🪨 Is enhanced rock weathering (ERW) ready for scale?

💚 I had the great pleasure of attending the first Carbon Drawdown Symposium in Erlangen, Germany. It gathered the who’s who of ERW: startups, standards, policy, and a lot of academia. 

It was a fascinating deep dive into the current state of the sector. So what did I take away from it?

1️⃣ We still cannot explain the [sometimes huge] differences in soil vs water measurements, which in turn have a significant impact on the expected amount of carbon removed.

2️⃣ ERW credits today are still prone to a lot of uncertainty. Progress here is rapid, but we should still treat predicted removal rates with a lot of caution.

3️⃣ MRV remains the biggest and most costly challenge. AI could change this. Models are getting increasingly accurate. Soon, AI trained models coupled with a handful of field probes could replace current, cumbersome MRV practices without compromising accuracy.

4️⃣ The sector does not advocate with a unified voice. Too much bickering which might feel right in its bubble but is not helpful externally.

🌍 Finally, and most importantly, there are so many passionate, talented people working in ERW and trying to solve some of the tough outstanding questions above.

🙏 A huge shout-out to Carbon Drawdown Initiative and Dirk Paessler in particular for generously hosting all of us in Erlangen. Hope it will become a yearly occurrence.

📽️ All presentations are now publicly available by the way: https://lnkd.in/eGhVQQCR

⁉️ To the other attendees or anyone working in/on ERW: would you agree with the above? Anything I missed?

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