XPRIZE Commissions Custom Bennett Award

XPRIZE commissioned Bennett Awards to create a new custom award for its latest competition: the Water Abundance XPRIZE. The Water Abundance XPRIZE was created to recognize pioneering technologies aimed at alleviating the global water crisis with energy-efficient technologies that harvest fresh water from thin air. The Water Abundance XPRIZE drew 98 competing teams from 25 countries, who were asked to develop and demonstrate technologies capable of harvesting a minimum of 2,000 liters of water from the atmosphere each day. They needed to be powered entirely by renewable energy, and produce water at a cost of no more than two cents per liter.

The winner of the award competition, which was launched in 2016 at the United Nations in New Delhi, was Venice Beach-based Skysource/Skywater Alliance. They created a range of deployable clean-energy, carbon-negative machines that are capable of pulling moisture from thin air, condensing it, and then filtering it in fresh water.

The winner received a custom award created by Bennett Awards, along with $1.5 million in prize money. For the custom award, Bennett Awards created a clear, acrylic sculpture in the shape of a water drop. A globe was embedded ed in the middle of the water drop sculpture. The sculpture was mounted on a large, unique trapezoid-shaped cast pewter base with sculpted engravings of the XPRIZE and Water Abundance XPRIZE logos, along with information on the award and award winning team.

The Water Abundance XPRIZE award was presented to Skysource/Skywater Alliance at Visioneering 2018, XPRIZE’s annual gathering of philanthropists and innovators to evaluate concepts for future competitions.

Prior to this competition, Bennett Awards has also created custom sculpture awards for two previous XPRIZE competitions: the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE and the Wendy Schmidt Ocean Health XPRIZE.

Since 1994, XPRIZE has designed and launched seventeen prizes in the domain areas of Space, Oceans, Learning, Health, Energy, Environment, Transportation, Safety and Robotics. Each of these prizes has created an industry-changing technology that brings us closer to a better, safer, more sustainable world.