XPrize In Carbon Removal Goes To Enhanced Rock Weathering 25
An anonymous reader quotes a report from IEEE Spectrum: The XPrize Foundation today announced the winners of its four-year, $100 million XPrize competition in carbon removal. The contest is one of dozens hosted by the foundation in its 20-year effort to encourage technological development. Contestants in the carbon removal XPrize had to demonstrate ways to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or oceans and sequester it sustainably.
Mati Carbon, a Houston-based startup developing a sequestration technique called enhanced rock weathering, won the grand prize of $50 million. The company spreads crushed basalt on small farms in India and Africa. The silica-rich volcanic rock improves the quality of the soil for the crops but also helps remove carbon dioxide from the air. It does this by reacting with dissolved CO2 in the soil's water, turning it into bicarbonate ions and preventing it from returning to the atmosphere.
More than a dozen organizations globally are developing enhanced rock weathering approaches at an industrial scale, but Mati's tech-heavy verification and software platform caught the XPrize judges' attention. "On the one hand, they're moving rocks around in trucks—that's not very techy. But when we looked under the hood... what we saw was a very impressive data-collection exercise," says Michael Leitch, XPrize's technical lead for the competition. Here's a list of the runners-up:
- Paris-based NetZero won $15 million for turning agricultural waste into biochar through pyrolysis, a method that locks carbon into a stable, solid form.
- Houston-based Vaulted Deep won $8 million for geologically sequestering carbon-rich organic waste by injecting it deep underground.
- London-based Undo Carbon won $5 million for its enhanced rock weathering approach, spreading silicate minerals to speed up natural carbon removal.
Additionally, Project Hajar and Planetary Technologies each received $1 million honorary XFactor prizes, recognizing their promising work in direct air capture and ocean carbon removal, despite not meeting the competition's 1,000-tonne removal threshold.
Mati Carbon, a Houston-based startup developing a sequestration technique called enhanced rock weathering, won the grand prize of $50 million. The company spreads crushed basalt on small farms in India and Africa. The silica-rich volcanic rock improves the quality of the soil for the crops but also helps remove carbon dioxide from the air. It does this by reacting with dissolved CO2 in the soil's water, turning it into bicarbonate ions and preventing it from returning to the atmosphere.
More than a dozen organizations globally are developing enhanced rock weathering approaches at an industrial scale, but Mati's tech-heavy verification and software platform caught the XPrize judges' attention. "On the one hand, they're moving rocks around in trucks—that's not very techy. But when we looked under the hood... what we saw was a very impressive data-collection exercise," says Michael Leitch, XPrize's technical lead for the competition. Here's a list of the runners-up:
- Paris-based NetZero won $15 million for turning agricultural waste into biochar through pyrolysis, a method that locks carbon into a stable, solid form.
- Houston-based Vaulted Deep won $8 million for geologically sequestering carbon-rich organic waste by injecting it deep underground.
- London-based Undo Carbon won $5 million for its enhanced rock weathering approach, spreading silicate minerals to speed up natural carbon removal.
Additionally, Project Hajar and Planetary Technologies each received $1 million honorary XFactor prizes, recognizing their promising work in direct air capture and ocean carbon removal, despite not meeting the competition's 1,000-tonne removal threshold.
Not the NetZero you're probably thinking of (Score:2)
Here's a list of the runners-up:
- Paris-based NetZero won $15 million for turning agricultural waste into biochar through pyrolysis
"NetZero"? I haven't heard that name since the dial-up era.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe it just has not reached your usual news outlets. But Net Zero, talking about carbon emissions, is well known. See the concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] and the current worldwide implementation map https://ourworldindata.org/gra... [ourworldindata.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I guess I was confused because I hadn't seen "net zero" in the pollution mitigation sense written in CamelCase.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a list of the runners-up:
- Paris-based NetZero won $15 million for turning agricultural waste into biochar through pyrolysis
"NetZero"? I haven't heard that name since the dial-up era.
I’m not dead yet [netzero.net]
Virtuous Cycle (Score:1)
People often say we need to reduce our population to reduce our footprint, and commonly primarily cite as evidence our need to eat, and the impact of modern agriculture. But there exists a field known as regenerative agriculture [nrdc.org], which is what it sounds like: making agriculture improve the soil rather than depleting it, and making it build soil rather than causing it to blow and/or wash away.
