🏆 XPRIZE launches prize competition to combat water scarcity with innovative desalination techniques

• The XPRIZE Water Scarcity competition aims to increase the availability of clean water globally through new desalination techniques.
• The competition has a total prize pool of $119 million.
• The goal is to develop sustainable, reliable, and affordable solutions for desalinating seawater.

A global challenge

Water is, of course, fundamental to life on Earth. Currently, only 0.5 percent of the planet's water is available to support 8 billion people. With seas and oceans containing over 96 percent of the Earth's water, desalinating seawater has become an increasingly attractive option to provide reliable access to water for countries and communities around the world.

However, current desalination technologies need to become more efficient and cheaper to meet water needs. Additionally, current desalination plants often use fossil fuels and non-environmentally friendly water treatment materials and release brine that can have a negative impact on sensitive marine ecosystems.

One million liters of drinking water per day

This multi-track competition focuses on a main track to rethink the desalination system. The winning team is the one that can generate one million liters of drinking water per day from seawater at the lowest cost and most sustainably over a year. According to WHO standards, this is enough to supply water to 10,000 people.

Other sub-tracks involve new membrane materials to reduce the cost of water production and increase reliability and sustainability.

Prize competitions are a smart way to accelerate innovation

Prize competitions accelerate innovation by crowdsourcing both ideas and funding. In many prize competitions, the amount invested by all teams is often considerably larger than the prize money, not infrequently 10 or 20 times larger.

Even more important is the diversity of ideas. With "normal" innovation, it's usually those who work within a field who tinker with it, but in a competition, others get the chance to test their ideas.

A well-designed prize competition attracts many minds and wallets and pushes innovation forward.

💡 Optimist’s Edge: Prize competitions accelerate innovation

💡 Prize competitions accelerate innovation by both crowdsourcing ideas and financing.

Warp NewsMathias Sundin

🏆 XPRIZE aims to add 10 healthy years of life - $101 million in prize money

The winner will succeed in rejuvenating several vital body functions by at least 10 years, for people aged 65 to 80 years old.

Warp NewsMathias Sundin

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