Latest XPRIZE competition takes on ocean acidification

A NOAA research vessel.

NOAA

Environmental problems can often seem intractable, not offering an obvious place for anyone to roll up their sleeves and make a significant difference. But the XPRIZE Foundation is now offering people the chance to bring home a considerable cash prize for solving an environmental challenge. All you need is the ability to develop a better pH sensor for monitoring ocean acidification and you can end up having a personal impact and a wad of cash.

The XPRIZE Foundation has been organizing competitions to spur technological innovation since Peter Diamandis put up $10 million for a successful sub-orbital launch of a privately built, manned spacecraft in 1996. (The prize was won in 2004 by Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne.)

In 2010, environmental advocate Wendy Schmidt donated $1.4 million for a competition to build a better oil cleanup system following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. During the XPRIZE tests, the winning team demonstrated that they could recover oil over three times faster than the best technology in use by industry. Schmidt was so pleased with the results that she is putting up $2 million to help address a global marine environmental threat: ocean acidification.