Climate experts agree: reducing CO2 emissions in itself will not be enough. We must also remove enormous amounts of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and thus reverse past emissions. Innovators from all over the world have already shown that this is technically possible. However, these methods are immensely expensive, often energy-intensive and frequently fail to scale.

With this motto in mind, The Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation SprinD has a mission-critical challenge: Develop a solution in the fight against climate change that removes CO2 from the atmosphere permanently, economically and at scale.

If your process can remove large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere permanently and can be economically transformed into new products, you’re right the person to address this challenge.

How you achieve this goal, the technological basis on which the CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere, be it via direct air capture, bioenergy with carbon capture, processing of organic materials or any other method, is up to you.

You need to demonstrate how you are able to transform the CO2 from the atmosphere into raw materials or products that sequester the carbon for decades; and how the process from CO2 capture to the produced raw material or product is or may be economically viable. For your solution to contribute to the fight against climate change, it must also be able to be implemented at scale.

How to participate:

Participating in the Challenge will push the teams to comprehensively stress-test their idea. SprinD therefore provides intensive and individual support. This includes funding the teams as well as individual support from a Challenge coach, who has significant experience in the Challenge area and has already implemented high-impact innovations.

Thinking one step further: Ideas with the potential for a breakthrough must be brought to market for the benefit of people and planet. That is why SPRIND continues to support projects with breakthrough potential even after the Challenge has formally finished.

This challenge is aimed at participants from all over Europe. Through collaborations, you can also involve partners worldwide.

The Challenge is built on the competition between teams. Over the course of the Challenge, SprinD will jointly find out which approaches have potential for a breakthrough. Based on interim evaluations, the jury will decide which teams will continue to be part of the Challenge. As a finalist, you will get the opportunity to demonstrate your novel and groundbreaking approach.

SprinD will be offering two webinars for interested applicants, on Dec. 21st and February 8th (16:00-17:00 CET). If you are interested, please send an email to challenge@sprind.org.