Turning situations where our impact is negative into the opposite rather than only trying to mitigate harm is the onl
Great (Score:2)
The term "enhanced weathering" sounds familiar (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure I heard about "enhanced weathering" for carbon sequestration at least a decade ago. I also recall a Dr. Darryl Siemer being an advocate for this, a professor at Idaho State University. This process appears to be a near exact copy of his work. He's advocated for mining basalt as a kind of agricultural fertilizer just like that shown in the fine article.
I suspect everyone reading this can recall being told to drink milk because the calcium in the milk builds strong bones. Okay, did anyone
Yes, for decades: Remineralize.org (Score:2)
https://www.remineralize.org/ [remineralize.org]
"REMINERALIZATION utilizes finely ground rock dust and
sea-based minerals to restore soils and forests, produce higher yields and more nutritious food, and store carbon in soils to stabilize the climate."
"We can move from an economics based on scarcity using fossil fuels to an economics of abundance
through remineralization... "
"Through our education, outreach, research, and advocacy, Remineralize the Earth facilitates a worldwide movement that brings together gard
Excellent! (Score:2)
Conspicuously absent from the list of winners were companies developing direct air capture (DAC) and ocean carbon removal systems. The contest rules stipulated that to win, contestants must remove and store at least 1,000 tonnes of carbon over the course of a year. None of the DAC or ocean carbon removal contestants met that threshold, XPrize’s Leitch says.
That's an impressive amount of storage for just spreading around crushed rock. I suppose the real question is what the long-term impacts are and it's limitations.
Re: Excellent! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
The long term impacts are likely pretty minimal. What plants need that basalt provides is largely calcium. Cattle, pigs, chickens, and humans need calcium and they can get that from plants grown on an industrial scale on modern farms.
Where do the plants get the calcium? From the dirt. Farmers learned a long time ago that if calcium isn't added to the dirt they grow their crops in then the crops are not as productive, and the animals and humans that eat these crops aren't as healthy either. Where do the
Re: (Score:2)
Basalt is a carbon sink while limestone is not for reasons of chemistry
Yes, that's true of literally all chemical compounds.
and likely other elements that plants crave.
You're thinking of Brawndo because it has electrolytes.
If people want lower CO2 in the air then I expect they'd be wiling to pay a bit extra on products to get there.
No. People want lower CO2 if it's easy and cheap. It's a very abstract concept, so people generally don't care enough to pay more for what is (perceptibly) the same thing.
Nuclear Rock Weathering (Score:2)
https://arxiv.org/html/2501.06623v1
Puts all those nuclear weapons to good use, albeit with the risk of poisoning the planet with radiation.
Something doesn't add up. (Score:2)
Re: Something doesn't add up. (Score:2)
Re: Something doesn't add up. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Via https://www.xprize.org/prizes/... [xprize.org]
Over the course of the competition, $5M was awarded to student teams, and $15M in Milestone Awards were granted to teams with early demonstrations of their [Carbon Dioxide Removal] solutions.
The end of life on planet earth (Score:2)
Will be caused be rock weathering due to an increase in the sun's luminosity approximately 1 billion years from now.
https://www.space.com/billion-years-from-now-oxygen-lack-wipes-out-life-on-earth
"As our Sun ages, it is becoming more luminous, meaning that in the future Earth will receive more solar energy. This increased energy will affect the surface of the planet, speeding up the weathering of silicate rocks such as basalt and granite. When these rocks weather the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide is pulled
This is one of the only (Score:2)
Idea: Shut the lights off when you leave the room (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
and to also use links instead of search
And where do these links come from?
You are probably thinking about bookmarks and favorites instead of searching for stuff you use repeatedly.
Trees Already do this Sustainably (Score:1)
Why not just plant trees? In fact, forests are growing and trees are spreading due to increasing CO2.
Plant some trees. Turn those trees a few years into houses, books and furniture. The carbon has been successful 'sequestered'.
Or just let the trees grow and grow some more soaking up more CO2 as they do. As the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere decreases, the trees will grow less, so it's natural and self-balancing.