Investors accumulate in rocks to absorb carbon emissions

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Technology, banking companies and shipping groups invest in a way to remove carbon dioxide, which promise to accelerate chemical reaction between the rocks and rain.

Its promoters say that the natural geological process is accelerating by spreading the crushed silicate rocks on the farm ground to increase the surface of the rock surface and communicate with CO₂. The alkaline materials can also be added to the ocean floor.

The idea is increasing from popularity, as the pollutants are betting on a variety of techniques to achieve the goals of “zero” as possible in the coming decades.

Last month, Microsoft agreed to purchase 12,000 tons of the so -called Brazilian “Heroes” between 2026 and 2029, from San Francisco -based Terradot, which is emitting basalt from quarries in southern Brazil and transporting them to nearby farms. The Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund has participated in a $ 54 million financing round for the company.

Illon Musk, which is supported by XPrize, recently granted $ 5 million and $ 50 million, respectively, to two companies that enjoys the improved luxury: a London -based startup, which is also committed to Microsoft, and Mati Carbon, which funds funding from JPMorgan and tried the spread of the powder on Rice Fields.

Using a Separate This depends on similar chemical reactions, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company has supported 44.01 for pilot technology that injects CO₂ in the rocks in the Emirate of Fujira.

Initial experiments of improved rocks showed that about 4 co₂ from 1 hectare of Earth can be captured. Once the rocks spread, ions can take a few years to depth in the soil, after a few months to be exported to the groundwater and the ocean, and tens of thousands of years turn into solid carbonate in calcium.

“We are in the construction of coral reefs of clouds,” said Sparsh Agarwal, a fourth -generation tea plan in India and co -founder of Alt Carbon, a startup with a project in Darjeling, planning to provide the first carbon credits in June. It has previously sold credits at $ 270 per ton.

Alt Carbon signed last year the OffTAKE agreement with the NEXTAN Alliance for buyers, led by Mitsubishi and includes UBS and Swiss Re. A similar deal has also signed a coalition called Frontier, which includes a commitment from companies including Stripe, Alphabet and Meta to buy at least a billion dollars of permanent carbon removal at the end of the contract.

The company operates in the slopes of the Himalayas, where the basalt rock is spread in the fields.

Frontier spent more than $ 150 million on agreements for future carbon credits from this process. Other startups by Frontier signed deals on a rock on Brazilian sugar cane farms and corn farms in Cameroon.

Simon Manley, head of the carbon dioxide removal department, told the SELVERA evaluation provider that the extensive samples needed to check the progress of ions through the soil still make it a “commercial and practical challenge.”

At the present time, reaching the stage of the ability to issue the credits of “many of the very diligent scientists who wander around their hands and knees” to collect samples of fields, he indicated, he indicated,

Japanese charging companies NYK and Mitsui Osk Lines recently agreed to purchase improved luxury balances to cancel some of their emissions – in the NYK case of burning fuel shipping.

The ships that enter and leave the European Economic Zone were responsible for more than 10,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2023, the European Commission estimated.

Nan Ransohoff, founder of the Frontier coalition, said that the natural reactions between rocks and CO₂ in rainwater already helps planetary systems to absorb about 1GT annually from CO₂. Specialized improved rock techniques mean “you are just trying to speed up this process.” This means that “the least issue is if it happens but when.”

Ransohoff said the improved weathering has the ability to be relatively low by “disposal” of current industrial and agricultural processes. Projects use secondary products of quarries, and encourage farmers to spread the rock as they do fertilizers.

However, it is more expensive to accurately measure it than other carbon removal techniques such as direct air capture, as CO₂ machines absorb directly from the atmosphere and their impairment under the ground.

Facial credit deals ranged widely from $ 75 to $ 500 per ton, according to MSCI Carbon Markets data.

The cost can decrease with standard sophisticated methodologies that can predict the storage of CO₂, instead of being able to measure them through soil samples. But the costs can rise, in theory, too.

The market is still in the cradle. In January, the equal measurement announced the first credit delivered independently. MSCI said the investments so far represented about 7 percent ($ 53 million) of the total investment in permanent carbon removal.

recently research From the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I noticed that the improved rocky welfare was a benefit from asking land less specialized than vital energy while capturing and isolating carbon, which is a famous type of carbon removal that stores CO₂ emitted when the vital mass of power is burned.

However, all of these technologies are more expensive or intense energy than constitutes emissions in the first place by burning fewer fossil fuels.

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