh, I should mention that in February 2024 we will be awarding 30 site visits. So, so, I guess a couple of key points here. Well, anyone can apply for site visits in February of 2024 you do not have to have won a milestone in 2022 to do that so this is an open competition, we're keeping it open for anybody to join at any time. And then in February 2024 will be awarding up to 30 site visits, we're going to go into the field and do verification and those 30 teams will be the ones invited to submit for the grand prize. So it is kind of a cut off as it were in February of 2024 where you need to successfully receive a site visit in order to be considered for the grand prize. So what's next. First of all, if you haven't already go to our website and read the guidelines, the guidelines are really the key document that describe the competition in detail. We contain lots of details on not just the main competition but also the student competition. I'll come back to that in a second. We also have a frequently asked questions page on the website that we'd encourage you all to look at. We updated it not too long ago and it contains a lot of information and answers a lot of the most common questions that we receive from folks. So if you haven't already register on pop and Rupa is going to talk about what pop is. It's our online for registration portal. You only need to do this once, even though our competition has several phases. Once you're in, you're in, you know, so if you haven't done already we'd encourage you to to register. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your team and what you guys intend to accomplish over the next few years. And once you're in, you're in. We will be issuing submission templates for the student competition and phase one milestone submissions later this summer. So we're just working on that and those submissions will be due by the respective due dates in October of this year in February of next year. Those submissions will be uploaded to pop so the same portal where you go to register is where those submissions will eventually be be sent to. And then demonstrate the key component of your CDR solution this year and a fully operational solution by 2024. It's really as simple as that. You do not have any other milestones or requirements. It's really up to you to hit the ground running, build a team raise money, get the get your technologies off the ground. So start developing your solutions you know it's really don't delay and and and certainly don't don't rush to tell you what to do because the the the X prizes really just about letting the world go to work against these hard problems. Okay, so I'll just spend a couple of minutes talking about the student competition and this is something we're really excited about. We when we design the student competition we really wanted to accomplish two things. We wanted to put some money into the field early and seed some some early stage ideas, but we really wanted to also sort of super charge the young people in the world and and focus young talent on this problem. And so the student teams are, you know, our definition of student teams are fairly broad, you know, they might be formed out of existing research groups they might be student clubs on on a, you know, on any campus. Students should also be independently incorporated so you don't necessarily need to be, you know, operating within the confines of a school. But we do want student teams to be led by students and comp and majority students. So, you know, student leadership and at least 50% of the team should be students, we define students as people as young people less than 35 years of age, enrolled at an educational institution for this academic year, or recently graduated So we, you know, we want to see as many young people join the competition as possible and so as far as the definition of a student is concerned, we're including both current students and recent graduates. Very young people can apply to if you're under 18 you need to get, you know, sign off from a parent or guardian when you register but even folks in in grade school could could could apply for this funding. If, if you guys, if you guys like. I do want to see you identify an academic advisor or business leader who is going to act as a formal mentor of the team, as well as a letter of support from an academic institution so like I said at the top, you don't need to be organized within that academic institution but we do want to see a letter of support from an institution. So, so that's really how we think about student about eligibility for the student awards, we have $5 million available for students, and, and that includes awards for both competing in X prize carbon removal. We have awards up to up to $250,000 for proposals to develop CDR solutions to compete in the prize. And we are also interested in funding development of measurement reporting and verification technology so if you work on a research team for example and you're developing, say, a really hot soil monitoring device or your, or your, or your developing are excellent new sort of software algorithm for calculating some, you know, some bigger and better way of calculating calculating carbon, carbon effects or something like that. You know, we really want to see those kinds of proposals as well. We have awards up to $100,000 for teams developing those kinds of technologies and proposals are due on October 1. So, again, download the guidelines the appendix a and the guidelines describes the student competition in a bit more detail. The point of entry is exactly the same as the main competition, go to pop register a team, and, and then you'll be, you'll be able to submit a proposal for student funding. How to register visitor website xprise.org slash carbon removal. We hope to see you all there. Okay, thanks Mike thanks Nikki. I'm Rupa team relations manager for X prize carbon removal. I'm just going to go through kind of quickly because we want to make sure we get plenty of time for questions about the registration process so what is pop pop is the prize operations platform. It's where you register to