Australian govt partners with Tata Group for $1.5 mn prize

The Dollar Business Bureau

The Australian government has entered into partnership with Indian multinational conglomerate Tata Group and US-based non-profit organisation XPRIZE for running a $1.5 million global challenge on 'Water Abundance Prize' for innovators who bring new ideas for using energy-efficient technology for harvesting water from air. 

The challenge is open to innovators, creative thinkers, engineers, entrepreneurs, academics and scientists with innovative ideas to showcase the use of technology for improving access to affordable clean water in areas of high humidity where the water is either inaccessible or unavailable.

“Julie Bishop, Foreign Minister of Australia encouraged the innovators all over the world to take on this Challenge when she visited the headquarters of XPRIZE, a non-profit organisation which is specialised in encouraging technological improvements to meet world development needs,” said an official statement.

The highest prize of $1.5 million will be provided to the inventor of most innovative and effective tool which uses energy-efficient technology for harvesting water from air and producing atleast 2,000 litres of water a day from the environment by using 100% renewable energy, at a cost of upto 2 cents a litre. 

Besides, there are five more prizes worth A$67,000 which will be given to other finalists. 

“This ground and surface water is unevenly distributed, which can lead to the spread of disease, conflict over resources, irregular migration and slowed economic development. Water scarcity is a particularly acute problem in our Indo-Pacific region,” Bishop said. 

The teams and participants can register until March 31. After that 7 months will be provided for initial solution development and 12 months to finish rounds of testing before the results are judged by an expert committee.