Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Podcast

The Next Big Climate Tool: Little Chunks of Rock

Inside episode four of Shift Key.

Rocks.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

When we talk about carbon removal, we often focus on “direct air capture” facilities — big factories that suck carbon dioxide out of the ambient air.

But a simpler and easier way to remove carbon from the atmosphere may exist. It’s called “enhanced rock weathering” — grinding up rocks, spreading them out, and exposing them to the ambient air — and it works, essentially, by speeding up the Earth’s carbon cycle. Enhanced rock weathering recently got a major vote of confidence from Frontier, a consortium of tech and finance companies who have teamed up to support new and experimental carbon removal technologies.

Frontier’s members include Stripe, Meta, Alphabet, Shopify, and McKinsey & Company. It aims to buy nearly $1 billion of various forms of carbon removal in the next few years — an intervention meant to spur commercial and investor interest in the sector.

In this episode, Jesse Jenkins, an energy systems expert and professor at Princeton University, and I talk with Jane Flegal, a former Biden White House climate adviser and now the market development and policy lead at Frontier, about the promise of enhanced rock weathering and why Frontier just spent $57 million to do it.

Subscribe to “Shift Key” and find this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also add the show’s RSS feed to your podcast app to follow us directly.

Here is an excerpt from our conversation:

Jane Flegal: So enhanced weathering is a carbon removal process that speeds up a natural process which is weathering of alkaline materials. And so weathering happens naturally, it actually drives what makes the earth habitable in the first place. It just happens over very, very long periods. So essentially what happens is that rocks slowly erode when they come into contact with acid rain essentially and —

Robinson Meyer: Naturally acidic rain?

Flegal: Yeah, not like acid rain the way we think of it, rain that is acidic because it has some dissolved CO2. And so that acidic rainwater interacts with rocks and erodes them, and it results in CO2 being stored either as a solid carbonate or as a bicarbonate. So that happens naturally, again, on very long time periods.

Meyer: And I just want to interrupt before we go any further. What then happens, right, is that the CO2 winds up being dissolved as a bicarbonate. It goes into the ocean.

Flegal: Into the ocean.

Meyer: And then what happens? It’s turned into ...

Flegal: It sinks and becomes part of the Earth’s crust.

Meyer: Right. Or it gets turned into a shell, a creature’s shell, and then it sinks again.

Flegal: It is functionally stable. It is thermodynamically pretty much impossible to reverse.

Meyer: And you kind of said this, but I do want to draw it out: This is the carbon cycle. This is a central Earth science process. There’s nothing fancy about this.

Jesse Jenkins: The problem is it takes centuries to play out. It’s just moving on geologic time. But this idea of enhanced weathering means we can potentially speed that up, right?

Meyer: Sorry, I just want to — this is, like, the whole problem of climate change, right? The problem of climate change is that we take fossil fuels and carbon that’s stored in geological storage out of the ground on historic time scales, on decadal ... you know, every year we take millions of tons of it out of the ground, and then it would only be restored back to the ground by this extremely slow process.

Flegal: One way to think about carbon removal is, like, taking stuff out of the fast cycle and putting it into the slow cycle, basically. And essentially, you either inject CO2 underground, where it’s where it’s stable, or you turn it into salt. These are kind of the options.

And so enhanced weathering, to exactly this point, it’s enhanced for a reason, right? There’s regular old weathering, and then there’s the enhanced kind, which aims to speed up this process that typically takes millennia to years or days by either using more reactive materials than the normal rocks that would just weather naturally or increasing the surface area of the material that is exposed to CO2. So grinding up rocks into very, very fine fine powder and exposing that material to more favorable environments.

This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by Advanced Energy United, KORE Power, and Yale …

Advanced Energy United educates, engages, and advocates for policies that allow our member companies to compete to power our economy with 100% clean energy, working with decision makers and energy market regulators to achieve this goal. Together, we are united in our mission to accelerate the transition to 100% clean energy in America. Learn more at advancedenergyunited.org/heatmap

KORE Power provides the commercial, industrial, and utility markets with functional solutions that advance the clean energy transition worldwide. KORE Power's technology and manufacturing capabilities provide direct access to next generation battery cells, energy storage systems that scale to grid+, EV power & infrastructure, and intuitive asset management to unlock energy strategies across a myriad of applications. Explore more at korepower.com — the future of clean energy is here.

