It’s one of the latest technologies for sequestering carbon: Crush silicate rocks, add to crop soil, and let the rock dust naturally react with carbon dioxide.
It’s one of the latest technologies for sequestering carbon: Crush silicate rocks, add to crop soil, and let the rock dust naturally react with carbon dioxide. The reactions bind carbon into stable mineral forms that can persist for millennia, while also enriching the soil with nutrients, boosting crop yields and increasing farmer profits.
But this process, called enhanced rock weathering, needs to be widely adopted to move the needle on global warming and deliver real benefits to farmers.
In a new study, published Feb. 16 in Communications Sustainability, researchers model various trajectories for the global adoption of enhanced rock weathering, finding that the method could remove up to about a gigaton of carbon from the atmosphere annually by 2100, roughly equivalent to the yearly emissions of a major industrial economy. But to reach that mark, access and adoption by the Global South, where warmer and wetter conditions facilitate rock weathering, will be essential.
“If this were to be scaled, the Global South would eventually contribute more, and tech transfer and global carbon markets could accelerate adoption in these regions while also making adoption more equitable,” said senior author Chuan Liao, assistant professor in the Ashley School of Global Development and the Environment, part of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). “Previous research assumed a uniform adoption across regions. Our major contribution in this study is to model these trajectories in a more realistic way.”
Read more at: Cornell University
