NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE Competition Page

Duration

2015 - 2021

Phase Awarded

Prize Purse

$20 Million

Designed to transform CO₂ from environmental liability into economic opportunity, this prize challenged teams to develop breakthrough technologies that convert emissions into useful products and ignite a circular carbon economy.

Impact

Teams raised $110M to scale their solutions

Breakthrough solutions have prevented 500,000 metric tonnes of CO₂ from entering the atmosphere

7.5 million truckloads of lower carbon concrete mixes delivered by the winning team

Winners

Winners in both tracks, CarbonCure in the Natural Gas Track and CarbonBuilt in the Coal Track, developed strong, cost-effective, low-carbon concrete that locks away CO₂ permanently. Since winning the competition, their technologies have been adopted at hundreds of plants and manufacturing sites worldwide.

CarbonCure

Dartmouth, Canada

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CarbonCure is the world leader in CO₂ utilization technologies for the cement and concrete sector. Its retrofit technology chemically mineralizes waste carbon dioxide during the concrete manufacturing process to make greener and stronger concrete. The CarbonCure Technology is being used by concrete producers across North America and Southeast Asia to reduce concrete’s carbon footprint, create new production cost savings and gain a competitive sales advantage. Concrete plants are retrofitted in a single day and require no CAPEX or changes to their materials and production practices.

CarbonBuilt

Los Angeles, United States

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Our ultra-low carbon concrete technology profitably reduces embodied carbon of concrete products by 70-100+% through the use of lower carbon binding ingredients and the mineralization of atmospheric carbon, storing it permanently. CarbonBuilt integrates with existing concrete plants. After the retrofit, a single concrete masonry unit production line running a single shift will remove 500-1000 tonnes of carbon while avoiding another 2500-3500 annually.

CarbonBuilt

Los Angeles, United States

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Our ultra-low carbon concrete technology profitably reduces embodied carbon of concrete products by 70-100+% through the use of lower carbon binding ingredients and the mineralization of atmospheric carbon, storing it permanently. CarbonBuilt integrates with existing concrete plants. After the retrofit, a single concrete masonry unit production line running a single shift will remove 500-1000 tonnes of carbon while avoiding another 2500-3500 annually.

CarbonCure

Dartmouth, Canada

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CarbonCure is the world leader in CO₂ utilization technologies for the cement and concrete sector. Its retrofit technology chemically mineralizes waste carbon dioxide during the concrete manufacturing process to make greener and stronger concrete. The CarbonCure Technology is being used by concrete producers across North America and Southeast Asia to reduce concrete’s carbon footprint, create new production cost savings and gain a competitive sales advantage. Concrete plants are retrofitted in a single day and require no CAPEX or changes to their materials and production practices.

Carbon Upcycling Technologies

Calgary, Canada

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Carbon Upcycling Technologies (“CUT”) uses the waste of today to build a better tomorrow by converting CO2 gas into solid products. CUT sells advanced solid products derived from greenhouse emissions and cheaply available solids. Since 2014, CUT has scaled its ability to convert CO2 emissions into value-add end materials by over a million times and has since been confirmed as one of the top CO2 utilization companies in the world as a winner of the X-Factor Award in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE.

Newlight Technologies

Huntington Beach, CA, United States

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Newlight is a nature-inspired biotechnology company converting air and greenhouse gas into a biomaterial called Aircarbon®. Aircarbon is a high-performance, carbon-negative PHB biomaterial produced by naturally-occurring microorganisms that is being used to replace plastic in industrial segments ranging from foodware to fashion. Newlight’s mission is to help end plastic pollution and climate change by replacing plastic with Aircarbon, creating global-scale economic and environmental value. Mark Herrema is the co-founder and CEO of Newlight Technologies. In 2003, Mark co-founded Newlight with a vision of using greenhouse gas as a resource to make high- performance sustainable materials. After a decade of research, Mark and his team developed a technology that uses a natural process to convert greenhouse gas into a material called Aircarbon. Aircarbon is a meltable energy storage material made in almost all known living things that can be used to replace plastic, fiber, and leather. Aircarbon is now being used to replace plastic and leather in foodware and fashion products, with a goal to help end plastic pollution and climate change. Newlight has been honored to receive recognition as “Biomaterial of the Year” by the Nova Institute, “Innovation of the Year” by Popular Science, and “Technology Pioneer” by the World Economic Forum. Mark graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, and has since garnered 19 years of experience in process engineering, polymer functionalization, and strategic business development.

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Partners

Partners play a hands-on role in our prizes—co-designing competitions, supporting operations, and helping scale solutions with their expertise, resources, and global reach.

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Each year, billions of tonnes of CO₂ are released into the atmosphere, driving the climate crisis, yet these emissions are still treated as waste. The challenge: capture CO₂ to create resources, rather than pollution.

Winning teams proved that CO₂ can be converted into real products with value. From turning emissions into concrete to creating consumer products, finalists demonstrated real-world carbontech solutions that reduce emissions and make economic sense, accelerating a new market.

The $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE challenged the world to reimagine CO₂ as a resource. Launched in 2015, this six-year global competition called on innovators to develop breakthrough technologies that convert CO₂ emissions into valuable products, at scale, and under real industrial conditions.

To facilitate this, XPRIZE partnered with the governments of Alberta and Wyoming to build two first-of-their-kind carbon conversion test centers: the Alberta Carbon Conversion Technology Centre and the Wyoming Integrated Test Center. These sites, backed by over $50M in public-private partnerships, allowed teams to demonstrate their technologies using flue gas from working coal and natural gas power plants.

Finalist teams poured more than 2.5 million hours into R&D, driving a 76% surge in patents, shaping ISO standards for carbontech validation, and attracting over $987M in follow-on investment. The prize not only accelerated breakthroughs but also ignited a global carbon-to-value market—setting a new benchmark for innovation in the field.

Grand Prize Winners CarbonCure and CarbonBuilt showed that emissions can be permanently stored in concrete while improving material performance. Chosen as Grand Prize Winners for their groundbreaking carbon-to-concrete technologies, CarbonCure and CarbonBuilt proved that CO₂ emissions can be permanently stored while improving material performance. Their solutions are scaling worldwide—turning a climate liability into an economic engine.

Launched in 2015, the prize concluded in 2021 with CarbonBuilt and CarbonCure named winners of their respective tracks. Finalists tested their tech at live power plants in Wyoming and Alberta, supported by $50M in infrastructure funding—moving carbontech from lab to market.

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