Energy/Environment Prize Roundup: Automotive, Plane, Airship, Biofuels, NASA Centennial Challenges

Future NASA Centennial Challenges

As I mentioned in an earlier post, NASA Centennial Challenges is looking for Ideas for New NASA Prize Challenges. One of the "Criteria for Selecting New Prizes" noted on the NASA Centennial Challenges site is "Links between NASA Needs and National and Global Needs". Three of the six examples listed in this section strike me as particularly relevant to the subject of this post, energy and environment:

• Energy - Alternative sources, transmission, storage and conservation
• Food and Water Supplies, Life Support, Recycling, Hazard Remediation
• Climate Change, Earth Science, Space Weather

Many of the specific "Prize Challenge Ideas" listed on the same page also seem relevant to energy and environment innovation prizes, including the following:

• Electric aircraft - increasing range and speed
• Improved safety and efficiency of aviation systems
• Lunar greenhouse
• Closed loop life support
• Efficient clothes washing machine for space station
• Lunar Night power source and/or power storage
• Recycling of materials
• Solar power systems (size, mass, performance, cost)
• Power beaming - solar rover or airship
• Space solar power demo
• Power beaming to the lunar surface from space-based solar power systems
• New applications for Earth observation data
• Improved wind power systems (aeronautical technology, Earth or Mars application)
• Closed loop life support systems and resource recycling
• NASA Technologies to Meet Human Needs

All else being equal, it makes a lot of sense to me to go after innovations that help solve multiple problems at the same time, such as space technology improvements that also are improvements in energy, environment, or other important domains.

Progressive Automotive X PRIZE

Now Only 90 Official Teams Listed - X PRIZE Cars

Kinetic Vehicles MAX Withdraws from Automotive X Prize - X PRIZE Cars

Calculating MPGe - Progressive Automotive X PRIZE

An Update on Design Judging - Progressive Automotive X PRIZE

MIT

TTXGP: Isle of Man electric motorcycle race - MIT? - MIT Electric Vehicle Team Blog

The Electric Acid Test - On the Isle of Man, the beginnings of a marketable electric motorcycle. - MIT Review

One Gallon Challenge: 164 MPGe - MIT Electric Vehicle Team Blog

One Gallon Challenge: alt-fuel "race" cars get up to 164 MPGe - AutoBlogGreen (link from the MIT team blog post above)

One Gallon Challenge - Boston GreenFest 2009

Gallons in an electric car? - MIT Electric Vehicle Team Blog

Greenhouse Gas Emissions from One Gallon Challenge - MIT Electric Vehicle Team Blog

Prize Capital/Biofuels Prize

Eyes on the prize - David Strom’s Web Informant

The California Algae Fuel Prize (PDF) (draft/working copy) - Prize Capital - The concept includes a prize for the most fuel per acre (including farm and facility area) as well as a series of races with prizes. It also includes an advanced market commitment (10M gallons).

Algae Fuel Prize Workshop (PDF) - Prize Capital

The Algae Fuel Prize Draft V11 (PDF) - Prize Capital

CAFE Foundation

The The 2009 CAFE Foundation Electric Aircraft Symposium presentations includes this one on what is now called the 2011 CAFE Green Flight Challenge: The AGP: Aviation’s Green Prize—The Flight Competition for 100 MPG Aircraft: Brien Seeley M.D. President, CAFE Foundation. It includes some ideas for the challenge in later years, too.

The Green Flight Challenge has been getting a lot of media coverage.

PADA Awards at AirVenture 2009 - 2009: Burt Rutan

Airships

Unmanned German sperm dirigible ‘to fly within days’ - Airship Z Prize - No, this isn't from an Austin Powers movie.

Win a pair of tickets to ride in world’s largest airship OC (Orange County) Register (link from Airship Z Prize site):

The tickets will go to the person who best answers the following question: “If you could fly over anything you wanted to in the world in Eureka, what would it be?” ... The flight will travel over Orange County, from Long Beach.

Energy/Environment Prize Roundup - February 15, 2009

Exclusive: Aptera 2e - Yahoo! Autos - This was on the Yahoo! front page today, featured in the main picture.

Automotive X Prize News: Feb 12th, 2009 - X PRIZE Cars blog:

Yours truly sits in an Aptera outside TED. Also, news from Axon, Western Washington University (pictured), Tesla, Electric RaceAbout, and a couple of messages from the PIAXP blog.

