On Friday Dr. Peter Diamandis, founder and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, was the keynote speaker for the annual venture summit of the San Diego Venture Group.  This was my second opportunity to hear the dynamic Diamandis present.  His work is focused outside the box, but not so far as to be non-productive; in summary, “audacious yet achievable”.

The X PRIZE Foundation is the leading nonprofit organization solving the world’s Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, high-profile, incentivized prize competitions that stimulate investment in R&D worth far more than the prize itself.  The first two X Prize competitions awarded $20 million to the winners.  In May the X PRIZE Foundation announced that they would collaborate with Qualcomm Incorporated to design the Tricorder X PRIZE, a $10 million prize to develop a mobile solution that can diagnose patients better than or equal to a panel of board certified physicians.

In addition to active X Prize competitions there are others which are in development waiting funding or under consideration including several in the category of Energy & Environment.  The X Prize website lists a dozen “audacious yet achievable” topics for consideration.  (click to link)

• Aviation Battery (Lite/Heavy)
• Carbon Utilization
• Electric Aviation
• Energy Awareness
• ePod/Home Energy Storage
• Featherweight Solar
• Featherweight Wind
• Race to Zero CO2
• Rapid Drilling
• Residential Waste to Power
• Robotic Mole
• Solar Pavement

In particular I am intrigued with Carbon Utilization and Solar Pavement.

Carbon Utilization

We recycle aluminum, glass, paper, plastic, and yard waste – why not carbon? As of now, no company has successfully commercialized a carbon utilization technology. Current government funding is narrowly focused on ultra-expensive geologic sequestration, which treats carbon as a liability, with virtually no attention to utilization technologies, which treat carbon as an asset. A Carbon Utilization competition crosses political boundaries and environmental ideologies by finding profit in reducing emissions through technological solutions. The goal would be to develop radical new technologies that solve the global carbon challenge by recycling CO2 into brilliant new products. The winning team must create a system that cost-effectively transforms carbon emissions from coal-based power plants into beneficial products. This must be accomplished while maintaining energy producers’ ability to provide reliable cost-effective “base load” power to their customers, including those below the poverty level.

Solar Pavement

While nearly 3% of US land area is covered by pavement, it provides no benefit other than surface structure. A significant impact could be achieved if it were made to also produce power. The goal of the Solar Pavement competition will be to turn blacktop surfaces into photovoltaic power generation sources. The winner will be the first team to convert a one acre parking lot surface into a generator that can produce a peak power output of 50kW of solar energy.

Quick.  How many automotive firms are there in the United States?  Way more than I ever dreamed.  The Progressive Automotive X PRIZE attracted entries from 111 teams of which 88 are from the United States.  Competing for the $10 million jackpot are names we recognize  like Tesla Motors and those we do not including my favorite,7K Hamsters, which unfortunately did not make the cut.  On Monday the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE announced that 43 teams with 53 vehicles from 18 US States and 11 countries had made it through the stringent Design Judging phase.  Making the short list were two San Diego innovators, Aptera and SSI-Racing.  These teams will now be entering the final competition events that will be taking place from May 2010 with the announcement of the winners that Fall.  A no-show in the competition was Fisker Automotive.  I guess the opportunity to score $10 million looks like chump change compared to (more…)