Investing in Natural Capital: Enhanced Rock Weathering

Why the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund is backing Terradot ?

At Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund, we are on the lookout for new opportunities to back innovative solutions in the natural capital market. In my previous post I highlighted three companies—Yard Stick, Vibrant Planet, and Farmland LP—that are leading the way in measuring, managing, and regenerating ecosystems. But what if we could enlist these ecosystems for climate interventions? Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) is a solution in the natural capital market that has the ability to do just that. This pioneering carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology accelerates the Earth’s natural rock weathering process to sequester atmospheric carbon by spreading finely milled rocks over large agricultural areas, which enhances the reaction rate with atmospheric carbon [1]. Terradot, a leading ERW company, aims to advance this market and recently announced the completion of their Series A funding round with participation from the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund.

The Science of ERW

To understand Terradot’s core business and the broader potential impact of ERW, it’s essential to delve into the natural scientific processes that underpin this market. Scientists estimate 87% of Earth’s carbon is stored in rocks, a sink that continues to absorb 1B tons of atmospheric CO2 per year [2]. Rocks remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a process called “weathering”. Rainwater is slightly acidic, and when it rains, silicate rocks slowly deteriorate, generating alkalinity. That alkalinity pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere into the water to form bicarbonate. That bicarbonate flows through groundwater, streams and rivers to the ocean, where they are stored at millennial time scales [3].

Building on this natural process, ERW aims to accelerate carbon sequestration by leveraging finely milled silicate rock, significantly increasing the reaction surface area. This silicate rock particulate can then be spread on agricultural land, providing high durability carbon sequestration. In agriculture, this silicate can replace the use of lime, a soil additive commonly used to optimize soil pH for plant growth and crop yield. However, there are many different silicate minerals to choose from, including olivine, basalt, and wollastonite.? Each has different carbon sequestration efficacies under different environmental conditions, and different impacts to local communities and ecosystems [4]. Understanding the effect of mineral choice, quantifying the resulting bicarbonate in watersheds, and tracking its flow to the ocean is crucial for assessing environmental impacts and highlights the crucial importance of MRV (measurement, reporting, and verification).

This understanding is essential as ERW has the potential to achieve large-scale, high-durability CO2 sequestration, with a global capacity of 4-5 gigatons annually [2]. By utilizing existing infrastructure in mining, transportation, and agriculture, ERW can be an economically viable option for widespread implementation globally. Additionally, the application of these minerals could potentially provide significant ecosystem benefits, such as improving soil health and increasing crop yields, enhancing food security and agricultural productivity.

Developing the Bedrock of the ERW Market: Terradot

Terradot is a science and technology company focused on large-scale carbon dioxide removal through Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW). Their core business enables ERW project design, optimization and execution, paired with a leading research and MRV platform called OpenERW. Terradot’s innovative approach not only addresses carbon removal but also improves land use efficiency, supports food system resilience, and fosters economic development. Their team includes leading scientists and experts dedicated to deploying the latest science and technology for a sustainable future.

Where’s the tech?

Terradot has assembled a leading coalition of researchers from labs and institutions around the world, including Stanford, Yale, University of Sao Palo, University of British Columbia, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to advance ERW science and research. They are developing innovative, scientifically rigorous model-based MRV that can optimize and verify CDR and agriculture benefits at scale. Terradot’s model-based MRV is built on top of a highly sophisticated Reactive Transport Model (RTM). RTMs describe the interactions of competing physical, chemical and biological processes at a range of spatial and time scales, and are critical tools for the analysis of Earth systems [5]. While RTMs have been in use for some time, Terradot is leading the development of RTMs for ERW modeling in an agricultural environment.?Terradot’s approach enables optimal project design to maximize carbon removal and crop yields while ensuring environmental safety. Crucially, the model is backstopped with robust ground truth data collection to enable MRV and empirically measure removal with samples collected in soils, plant tissues, porewater, groundwater, and stream water (all at varying depths), ensuring trust and transparency for every project.

Why we invested

Terradot is working at the critical intersection of earth science and technology. Their ability to deliver projects while doing cutting edge science and research paired with their rigorous approach to MRV has positioned them as a leader in the ERW ecosystem. The ERW market is nascent today, but the future market opportunity is gigaton-scale sequestration over thousands of years. We are focused on finding natural capital markets to unlock and scale, and we believe Terradot is well positioned to accelerate the ERW market considerably with their project development methodology and rigorous commitment to transparency.

[1] Enhanced Rock Weathering. MIT Climate Portal

[2] LLNL & Microsoft Carbon Removal Paper, Feb 2022

[3] Potential and costs of carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering of rocks. Strefler, et al. 2018 Environ. Res. Lett. 13 034010.

[4] Enhanced Rock Weathering. MIT Climate Portal

[5] Reactive transport modeling: An essential tool and a new research approach for the Earth Sciences. DePaolo, Lichtner, Steefel. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. 15 Dec 2005.