Tesla Motors Update - Elon Musk (link from the previous X PRIZE Cars post) - There are updates on a lot of Tesla information, but for the space readers I'll mention this one:

On March 26th, at the Tesla design studio located within the SpaceX rocket factory, we will unveil a street-drivable prototype of the Model S four door sedan.

In light of the SpaceX COTS-D promotion, it will also be interesting to see how this goes:

Regarding funding, I am excited to report that the Department of Energy informed Tesla last week that they may disburse funds from our $350M Model S loan application within four to five months.

Who's the best recycler of all? - MIT News:

This is the fourth year that MIT will participate in the national RecycleMania contest...

Top high school students to compete in Blue Lobster Bowl at MIT - MIT News:

Sixteen teams of students from 12 Massachusetts high schools will answer quick buzzer questions and more complex team-challenge questions in areas such as biology, marine science, chemistry and ocean engineering.

Behind the Prize at the X Prize: A New Model For Venture Capital - Xconomy San Diego (link from X PRIZE Foundation) -

His research led him to New Mexico for the X Prize Cup, which was conceived as an annual two-day Air & Space Expo. During the trip, he met four aerospace engineering graduate students from Romania who told Stein they had developed a composite rocket engine. “When I asked them if they had filed patents on their design,” Stein recalls, “they said, ‘Patents? We don’t even have enough money for lunch tomorrow.’ ” ...

“So basically, if we can place a bet on every horse in a race, we don’t care who wins,” Stein says. The contest rules will be structured so that Prize Capital charges each entrant a “fee,” which consists of several options. It could be the right for Prize Capital to take a small percentage of the entrant’s technology royalty sales, or it could be the right to join future venture capital investors when they enter the picture to fund technology development. In such deals, Prize Capital would invest only as a passive “tag-along” investor without a board seat. Prize Capital also can provide loans of roughly $100,000 to contestants for various needs, such as filing patents. ...

Stein is especially keen on the idea of developing a biofuels competition. His concern for deforestation also has led him to sign a letter of intent with a large foundation in Brazil to create a series of small prizes to develop what he calls “small-scale, distributed energy systems.” With an environmental X Prize focused on the right kind of technology breakthrough, Stein says the next “Netscape moment” could trigger a 21st Century gold rush that will save our global forests from destruction.

Prize Capital and BioMarine 2008

"A Peace Treaty with Nature" Prize Capital Chairman Lee Stein Keynotes BioMarine 2008 - Here's the prepared statement (PDF). Page 5 has a section that explains their prize and investment model. Here's an excerpt:

Renewable Energy Prize

Current renewable fuels technologies are criticized for being inefficient, costly, unsustainable and incompatible with existing vehicles and infrastructure. The Prize Capital Renewable Energy Prize will accelerate development of breakthrough technologies for sustainable, small-scale decentralized production systems for liquid transport fuel. Prize rules will produce a winning technology that is energy- and cost-efficient, sustainable and compatible with today’s infrastructure. Draft prize rules were developed with a panel of expert advisors representing the Natural Resources Defense Council, Shell International Gas, Environmental Entrepreneurs, Federation of American Scientists, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories and more.

Organizational Roles

Prize Capital will stimulate capital for emerging inventors and provide the investment funds for competitors. Prize Capital intends for the X PRIZE Foundation (XPF), the leading global mega-prize producer, to manage the prize competition. Prize Capital also seeks to develop advanced market commitments with international agencies and governments.

Prizes Under Consideration

Welcome to Prize Development - Asher Spittler, Project Manager, Prize Development - neXt PRIZE

The X PRIZE Foundation's neXt PRIZE blog has been keeping a steady stream of posts going. Check it out. Here's an excerpt that shows what kinds of prizes they'd like to offer. Some of them are news to me:

We have several prizes in development at the moment and about once every few days, I (or someone else from Prize Development) intend to blog about what is going on within our pipeline. Currently we have prizes in smoking cessation, longevity, tuberculosis detection, vision restoration, health care informatics, a bionic prize, global development, energy, alternative aviation fuels, biofuels, and an exploration prize that will explore, conserve, heal and help map the ocean floor.

