Westlake, OH – Happy Earth Day 2022! The Elon Musk Foundation in cooperation with XPRIZE set out a year ago on Earth Day 2021 to launch the most comprehensive search for emerging carbon capture technologies in history. The contest sets a very high bar with the largest innovative technology prizes ever offered totaling at least $100 million by 2025.

After the first year of competition, 70 of the world’s leading environmental scientists and practitioners analyzed over 1,300 leading carbon capture technologies from around the globe and advanced 20% of them including Pavement Technology’s PlusTi solutions for roadway microenvironment vehicular emission capture and sequestration.

“We are pleased the XPRIZE judges looked outside the traditional land and ocean carbon capture box to include green road technologies and the only photocatalytic based technology to advance from their deliberations.  Mobile sourced emissions are now the #1 source for both GHG accumulations and photochemical smog contaminations.  The roadway microenvironment and transportation infrastructure are a critical target for climate change mitigation strategies and XPRIZE recognizes such,” said Michael Durante, Vice President Strategic Planning for Pavement Technology, Inc.   

PlusTi™ leverages state-of-the-art photocatalytic technology (PCT) and traditional pavement preservation formulas creating the world’s first scalable TiO2 enhancement to produce ultra-low emission pavements.

TiO2 is a powerful, yet eco-friendly catalyst capable of removing critical climate damaging pollutants including those emitted by vehicles e.g., NOx and tire-wear microplastic particles. TiO2 also creates a solar reflective top boundary that creates so-called “cool pavements” essential to managing urban heat islands.

In both field and standardized lab testing, PlusTi™ has shown to remove up to 60% of vehicular emissions and improve pavement solar emissivity by as much 400%.

PlusTi™ has been deployed in (and around) numerous major US cities to date including Cincinnati, Cleveland, Akron, Raleigh, Charlotte, Durham, Charleston, Greenville, Orlando, Orlando International Airport, Delray Beach, Phoenix, Tucson and Tempe.  PlusTi is supported by numerous US and Canadian patents and now available commercially.

“Communities are now taking climate change head-on one road, one neighborhood, and one city at a time,” Durante continued. 

Happy Earth Day!