Childhood friends in Oman who figured out how to turn carbon dioxide into rock are among five winners chosen for the Prince of Wales’s prestigious Earthshot Prize.
The annual awards were created by Prince William to fund projects that aim to save the planet.
Each winner will receive £1m ($1.2m) to develop their innovation.
Prince William announced the winners on Friday at an awards ceremony in Boston in the US.
“I believe that the Earthshot solutions you have seen this evening prove we can overcome our planet’s greatest challenges,” Prince William said during the ceremony.
“By supporting and scaling them we can change our future,” he said.
The winning projects are based in Kenya, India, Australia, the UK and Oman.
This is the second set of Earthshot Prizes awarded, after the first ever awards last year.
The prize’s name refers to the “Moonshot” ambition of 1960s America by then-President John F Kennedy, who pledged to get a man on the Moon within a decade.
Five Earthshot Prizes of £1m ($1.2m) are being awarded each year until 2030 in support of environmental innovation projects for the future. Nominations for the 2023 prize open up on 5 December.
This year’s winners were chosen from a list of 15 finalists by a panel that includes Prince William, Sir David Attenborough, actress Cate Blanchett, footballer Dani Alves, Fijian activist Ernest Gibson and singer Shakira.
William and Catherine handed out awards to the five winners during a star-studded ceremony in Boston on Friday – with celebrities there including Billie Eilish, Annie Lennox, Ellie Goulding, Chloe x Halle and David Beckham.
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