Plans for Energy and Environment X PRIZEs

Business Week has an article on the X PRIZE Foundation's goals for its Energy & Environment X PRIZE Suite. The plans for the Biofuels Prize, the next one planned after the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE, are described:

... foundation President Tom Vander Ark said the biofuels prize would be launched late this year, followed by the other categories over the coming two years. The biofuels prize will be worth at least $10 million, he said. ... Among the rules are that contestants must produce a biofuels plant that uses nonagricultural fuel. The plant must also be small-scale and easily shipped, thus making the technology applicable anywhere in the world.

There are also more hints about later energy and environment prizes, with a goal of $100M in prizes:

He says one prize will be for innovation in providing water, broadband, and clean electricity to villages in the developing world. Other energy categories will be for innovation in energy transmission and the construction of energy-efficient houses and commercial facilities.

X PRIZE Foundation and Biofuels Prize

Recently I posted about a late 2007 podcast featuring the X PRIZE Foundation's Tom Vander Ark discussing various initiatives at the Foundation, including (to quote my paraphrase of the interview) "4 to 6 energy generation, storage, distribution, and efficiency prizes with a Bay Area energy-related organization potentially sponsoring $100M+ in prizes".

Now, the X PRIZE Foundation news ticker points to an article by the Santa Monica Daily Press about a Biofuels Prize announced at WIREC 2008 (Washington International Renewable Energy Conference 2008) to be run by the Foundation and Lee Stein's Prize Capital. The Biofuels Prize is meant to

spur the creation of a new technology that is energy and cost-efficient, sustainable, versatile, easy to scale and decentralized.

It sounds like the prize isn't going to be a pure "innovation prize", but rather a combination of innovation prize plus investments - perhaps similar to how the DARPA Urban Challenge was implemented - to allow certain contestants with a good idea but without capital a better chance to make productive advances:

The $10 million prize purse will be awarded to the team that wins a series of challenges designed to test efficiency, scalability and sustainability of new biofuel liquid transport technology. To finance the Biofuels Prize and other prizes, Prize Capital will be creating a series of investment funds to provide capital for select contestants. For investors, this reduces the risk of having to seek out suitable investment candidates.

Of course this mixes the pros and cons of prizes and grants to some degree. It would be interesting if the prize were designed in such a way that contestants with great ideas but little funding could "earn" investment money in the "prize" sense (rather than the "grant" sense) by demonstrating easier versions of the main prize to show they're serious and capable. In Lunar Lander Challenge terms, maybe a few ~$50,000 prizes could be awarded for, say, a single 45 second, low payload up-over-down in one piece flight to get low-budget but inspired teams a chance to win some cash to work with, to say nothing of getting more teams into the competition for the fans to see.

You can read more about the Biofuels Prize at Lee Stein's Bio:

“Somebody affiliated with the GEF, the Global Environment Facility [the largest independent financier of environmental projects worldwide] was visiting and we shared with them confidentially what we were doing with the X Prize and the risk mitigation model and how we were going to apply it to prizes dealing with energy and the environment.”

Since its inception in 1991, the GEF has disbursed nearly $7 billion in grants to developing countries for more than 1,300 projects implemented by UN agencies and the World Bank Group.

As a result in June 2007, the GEF gave a $50 million green light for the formation of a pilot public private partnership (PPP) to jointly fund global prize competitions. That led to tying the GEF and X-Prize together directly. The X-Prize board in October of 2007 agreed to the implementation of planning as the prize awarding entity for the GEF/Prize Capital biofuels prize.

The first GEF/Prize Capital competition will focus on bringing second generation biofuels for transport production technology to developing countries.

The GEF document Second Meeting of the GEF SAG has some notes about the prize as it was being considered at that time:

30. The GEF Secretariat presented the GEF’s progress in engaging the private sector. The evolving private sector strategy complies with previous guidance of the GEF Council, and has the following requirements for its operations: absorption of risk that the private sector will not absorb on its own to generate global environmental benefits; using GEF resources to leverage high levels of private investment; catalyzing new investment areas and mechanisms for financial and other institutions to then adopt; and a focus on specific environmental problems. Examples of proposed platforms for this engagement were given: a $10m biofuels prize which would generate a series of technological innovations through a $100m investment fund managed by a fund manager; a water purification system for coastal areas prize; and financial instruments to influence the creation of portfolios and risk mitigation instruments upstream (for example contingent grants through energy efficiency portfolios).