Build your skills in policy, finance, and clean technology at Yale. Yale’s Financing and Deploying Clean Energy certificate program is a 10-month online certificate program that trains and connects clean energy professionals to catalyze an equitable transition to a clean economy. Connect with Yale’s expertise, grow your professional network, and deepen your impact. Learn more at cbey.yale.edu/certificate.

Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.

Yellow

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Climate

What Started the Fires in Los Angeles?

Plus 3 more outstanding questions about this ongoing emergency.

Los Angeles.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

As Los Angeles continued to battle multiple big blazes ripping through some of the most beloved (and expensive) areas of the city on Thursday, a question lingered in the background: What caused the fires in the first place?

Though fires are less common in California during this time of the year, they aren’t unheard of. In early December 2017, power lines sparked the Thomas Fire near Ventura, California, which burned through to mid-January. At the time it was the largest fire in the state since at least the 1930s. Now it’s the ninth-largest. Although that fire was in a more rural area, it ignited for many of the same reasons we’re seeing fires this week.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Hotspots

Fox News Goes After a Solar Farm

And more of this week’s top renewable energy fights across the country.

Map of U.S. renewable energy.
Heatmap Illustration

1. Otsego County, Michigan – The Mitten State is proving just how hard it can be to build a solar project in wooded areas. Especially once Fox News gets involved.

  • Last week, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said it wanted to lease more than 400 acres of undeveloped state-owned forestland for part of a much larger RWE Clean Energy solar project near the northern Michigan town of Gaylord.
  • Officials said they were approached by the company about the land. But the news sparked an immediate outcry, as state elected Republicans – and some Democrats – demanded to know why a forest would be cleared for ‘green’ energy. Some called for government firings.
  • Then came the national news coverage. On Friday, Fox News hosted a full four-minute segment focused on this one solar farm featuring iconoclastic activist Michael Shellenberger.
  • A few days later, RWE told the media it would not develop the project on state lands.
  • “[D]uring the development process, we conducted outreach to all landowners adjacent to the project location, including the Michigan Department of Natural Resources,” the company said in a statement to the Petoskey News-Review, adding it instead decided to move forward with leasing property from two private landowners.

2. Atlantic County, New Jersey – Opponents of offshore wind in Atlantic City are trying to undo an ordinance allowing construction of transmission cables that would connect the Atlantic Shores offshore wind project to the grid.

Keep reading...Show less
Policy Watch

How to Solve a Problem Like a Wind Ban

And more of this week’s top policy news around renewables.

Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

1. Trump’s Big Promise – Our nation’s incoming president is now saying he’ll ban all wind projects on Day 1, an expansion of his previous promise to stop only offshore wind.

  • “They litter our country like paper, like dropping garbage in a field,” Trump said at a press conference Tuesday. “We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are built.”
  • Is this possible? It would be quite tricky, as the president only has control over the usage of federal lands and waters. While offshore wind falls entirely under the president’s purview, many onshore wind projects themselves fall entirely on state lands.
  • This is where the whole “wind kills birds” argument becomes important. Nearly all wind projects have at least some federal nexus because of wildlife protection laws, such as the Endangered Species Act and Migratory Bird Treaty Act.
  • Then there are the cables connecting these projects to the grid and interstate transmission projects that may require approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
  • I’m personally doubtful he will actually stop all wind in the U.S., though I do think offshore wind in its entirety is at risk (which I’ve written about). Trump has a habit of conflating things, and in classic fashion, he only spoke at the press conference about offshore wind projects. I think he was only referring to offshore wind, though I’m willing to eat my words.

2. The Big Nuclear Lawsuit – Texas and Utah are suing to kill the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s authority to license small modular reactors.

Keep reading...Show less