To curb the effects of global climate change before we cross the “tipping point,” we need to act now. Rather than waiting unknown years for a lab technician to solve our problems for us, let’s roll up our sleeves and take responsibility for solving this issue ourselves. Acting together, we can have an enormous, immediate impact.

The capacitor challenge forces a specific solution to a broader problem – clean, safe and useful energy storage. By limiting the solution to a specific technology, this prize fails to allow for completely free-thinking innovation in solving the larger problem. Additionally, a current X-Prize, the Progressive Automotive X-Prize, addresses this issue with a strikingly similar contest. Why double-up on this issue, especially when market forces are already driving innovation in this arena? This prizes just offers another prize for a specific solution to an existing prize.

Off-grid homes are great and currently exist. Even with a cost-effective way to make homes completely self-reliant, however, the amount of time and money required to retrofit existing homes is prohibitive. Also, in addition to the years it would take to develop, test, and mass-market the proposed technology in the video, it would take even more years to ramp-up production and complete the amount of installations necessary to make a significant impact.

The efficiency concept, however, can have the greatest impact in the shortest amount of time. This concept is not easy to implement and faces its fair share of challenges – but it is definitely possible and has the greatest potential for change out of the three finalists. Designed and implemented correctly, it can create significant and permanent behavioral change. It’s not a technological solution but it fits perfectly into the X-Prize foundation’s criteria for a good prize: it is trying to solve a specific grand challenge; it determines the problem, not the solutions; there is a market failure that is preventing innovation in this area; and, it is designed to stimulate public interest.

Let’s work together and make this happen.

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