The construction process of a semiconductor facility.(Source: arsenalpartnership.com)

Santa Monica, CA based X Prize Foundation has announced their richest and the largest competition for developing clean technology and alternative fuels.

These are same people who gave away the much hyped-about $10m Ansari X Prize to SpaceShipOne for developing a space passenger vehicle in 2004.

The non-profit foundation will be giving up to $100m for breakthrough developments in the key areas of biofuels, clean aviation fuel, carbon capture, solar and other categories.

X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis says that through this prize they will aim to frame a target of a large monetary benefit in front of a pool of brilliant minds to speed up the innovation and research process required for rapid breakthroughs with the potential to directly benefit us all.

While I agree, a contest of such sorts will definitely be effective in opening new markets and revolutionizing industries, but saying that ‘the progress is too slow’ is inappropriate.

While clean technology is developing quickly, solutions are not coming in fast enough. Just recently, there have been developments of turning corn into biofuel and converting plant sugars into hydrogen. What we really need is the commercially-viable form of such technologies.

Also,the effort should be a combined one, not just by a foundation or independent individuals. The government should also encourage the policy of developing alternate fuels and not act rationally.

While U.S. senate applauded the X Prize foundation for their efforts, I recently found out that Congress has not yet renewed the Federal Solar Tax Credit that is set to expire this December.

Presidential hopefuls have been endorsing the idea of a gas tax relief and you are killing the solar power!

The initiative taken by the foundation is surely going to yield positive results as you can get a clue with the fact that 8% of the total venture capital funding in America is already flowing into clean technology.

In the end, I would like to emphasize one point.

While we are talking about funding new means of energy-production, why not we talk about saving it also? Conventional energy-conservation might as well solve the problem, besides spending millions of dollars on generating it’s alternatives.

Source: BusinessWeek