Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a process that helps to address climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and permanently storing it in rocks
A new partnership looking at enhanced rock weathering has been launched in a bid to trial faster, permanent carbon dioxide removal directly from the atmosphere.
Resource management company Veolia has teamed up with UK biotechnology start-up FabricNano as part of the Veolia Group's decarbonisation innovation project "GreenUp". The move has seen the business pledge to accelerate its investments in the field and it has set aside more than £170 million to ‘design the technologies of the future'.
Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a process that helps to address climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and permanently storing it in rocks. Veolia's new ERW service utilises large particle basalt rock fines sourced from local mining operations.
Once spread on land, these rocks react with the carbon dioxide from rainwater to permanently store carbon dioxide. One tonne of basalt rock fines can remove up to 300 kg of carbon dioxide, however this process can take more than 30 years.
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FabricNano's patented technology immobilises the Carbonic Anhydrase enzyme directly onto large particle basalt, accelerating carbon sequestration timelines from decades to just a couple of years.
Marine Avisse, Veolia head of corporate development said: "Wide scale adoption of viable, permanent and effective decarbonisation solutions is essential if we are to achieve net zero targets but we need to deploy these faster.
"This innovation, combining world leading biotechnology and established carbon removal practices, represents a huge step forward in ecological solutions. Not only will this trial see enzymes accelerate the rate of enhanced weathering, it will also provide us with the data we need to replicate this across more applications so industries can tangibly meet their fast-approaching decarbonisation goals."
Veolia said 30,000 tonnes of basalt rock will be spread across farmland throughout the UK as part of its ERW decarbonisation operations. The landmark trial with FabricNano will see protein powder, containing the Carbonic Anhydrase enzyme, combined with silicate rock being spread on a stretch of farmland near Bicester, UK and run by Oxford Agricultural Trials (OATs).
The trial uses locally sourced, larger rock particles that are a plentiful resource of nearby mining operations. Applying enzymes to speed up the natural rock weathering processes, this trial will incur less than 100 miles of rock transport to the farmland and consume no energy to grind up rocks. The aim is to prove the methodology for an efficient, scalable method to capture huge volumes of atmospheric carbon dioxide
According to research by the University of Sheffield, ERW could deliver six to 40 million tonnes of carbon dioxide removal a year in the UK.
