An entrepreneur from Oman has taken an international prize for a project that could tackle climate change.
Talal Hasan’s project, 44.01, turns carbon dioxide into rock – specifically peridotite, which is native to Oman as well as being found around the world.
Through 44.01’s process, excess CO2 can be stored into rock form instead of making its way into the air and damaging the climate. This revolutionary discovery won the Fix Our Climate award at the prestigious Earthshot Prize ceremony in Boston, USA.
The Earthshot Prize is an annual awards ceremony from the Prince of Wales, and honors notable projects that are tackling environmental issues. Prince William handed out the awards to five winners chosen from a shortlist of 15, at the second star-studded annual event since the competition began last year.
Judges from the worlds of science, politics, sport and entertainment included Prince William, Sir David Attenborough, Cate Blanchett, Dani Alves, Ernest Gibson and Shakira Winners receive $1.2 million in funding to further develop their plans, and the competition will continue until 2030 in an effort to promote projects that can help to change the world.
44.01 was started by two friends from Oman, who now want to scale the project to see how much good they can do for the environment. Current methods of storing carbon include burying it in disused oil wells underground, but this new method could prove even more cost-effective and useful, by creating a new resource from the by-product.
Talal hopes to use this new process to store billions of tonnes of CO2 around the world, removing it from the atmosphere and helping to tackle the problem of climate change at the same time.