Have you heard of WHS yet? Run by Carbon Lockdown under the leadership of Professor Ning Zeng, this project - as of this week - is already locking away 100 tons of CO2 with plans to expand to about 5,000 tons of CO2 in the near future. It is using residual biomass from the City of Baltimore which is safely stored in a so-called wood vault on a farm in the United States (Maryland).
🔍 So how does WHS work?
1️⃣ You take residual biomass, usually wood, which can be trunks, can be chips
2️⃣ You create a wood vault in a suitable location that fulfills at least one of three criteria: anoxic, cold, and/or dry
3️⃣ You deposit the biomass in the vault
🤩 The beauty of WHS is its simplicity. It doesn´t require fancy technology, has low CAPEX costs, very high carbon efficiency, and can - in theory - be done in a distributed way at a very low cost (I´ve heard $50/ton of CDR at scale).
🧐 The challenges of WHS are mainly questions around permanence (currently largely anecdotal), potential methane releases, as well as impact on soil and ecosystems. There is also a broader question whether we should ever disregard the energy potential of biomass.
➡ My take: I can see the appeal of WHS. It could provide an effective way to lock away surplus, unmerchantable biomass in hard-to-reach locations. Several questions need answering and thankfully many incredible people I met over the last few days are working collaboratively to answer them.
👏 Also a shout-out to the other awesome WHS startups I met in DC: Kodama Systems, Graphyte , Carba, Inc., Carbon Sequestration Inc. keep up the great work.
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