A Surprising X Prize

I was excited to read in this article that the X Prize Foundation announced they would be putting up money for a competition with the goal of cleaning up oil from the BP spill.

However, when I went to the X Prize Foundation homepage, I didn’t find any more details.

What did catch my eye, though, was a little blurb that said “X PRIZEs are being developed that will end our addiction to oil and stem the harmful effects of climate change.” I would loooooove to see how this plays out…

I attended a rather depressing panel discussion sponsored by the E-Cubed club during lunch today: 3 professors (an economist, an environmental attorney, and a former astronaut who’s now in the Environment and Public Policy school) all basically said that they don’t have big hopes that any significant climate change legislation will be passed any time soon.

In light of that grim outlook, it’s great to read about prizes that could stimulate innovations that reduce our carbon footprint. After all, we need something to drive change. If it’s not going to be Congress, what will it be?

As we read in the X Prize article for this week’s class, the X Prizes excite people, “pulling” them toward a certain goal. If that goal can be an end to oil addiction, we’ll all be better off! Especially if the prize delivers on what it promises: growing awareness of the market for the winning (and even non-winning) technologies.

There are a lot of land use, environmental and infrastructural issues associated with the energy use changes we’d likely have to make to facilitate a massive switch to renewables and other technologies. Are these obstacles to big for a prize to overcome? In other words, does this challenge of breaking free from our oil addiction require more cooperation and investment than X Prize participants will be willing to give?