In a bid to mitigate the impact of their pollution on the climate, Google and other prominent companies have partnered with Terradot, a startup that uses rocks to trap carbon dioxide. The deal, brokered by Frontier, a carbon removal initiative led by Stripe, Google, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability, involves the purchase of 200,000 tons of carbon removal from Terradot.
A Big Deal for Carbon Removal
Google’s announcement marks the biggest purchase yet of carbon removal through enhanced rock weathering (ERW), a relatively low-tech tactic for taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. According to Oliver Jagoutz, a professor of geology at MIT, this development is significant and should be taken seriously by both academics and industrialists.
The Terradot Story
Terradot was founded in 2022 by James Kanoff, Sasankh Munukutla, and Scott Fendorf, who was also the company’s chief scientist and technical advisor. The startup grew out of a research project at Stanford, where Kanoff and Munukutla were undergraduate students. Before starting Terradot, Kanoff had co-founded a nonprofit called the Farmlink Project, which connected food banks to farms with excess produce. He met Sheryl Sandberg, the former Facebook COO, through this initiative, who later invested in Terradot.
What is Enhanced Rock Weathering?
Carbon dioxide removal encompasses a suite of strategies to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. One such strategy is enhanced rock weathering, which attempts to speed up a natural process that might otherwise take thousands of years. Rainfall naturally "weathers" or breaks down rock, releasing calcium and magnesium and triggering a chemical reaction that traps CO2 in water as bicarbonate. Groundwater carrying that bicarbonate eventually makes its way to the ocean, which stores the carbon and keeps it out of the atmosphere.
Terradot’s Approach
Terradot takes basalt from quarries in southern Brazil to nearby farms. Farmers can use the finely-ground basalt to manage the pH of soil, and carbon removal is a bonus. Terradot has partnered with Brazil’s agricultural research agency (EMBRAPA), allowing the startup to use this strategy on more than one million hectares (roughly 2,471,054 acres) of land.
Challenges Ahead
One of the tricky parts will be trying to count how much CO2 Terradot actually manages to trap. Google admits that it’s hard to measure with precision how much CO2 this process removes from the atmosphere. However, Terradot says it’ll take soil samples to assess how much CO2 is captured based on how the rock degrades over time.
The Role of Fertilizer
Fertilizer in the soil can potentially limit how much carbon is captured through enhanced rock weathering. According to Jagoutz, "How much they sequester is still the outstanding question." However, he doesn’t think that uncertainty needs to stop trials in the real world.
Google’s Commitment to Clean Energy
Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are already making heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and other climate disasters more dangerous. Google’s carbon footprint has grown as it builds out energy-hungry AI data centers. The company has recently announced plans to help develop advanced nuclear reactors and new solar and wind farms to power its data centers with carbon pollution-free electricity.
Conclusion
Carbon removal is not a substitute for emissions reductions, but rather an attempt to counteract some of a company’s legacy of pollution while they make that energy transition. Google’s commitment to clean energy is laudable, and Terradot’s partnership with the tech giant marks a significant step forward in the fight against climate change.
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