---
title: "Elon Musk Pledges $100 Million for Carbon Capture Technology"
description: "Elon Musk promised on Thursday evening to pony up a substantial $100 million toward a prize for new carbon capture technology."
date: "2021-01-21"
modified: "2021-01-21"
authors:
  - name: "Jon Christian"
    job_title: "Executive Editor"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/jonc"
url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-pledges-carbon-capture"
categories:
  - "Elon Musk"
  - "Future Society"
  - "The Industrialists"
tags:
  - "Carbon Capture"
  - "elon musk"
  - "environment"
  - "the digest"
---

# Elon Musk Pledges $100 Million for Carbon Capture Technology

![Elon Musk is once again posting misleading claims about the coronavirus pandemic in an attempt to downplay the danger it poses.](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/elon-musk-sharing-coronavirus-misinformation.jpg>)
*\<em\>Image: JD Lasica via Flickr\</em\>*

## Carbon Capture

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk lobbed an environmental grenade into the discourse Thursday evening, promising to pony up a substantial $100 million toward a prize for new carbon capture technology.

"Am donating $100M towards a prize for best carbon capture technology," [he wrote](<https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1352392678177034242>), enigmatically.

## Last Gasp

Technologically, Musk is referring to an umbrella of yet-unrealized concepts that would attempt to arrest climate change by sucking carbon out of the air and either [making use of it](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/synthetic-gasoline-without-fossil-fuels>) or [simply sequestering it](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/mit-scrub-atmospheric-co2>) where it can't cause any further warming. It's a cool idea, but experts worry that it'll never scale enough to make a difference to the global climate — or even that it'll [give corporations an excuse](<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/18/climate/carbon-removal-technology.html>) to maintain bad environmental habits.

Financially, the context is that Musk has had an extraordinary run of financial luck lately due to soaring Tesla stock, [briefly becoming](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-richest-person-earth>) the world's wealthiest person before being bumped off the top spot again by Amazon boss Jeff Bezos. The wealth boost seems to have put him in a charitable frame of mind; earlier this month, he was [publicly soliciting](<https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1347356316763705344>) ideas for how to donate money.

## Details Hazy

As with all things in Muskworld, though, the specifics are still hazy.

"Details next week," Musk [tweeted in a followup message](<https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1352392678177034242>).

**More on Elon Musk:** [*Man Faced 10 Year Sentence for Wielding Elon Musk Flamethrower*](<https://futurism.com/the-byte/sentence-elon-musk-flamethrower>)

## Author
I'm responsible for editing, assigning, and scouting at Futurism, as well as occasionally writing for the site. That work involves keeping an eye on a wide range of narratives and issues, but over the past few years I've become increasingly interested in how AI is shaping the future of media, the web, and information itself. My day-to-day often involves collaborating on reporting and commentary projects bylined by my colleagues, but I try to find time to do my own reporting as well; stories I've broken for Futurism have been cited by publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Wired, Ars Technica, New York Magazine, the Columbia Journalism Review, Bloomberg, and more. I grew up in Southern Vermont and attended Vanderbilt University. Prior to Futurism, I contributed to outlets including the Boston Globe, Vice, Wired, Slate, the Atlantic, the Outline, Ars Technica and more, and did stints in farming and food service. I currently live in Brooklyn, New York, and in my free time I enjoy pinball, word games, cycling, running, and music production.

### Author social links  
[Bluesky](<https://bsky.app/profile/jonchristian.net>)