compete it's where you create your team profile. It's where you sign the competitors agreement, pay the registration fee, and it's where you can look for other teams who are accepting new team members as well. It's also where you'll be uploading your submission documents when that time comes. So it's kind of where you know essential hub for everything that we do on prizes at X prize. So you access pop by you can go to our website and click the register now button, or you can also go to pop dot X prize.org and create a account there. So once you create account, you know, you'll get an email sent to you and you'll have to confirm your account to complete that. You'll get a message like this. And once you do that you'll log into pop and create your user profile. So that's just it's it's separate from your team profile it's just sort of, you know, more about you and which prizes you're interested in and things like that. So it's just it's basic information about yourself. Once that's done you can actually access all the prizes that are active and here we've got X prize carbon removal and in the second the second block here and you will click click on create a team. So there you'll create your team. And once you're logged in as you as you know the team you created, you'll see a dashboard that has sort of, you know everything that, you know, you need for working in pop. activities that's the activity section where it lists everything you've got to still do to register so here it's completing team registration and payment and signing the competitors agreement. Later on down the road there'll be new activities added such as like complete your submission, things like that. So the team, the first part of the registration is team profile and paying your registration fee. So the team profile includes a registration form that looks like this. It'll have a bunch of questions that you know we're really just asking you to gather information about people interested in competing. I just want to note and stress and stress again that none of this information is going to be scored or evaluated by judges. I know, you know we've gotten requests to change things and worried that you know they didn't include enough or, you know, wanting to swap out descriptions and things like that. We can help on a case by case basis with that. But it does take some energy from our pop staff to keep to make those changes. So just to kind of, you know, relieve any concerns I want to make sure that's clear. This is really more information for us, just to get a kind of understanding of the larger group of people who are interested and it's not counted towards, you know, your evaluation. The next step is to sign a competitor's agreement. That's a legal document that's got all those sort of legal legally binding language that you're agreeing to in the competition it's actually also a really good resource, you know to read through and make sure you read through carefully. And if you need tech support while you're in the platform, you can email pop support at xprise.org. You can also look for other teams on pop. There's teams that might be accepting new team members or say you're an individual and you want to see, you know, maybe I have the skills to join a particular team. So once you're logged into pop and you can click on teams and do a search by skills needed. So say here it's material science and chemical engineering because you have those skills. And you filter by prize, you choose X price carbon removal, and you're looking for teams that are already registered so you click you or you enter registered under the team status. You can even look for city location, part of the world even if that's if you want to narrow it that down, narrow it down to that level. So say once you enter those fields all the teams that are accepting new team members that meet all that criteria will show up. So here let's pick on C negative. So this team, you know you can check their team profile out and look for, you know, read their profile and here it says we're currently accepting talented chemist engineers and designers to complement our team so you kind of know. If you're like an interesting team that I might want to join. You can click on apply to team. It's not a formal application it's actually really just an apple. A tool to communicate with that team so you can enter your information, you know your email, any other sort of details you want to include any clicks and the team lead of that team will receive a message like this. And when they log in they'll see oh okay this person's contacted me. Let me read what they've written. And if you kind of want to consider continue to talk to them you can click accept. And so I want to stress here, there's a lot of great resources for you as you kind of come up with questions and one of them as Mike mentioned before, absolutely the most important source I feel as a competition guidelines. And also the FAQ we are continuing to update the FAQ with questions that we get on an ongoing basis. So, you know, if they're questions about student competition about IP about the registration process. You can find find them there. We also have webinars and webinar recordings. So under on the main page there's an upcoming events and webinars page. If you go there you'll see all the upcoming webinars that are coming up and we also upload our recordings of past webinars there so watching those recordings can also be a great resource to you. And you can also contact us at carbon removal at x prize.org. We've got some upcoming events, calling all students we have a student energy. Oh, actually, that was best past. I was out yesterday so to those who joined thanks for joining. Hope you found that helpful. We have our next Q&A webinar on August 4 at 4pm Pacific. And then we have a another student energy webinar that is focused on, you know, how to prepare a winning x prize carbon removal student application. We'll have some past carbon x prize judges join us so it will be a great session to join if you are interested in competing for the student competition. We also had some good success. Last week we