Challenge Works is active here too
As well as past prizes on renewable energy and waste reduction, our current prize portfolio includes the Million Cool Roofs Challenge, which launched in 2019 and will be awarded early 2022, and the Afri-Plastics Challenge, which launched in Autumn 2021.
The Million Cool Roofs Challenge, which we are delivering for ClimateWorks Foundation (as part of the Clean Cooling Collaborative), will reward the team that develops the best service for installing and marketing cool roofs – reflective roofs that avoid the need for wasteful air conditioning.
The Afri-Plastics Challenge – three prizes in one, funded by Global Affairs Canada – is incentivising entrepreneurs to create, scale and raise awareness of innovative approaches to tackling plastic waste across sub-Saharan Africa.
The Earthshot Prize works slightly differently to the Challenge Works prizes. In our prizes (as with the Elon Musk Carbon Removal X Prize), we invite innovators to apply with a concept. We then support a cohort of teams to compete, developing their proposal into a solution typically over a year or more, with judges awarding a final cash prize to the best team at the end.
In the Earthshot Prize, nominating organisations (we’re one of them) put forward people or organisations who are already working on solutions, with the prize working both as a reward and financial subsidy for their good work – and an incentive for others to do good work in future years.
But let’s not descend into narcissism about small differences between our processes and theirs! The Earthshot Prize team have done a great job of rewarding breakthrough innovation, of supporting innovator teams and of raising awareness. These are the exact same objectives we set ourselves in our own prizes.
We wish them and their winners well, and can’t wait to see what the next nine years of Earthshot bring.