🌧⛰ 🇪🇺 Exploring the potential of enhanced weathering (#EW) with the European Commission 🇪🇺⛰🌧

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of moderating a meeting between six globally leading EW companies and the team at the #EUCOM working on carbon dioxide removals (#CDR), and more specifically the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (#CRCF).

🏅EW is one of the highest potential permanent carbon dioxide removal (#CDR) technologies out there, boasting tons of co-benefits, scaling potential, and an incredible startup ecosystem. Yet EW seems consistently underrepresented and underappreciated in the policy space.

💡 For this reason, Carbonfuture brought together the six EW companies who are part of our #Catalyst programme: Eion, Mati Carbon, Everest Carbon, InPlanet, Lithos Carbon, and Silicate. We spent months aligning on key topics, from #permanence and #MRV, to #scaling and #policypriorities. This workshop was the first concrete output of this coordinated EW group.

The key messages that we communicated to the EU COM:

🌍 Weathering is the foundation of life on this planet. It is a powerful tool. Accelerating it from 10,000s of years to <10 years is what the ERW industry does.

💪 EW builds on existing extractive industries, leverages existing technologies, and requires no new land to scale.

👩‍🌾 EW has numerous co-benefits, reducing costs while increasing yields for farmers.

📈 EW has significant scaling potential: up to 4Gt globally and 200Mt of CO2 removed in Europe’s five largest countries alone.

🤝 EW has a flourishing ecosystem, rooted in academia and working closely with established industry players.

📜 Our concrete ask to European policy makers is to recognise EW as a permanent carbon removal solution in the CRCF alongside #BECCS, #DACCS, and Biochar Carbon Removal (#BCR).

I would like to thank the team at the European Commission (Fabien Ramos, Christian Holzleitner, Andrea Klaric, Valeria Forlin, and Sevim Aktas) for hosting us and for the excellent questions.

And a huge shout-out to the stars of the show, the members of this working group who shared their ample experiences today: Matthew Clarkson, PhD, Niklas Kluger, Adam Wolf, Alan Tank, Shantanu Agarwal, Mary Yap, Maurice Bryson, Teresa Geruson, Pascal Michel, and Berta Moya, PhD Moya.

❓What do you think? Do you agree with EW’s potential? Should it be classified as permanent CDR in the CRCF?

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