had a matchmaking webinar. Some of you might have been on it. It seemed to have been received well and it's something we're trying out. So we would like to kind of hold those regularly and we haven't set the date yet but we're considering mid August so you should be hearing about that in some of our upcoming webinars and newsletters. So lastly, you know, for substantive questions about the competition, carbon rule at x prize.org is a great first stop and for tech support, you can always reach out through pop support x prize.org. So now we'll get into Q&A. If you want to go ahead and type your questions into the Q&A section in the bottom of your screen we can go through and answer those questions either we'll type answers in or we'll answer them live. So the first couple of questions here some good questions from from the audience here so thank you keep them coming. The first question is about about our choice of focusing on carbon dioxide rather than other GHGs. And basically that this is just, this was the scope of the competition that that we designed. It's focused on carbon dioxide with carbon dioxide being the largest contributor to global warming. We certainly understand and appreciate the folks who are working on other GHGs and you know we'd love to support your efforts, but we need to see in order to create an even playing field as it were, we are really focusing on CO2. And so you have to remove CO2 in order to be in scope for this competition. Every team will be given the opportunity to articulate other benefits of their technologies and removal of other GHGs would certainly be a very compelling part of that so definitely keep up the good work, focus on methane and the other GHGs out there, but we want to see you remove CO2 as well. The next question is about another kind of question about scope. Somebody is is describing a technology that they've developed that that sequesters that sequesters CO2 durably and profitably, but they do not remove carbon from the atmosphere. So, in order to compete, you will need to join forces with somebody who can do that removal. And one thing we would love to encourage you all to do. If you if you don't have the full solution, you know, in develop yourself. We would love to see a partner with another team or bring on, you know, join forces with other experts who might have those other technologies that that can that can supplement your technology and and demonstrate that full scope of what we'd like to see. So the next question is about about how do you sign up for the newsletter Rupa do you want to take that one. Sure, if you signed up in pop as a, as someone interested in carbon removal, you know as a user or if you have a team profile. You know the person that signed up with that very email that is who the newsletter it's going to. That's sort of how we export our lists. If for some reason you are still not receiving the newsletter. Please let us know in the subject line say I'm not receiving the newsletter we get a lot of requests through our email and through pop so if it can stand out that'd be great and those will need to be manually added so yeah if you're not getting it for some reason. Please let us know. Okay, so the next question is just as the rules prohibit making fuels from carbon dioxide the rules also restrict the oceans to only the sunlight layer is unclear to me what can't what we can't do below the sunlight layer of the ocean. As an example, hydrate of methane can be crystallized and store in the deep ocean. However, this would be the creation of methane to a fuel. Okay, so that a couple of there's a couple of questions in here so fundamentally, it's up to each team to demonstrate that their method of sequestration is in fact durable and meeting the durability requirements outlined in the rules so I would not immediately dismiss this idea as being out of scope. Even though you're using you're creating a molecule that could be used as fuel. What we want to do is ensure that there is very lower very limited risk of reemission. Once the once the after the carbon has been sequestered. So, I would not write that off as being out of scope. Now, the issue around oceans is is the what we're targeting what we're essentially doing is is expanding the atmosphere to include that first layer of the ocean, where there's a very strong buffering effect and and and kind of a well established flux between the atmosphere in the ocean. That's where we want the point of capture to be so we don't want folks going into the deeps and and just dealing with the CO2 in the deep ocean. But we want to see folks capturing the CO2 in the surface layer of the ocean and then maybe perhaps accelerating the downwelling into the deep ocean where it can be sequestered durably. So, so I hope that helps. Like I said, I, you know, we're working really hard to try and keep the scope as open as possible, while maintaining those fundamental concepts of removal from the atmosphere and and durable sequestration. So the next question is about about funding and this is something you know the question is, should we build a physical prototype in the first phase of the competition before getting any fun. And the answer is that's kind of how X prizes work we pay for performance. We don't pay for for proposals and the only exception to that is the student competition where we are giving away some some grants based on proposals. For everyone else, you are kind of responsible for going out and fundraising and, you know, gathering whatever resources you need to finance your prototype. And, and we will rein money on the best ones that's really what what we're here here to do. I already asked to explain a little bit about sequestration in simple English. So, I'll do my best here, but I think there are a lot of really good resources that I could point you to. So, help me out could is if there's if you could paste some some links, while I try to explain that might be really good sequestration in its simplest form is either converting the CO2 into a different molecule that that is more tightly bound and won't go back into the air, or, or otherwise storing