Voting for the $25,000 "What's Your Crazy Green Idea?" Contest has Begun!

We asked the public to propose an Energy & Environment X PRIZE... Where would a $10 million prize drive meaningful breakthroughs? We called this YouTube competition, "What's Your Crazy Green Idea?"

This competition, sponsored by Prize Capital, generated 133 video submissions. Our team of judges narrowed the field to three finalists and now we're asking the public to vote on the best idea (Vote here. The person whose video receives the most votes will win $25,000!

For those of you who don't know, an X PRIZE is a $10 million competition designed to solve one of the grand challenges of our time. The X PRIZE Foundation has three active prizes: the Archon X PRIZE for Genomics, the Google Lunar X PRIZE, and the Progressive Insurance Automotive X PRIZE. We are currently exploring more prizes in the areas of Exploration, Global Development & Education, Life Sciences, and, of course, Energy and the Environment.

We currently have one active prize in Energy and Environment: the $10 million Progressive Automotive X PRIZE. The goal of this prize is to create a commercially viable vehicle that gets 100mpg or the energy equivalent. We've had more than 125 teams express interest in entering the competition, which will culminate in a series of races around the country in late 2009 and early 2010. Earlier this week, we announced the first 20 fully registered teams. You can see the innovative companies that think they can meet this challenge on the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE website.

As we did with the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE, we usually begin the process of creating a new X PRIZE by gathering industry experts from around the globe to give us their opinions. But we recognize that the world's Energy and Environment problems are very much on the forefront of everyone's mind. Everyone has an idea of the problems that need to be fixed, and ways to fix them. So we wanted to ask the general public where they think we should be focusing our efforts. And as an organization based on competition, what better way than a contest to solicit ideas?

I'd like to personally thank each and every one of the people who submitted ideas to this competition. And of course, my friend Lee Stein and the people at Prize Capital who provided the $25,000 for the contest purse, without which this wouldn't have happened.

Our overall goal was to start a conversation with the public about the challenges we're facing in Energy and the Environment. After all, our prizes are ultimately designed to benefit all of mankind, so mankind should have a say in our prizes.

So those of you who weren't able to make a video, here's your chance to have your voice heard. Go vote for the best Crazy Green Idea and Join the X PRIZE Revolution!

Comments

[curiousasheck]

Lets see people have two or three cars, four or five tv sets, computers, ipods, and a sea of cheap entertainment, shallow and mindless consumerism etc etc . . . .

. . . maybe that 10 Million should be put into actual education?

[Ponovision]

Our society is looking for answers but the typical way do deal with problems is to accommodate wasteful living practices. We need to carefully look at our everyday ordinary activities- that is where waste begins.If one in five people get into another persons' vehicle, 20% of cars would be off the road tomorrow and for free! It is called carpooling. What about not buying so much stuff? We have a sickness called materialism and people will go into debt to buy non-essentials like a couch- it is too much already. Why is the storage company business booming? And another thing- most peoples jobs are reliant on never ending growth economics and that is the core of the problem. True sustainability is stagnation in our present economic bent. The party is over and it is time to tighten the belt. All the millions of people working but who is actually producing something tangible? Are we a nation of middlemen tapping the keypad in search of the cheapest labor?

[mioffe]

Al Gore made mistake carbon dioxide is not only one player in Nature.
Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, more important, than carbon dioxide.
Molecular weight of water vapor is 18, nitrogen-28, oxigen-32, carbon dioxide-44. That means that water vapor is lighter than almost all others gases in the air.
It takes 339 kcal of energy to evaporate 1 kg of water. After that vapor goes up to cloud.
It takes a lot of energy to evaporate water, the same energy released when vapor became droplets. What is the difference?
Energy released on cloud level and escape to space. It cool air of the Earth.
Is it means to escape global warming we need evaporate more water.
Will this reduce carbon dioxide?
Droplets of waters are the best solvents of carbon dioxide. They feed after rain all vegetations on the Earth!
It means that water vapor reduces carbon dioxide in the air better than anything else!
More:
www.ductworkinstallation.com/EnergySaving/EnvironmentPage/tabid/89/Default.aspx

[InBusiness4Good]

Sure wished we'd known about this. Here's a not so crazy Green and EcoFriendly Idea. Get 88 Million Pc's used for Social Networking, to go EcoFriendly, and save 5 GW daily of energy.

here's an overview on that campaign.

http://www.mygreenfootprints.net

[ImmanuelGoldstein]

Is there any stipulation that this 'crazy idea' has to make scientific sense? I've seen lots of ideas for 'solving' the energy crisis that don't.