The Ingenuity Lab Carbon Solutions team - headquartered in Edmonton of Alberta, Canada - has made it to the second round of competition. Its team of 14 has proposed to convert CO₂ waste emitted from a natural gas power plant into usable chemical products.

Ingenuity Lab Carbon Solutions is comprised of a multidisciplinary group of scientists and engineers, and was formed in the winter of 2012 to develop new approaches for the chemical industry. Ingenuity Lab Carbon Solutions is sponsored by CCEMC, and has also partnered with Ensovi for access to intellectual property and know how.

Launched in September 2015, the Carbon XPRIZE competition addresses global CO₂ emissions by incentivizing innovative solutions to convert CO₂ from a liability into an asset. Co-sponsored by NRG and COSIA, the four-and-a-half-year competition is designed to address CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels, a leading contributor to climate change. Semi-finalist teams hail from Canada, China, India, Switzerland, Scotland and the United States, and among the teams competing are leading carbon capture technology companies, top-tier academic institutions, non-profits and new startups. The advancing teams propose converting CO₂ into products as varied as enhanced concrete, biofuels, toothpaste, nanotubes, fish food and fertilizer.

"The team's unique combination of talent has permitted Ingenuity Lab Carbon Solutions to develop a technology that integrates life processes into a commercial, engineered solution. These solutions have the ability to transform an environmentally damaging waste product into a value-added product that can be the source for materials across all spectrums of modern society," said Dr Carlo Montemagno, Team Leader of Ingenuity Lab Carbon Solutions.

Teams selected to participate in Round 2 of the competition will demonstrate their innovative technology at pilot scale at a location of their own choosing, using either real flue gas or simulated flue gas stream. Over a ten-month period, teams must meet minimum requirements and will be scored on how much CO₂ they convert and the net value of their products. Following Round 2 judging scheduled for November and December 2017, up to five teams in each track that score the highest will share a $2.5m milestone purse and move onto the finals of the competition, demonstrating their technology at real-world power plants.

For more information about Ingenuity Lab Carbon Solutions please visit www.ingenuitylab.ca. High-resolution images and other team visuals are available upon request.

For more information about the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, visit carbon.xprize.org.

About Ingenuity Lab Carbon Solutions

Ingenuity Lab provides a platform for interdisciplinary research and innovation that leverages the possibilities of the intersection of material science, nanotechnology, and informatics.

Leveraging off the natural photosynthetic process for carbon sequestration, Ingenuity Lab Carbon Solutions is developing a scalable prototype for the biochemical conversion of carbon dioxide from industrial sites into value-added products. A flexible process, this new technology converts CO₂ into a wide variety of value-added products that will ultimately reduce the amount of CO₂ released into the environment, while simultaneously provide for increased economic opportunity. The impact of this technology will go beyond the reduction of CO₂. It will transition CO₂ from a waste product into a valuable resource, creating a new revenue source from industrial operations while greatly reducing the impact of these operations on the environment.

About the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE

Few challenges are greater and more critical than ensuring access to clean, affordable and abundant energy. As the global energy supply remains primarily derived from fossil fuels - the leading contributor to climate change - the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE will challenge the world to reimagine what we can do with CO₂ emissions by incentivizing and accelerating the development of technologies that convert CO₂ from a liability into valuable products. For more information, visit: carbon.xprize.org.