the CO2 in a way that it's, it's not going to remit into the atmosphere. And I don't know if that's if that's simple enough way of putting it, but it's really about trying to get those molecules out of the air where they're just floating around and then and then putting them somewhere where they are not going to cause any more problems. And we we talk about sequestration as as having to be durable. And what that means is we want to make sure that the CO2 isn't going to escape from where it's stored for at least 100 years. And so, again, I think there's a number of physical ways you could do that there's a number of chemical ways you can do that and we're really interested in any of those those concepts. But that idea of taking those molecules from the air and putting them somewhere where they aren't going to cause any harm going forward is is is kind of what we're getting at here. I hope that helps. Like I said, I think there's there's some good resources out there that you can you can look at online and and read about sort of the state of the art in carbon carbon dioxide removal I'm going to link to the CDR primer website, which is a new resource that came out in the last year and it's great gives you really a deep dive into carbon removal and all its different forms and pathways so definitely take a look at that if you're new to the space. Yeah, that's great thanks Nikki. So somebody asks, can we use the XPRIZE logos. I'm not sure but you might have to help me out with this one. I'm pretty sure when you sign up for the competition, you will sign a competitor's agreement that tells you exactly what you can and can't use there's a there's an appendix to the competitor's agreement called a media rights, media rights something. And that that kind of like tells you exactly what you can and can't do Rupa, do you want to expand on that. Yeah, that's right. So, read that read that section in the competitor's agreement that's what I meant about the competitor agreement being a really good resource for questions that might come up as well. And also when you're a fully registered team you'll receive a welcome email that includes a toolkit that includes, you know, some guidance on how to use the logos, what format that sort of thing and you know when and how you can use them so. Okay, so here's a good question about sales made for giga ships. I love this concept. I'm a sailor in my spare time. I love being on the water and, you know, in harnessing the wind and and all that good stuff. The point of this concept is to reduce fuel consumption on on large ships. This has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is a really great idea but unfortunately it is not in scope for this competition. This would be a emissions reduction technology that's how we would think about it. And unless you are somehow building into the system, a way of actually removing CO2 molecules from the air as you're as you're going along. This would not be in scope. Somebody asked about CCS that stands for for carbon capture and storage. Typically, when folks talk about CCS that refers to geological storage of the carbon dioxide in, you know, potentially old oil wells or other underground reservoirs. That would qualify. The answer is yes, it would qualify the the the only stipulation as we need that we need each team to make a credible case that the carbon is sequestered durably and and and you know many CCS projects have have satisfied that requirement, but you'll have to make sure that you have a carbon footprint as well and also that the system is carbon negative on a cradle to great basis. And you know you you make the point that it's been around for decades and isn't the intent of the project to encourage novel solutions. The intent of the project is actually to remove carbon dioxide. That's 100% of our point, and we don't care how you do it. We don't care the middle way, but you really have to do it and you have to prove it so so we'd love to see CCS projects in addition to whatever other novel solutions folks can dream up. Then the last question in the in the chat box here is about about prototyping and independent verification. So what is the minimum of independent verification you expect what would be an excellent independent validation. Okay, this is a great question so we are this is one area where we will be publishing a little bit more guidance just over the next over the next month or two here this summer. We do want to provide some some clarity on this. I think the gold standard of independent verification would be like a professional technology audit meeting some recognized standards, but that's not the only way to go about it. That is I'll admit the most expensive way to go. And for many technologies. You know those kinds of standards don't yet exist. And so really the fundamental principle that we're concerned with is making sure that the verification is in fact independent and that the verifier is is sort of free of any conflict of interest or you know doesn't doesn't have a really, you know a pre existing relationship with with the team and that the verification is is is credible and that it's conducted by by somebody who is competent and and considered, you know an expert in the in the field. So I guess the direct answer to the question is, I think what you've described is is probably along the right track. You know, bigger is better. So, so the more verification you can provide the better you'll be but also stay tuned for more details on that. Yeah, so because of the lockdown we're not able to practically experiment in the lab this is a really, a really, you know, a really good point we live in a very strange world right now. The pandemic is not over, but unfortunately, you know from from as far as as we're concerned, we have to move this project forward we have to start removing carbon dioxide so we would really encourage you to, you know, use whatever you need to know about your disposal. Maybe. Maybe you'll have to find a new venue maybe you'll have to find some new resources and and I understand that's a that's a serious challenge. But, you know, you'll have to you'll