Atmospheric methane is surging—and it’s accelerating the climate crisis. Concentrations are now nearly four times higher than historical averages over the past 800,000 years and are rising faster than climate models projected. Despite being more than 200 times more dilute than carbon dioxide, methane is responsible for 30–45% of annual anthropogenic warming. It is one of the most potent and overlooked drivers of climate change—and also our fastest lever to slow it. Reducing methane can curb warming within years, not decades

Nearly 75% of global methane emissions come from diffuse, low-concentration sources—wetlands, lakes, agriculture, landfills, and wastewater systems—for which no scalable mitigation technologies exist today. And as the planet warms, natural systems are emitting more methane, threatening a dangerous climate feedback loop.

XPRIZE Mission Methane is designed to unlock the full spectrum of methane solutions–-spanning prevention, mitigation, destruction, and atmospheric removale–to immediately arrest warming and lay the foundation for future climate drawdown.

This is one of the greatest climate mitigation opportunities of our lifetime.

Mission Methane is XPRIZE’s boldest climate challenge since XPRIZE Carbon Removal—designed to catalyze a new field of innovation to mitigate, capture, or destroy methane from diffuse sources and the atmosphere.

To dramatically reduce methane emissions this decade by launching and scaling solutions that are energy-efficient, climate-positive, and real-world ready.

This prize aims to transform a blind spot in climate action into a breakthrough field of innovation—mobilizing bold thinkers to engineer and scale technologies, systems, and strategies that prevent, mitigate, destroy, or remove  methane from diffuse sources or the atmosphere itself–creating rapid, scalable impact across every major sector

Mission Methane will turn bold ideas into validated solutions by setting clear performance targets focused on rapid deployment of methane mitigation technologies to slow global warming. 

This is a turning point - one that redefines what’s possible in methane mitigation and rewrites our climate trajectory for decades to come.