have to kind of hustle your way around around this one I think. Yeah, I mean the last question is about removal of carbon dioxide versus other GHG so we're just focused on CO2 that's that's just the way the way it is so Chris I appreciate all of your questions but but this is the scope of this project and the the award money will be directed towards carbon dioxide removal. Looks like we have a question. Oh yeah do teams get brownie points for the extent of carbon negativity. Well I think the answer is yes in the sense that the, the, the, the more carbon negative you are the easier it will be to hit that 1000 ton per year, the 1000 tons per year is on a net basis so certainly, certainly the extent of carbon negativity is a is a unimportant, unimportant factor. We say tons of CO2 we're talking tons of CO2, pardon me, buddy that just answer your question. Okay, this is an interesting question. We have an innovation hub with 100 first to 11th grade students from 12 countries, I love that. This is, this is just what we want to see they're currently collaborating on six different solutions. They submit the six solutions in one portfolio than based on judges vote, continue to work on one of the solutions. Great question, Nikki Rupa what do you guys think about this I, I mean, I'll just say from, from my perspective, you know, there's we don't have any restriction on the number of submissions that you can put in each team for students, including the registration fee is only $25 so you could register six teams and, and, and hopefully that's not too heavy of a burden. But, Nikki, what do you what do you think would be the best approach here. Yeah, I think that's right. You definitely can submit multiple solutions, we think of it though as kind of like a one to one one team has one concept and we want each of the concepts to be unique so think about that. I think that some of them truly are unique or some of them are kind of variations on the same end to end carbon removal solution. And then, you know, the judges will pick to fund their favorite. So you can kind of see if multiple of them get advanced or just one of them gets advanced for funding purposes and then you can determine, you know how many want to continue working on for the rest of the competition. I hope that helps we would love to see some submissions from your from your group there thank you so much. Can you just add in the chat with the name of your group or your team miss. So there's a question in the chat box around the, you know what will be required in the submission. The, the sort of the what the requirements of the submission are articulated in the guidelines. But the specifics exactly like what you have to type and and and where we'll will be issued in a submission template that we are going to upload to the pop to the pop platform so stay tuned for that. The submissions will require quite a bit of writing. Think of it as, as a, you know, a pretty intense proposal, but we also are going to be asking for quite a bit of technical details drawings and some engineering documentation. In addition to evidence of a working demonstration which could include photos and videos so I think to answer your question, James, it's kind of like all of the above. There will be a little bit more details to come on this point, but it, the submissions are going to be fairly, fairly comprehensive with a project that makes only biochar qualify. As long as you can demonstrate the you your system is carbon negative, and that your that the carbon will not be remitted and then it will be sequestered. Then yes, but you know, certainly biochar processes qualify, but there's there that you, it won't be enough just to produce biochar you have to demonstrate the whole system and improve that that you are in fact, removing, removing carbon in a net negative sort of a way. Every question. And the question from Chris in the chat. Respectfully the intention of the project is to remove carbon not carbon dioxide this was done during the energy to see a carbon next prize as you know how's this different, how's this prize different if you only focus on CO2. I think I've answered this one already so so we're just focused we're focused on carbon dioxide here that's the scope where the funding is for carbon dioxide removal. And, and, you know, and that's, and that's it I don't think we can we can get into a debate at this at this time. We certainly appreciate and respect all the good work that's going into other greenhouse gas mitigation, but we're focused on carbon dioxide here. Thanks. Question from Keith, can a submission be completely audio and visual. Say a camtasia presentation, assuming all technical data is presented. That's an interesting question I've never had that question before. I don't know what camtasia is. But I don't I think the answer is no I mean well there will be an opportunity. You know, typically our submissions are are sort of multi multimedia in nature we give teams an opportunity to upload photos and video, but we will need to see written. There will be a written aspect of the submission. So hopefully both hopefully both. What if our co benefits make our product profitable. Do we still need to minimize cost or could we optimize customer value instead. Yeah good question so if you look in the guidelines we are asking teams to break down their cost calculations in a couple of ways so there's the there's the cost element. You know that this is like, like just the cost ton ton dollars per ton of removal think about that. And then we are, we're also asking teams to articulate cost of other kind of like, like externalities. That may be caused by their by their process so we're thinking about you know effects on on the biosphere biodiversity that sort of thing. And then we are also asking teams to articulate co benefits and that could include revenue and so so the judges will be looking at at all three of those and and and really, you know, summing them up to get your, your, your total, your total costs so. So, you know the question around should we be focusing on minimizing cost or optimizing customer value. I don't think I can make that decision for you I think my advice is to focus on on making sure that you can actually feel a successful demonstration, which may force you into that customer value position. But at the end of the day, you know, the idea of high quality and low cost solutions is is paramount value adding solutions are are absolutely a big part of that. If you have multiple ways to sequester co to do you need multiple entries. So, our, our assumption was, I mean Nikki mentioned this in answer to a previous question. The idea is, is really we want to have one to one relationship between like the team, the team technology and the submission so if you have multiple technologies at play. We would want to see multiple, multiple submissions here. That's a good question. But, but, but yeah I think I think I think the answer is multiple entries on this one. Question from Abhishek is it given that page 22 and the guidelines be led the student competition be led by a student who's enrolled in the 2021 22 academic year but if any, if any student who has completed his education recently. The question is like if they are not currently enrolled in the 2021 22 academic year, can they can they lead the competition, the student competition team has to be led by a student that is currently enrolled in at least one course. In 2021 2022 academic year, your team can be composed of other students who have recently graduated. If you provide, you know proof of that. So, yeah, the team lead does need to be currently enrolled. Does CCS and enhanced oil recovery projects qualify. This is a tricky question. I know that in and soil recovery is a slightly as a hot button topic in the in in the field here. Our philosophy going back to what I said right from the top is that technologies must be carbon negative. And so I understand some folks are working on trying to make a case for carbon negative oil extraction. I've, I haven't seen any, any definitive proof that that that this is the case. I would not say that you are out of scope right away but I will. I will say that, you know, technologies that exploit and actually produce other carbon sources are going to be scrutinized very, very closely by the judges so. So definitely sharpen your pencil and make sure you can make a make a good case here for our technologies dependent on natural resources. Is it applicable so I mentioned earlier the concept of breaking down this cost calculation and the second sort of category is around is around trying to trying to put a cost on negative externalities. We also have this concept of scalability to gigaton scale and and if your technology is dependent on the exploitation of natural resources, we're really going to need you to make a very strong case that that you are not sort of doing harm in another and, and that you're not that your technology is is still scalable to a very, you know, to a massive extent, in spite of that reliance on natural resources so I think if your technology is dependent on natural resources, especially a non renewable resource. You know, you kind of have to proceed with caution, but, but you are not strictly speaking out of scope. Yeah, so here's a question about sort of that that idea of like doing other things besides CO2. The main goal is to remove CO2 but when we build the project idea and design solution. What should the project be only removing CO2 or can I do other things to help the environment, it can do it whatever you want it to as long as it removes CO2. And, you know, anything else that that your technology does would, you know, that's that's bad I should say that's beneficial would be considered would be considered a benefit. So I think, I think we're definitely open to those kind of solutions. I'm not seeing any other questions in the chat here. There are a few questions I think in the comment box but if you could retype them in the Q&A box I think we appreciate that. I have a question from Nan in the, I'm sorry if I'm mispronouncing in the chat. Or sorry Q&A, can you please provide some clarification on the criteria relative to the amount of CO2 in tons per year to be removed from the oceans as the greenhouse effect is concerned with CO2 in the atmosphere, removing one ton of CO2 from the ocean surface layer will be equivalent to removing only one 150 ton of CO2 per year from the atmosphere. 150 is the partition coefficient between the ocean surface layer CO2 and the air CO2 during gas liquid phase exchange. Would it be fair and more correct to request much more CO2 to be removed from the ocean surface layer than from the atmosphere? This is a great question. The answer is, as far as we're concerned, a ton is a ton. And if you think it's easier to capture from either the ocean or the air, then you could consider that a competitive advantage. But the requirements will be the same for all teams. So respectfully, you know, best of luck and I think I appreciate what you're saying, but we're keeping that requirement constant across all teams. So it's a question about is the purpose of the contest to prevent CO2 from various sources from going into the atmosphere or remove accumulated CO2 in the atmosphere? The answer is the latter. We're about removing accumulated CO2 from the atmosphere. A question from Milan. Would it be acceptable to take CO2 from industrial processes like pipelines to then transform it to either final sequestration or to synthesize pure CO2 for later use in the manufacturing industry? No, that's not in scope. So we need to see removal that begins in the atmosphere or the surface layer of the ocean and ends in durable sequestration. So sourcing CO2 from industrial sources would not be in scope. Well, I think we're out of time and we're out of questions. I'm sure there's more questions in the room, but we are at the top of the hour. So let's call it there. What's next, Rupa? Yeah, I think the next webinar is going to be on August 4th. So that'll be our next Q&A webinar coming up. So we'll see you all then and we'll be posting the recording of this webinar on our events page on our website. So hope to see you for the next one. Thanks for coming.