Tech Companies Just Spent Millions On A Proposed Climate Fix That’s Literally Just Rocks
In an effort to mitigate the impact of their pollution on the climate, Google and other large corporations have joined forces with a startup called Terradot to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using rocks. The company has recently announced multimillion-dollar deals with a Sheryl Sandberg-backed startup called Terradot.
Google’s Largest Purchase Yet: $60 Million Deal for Carbon Removal
The deals were brokered by Frontier, a carbon removal initiative led by Stripe, Google, Shopify, and McKinsey Sustainability. Separately, Google has announced its own deal to purchase an additional 200,000 tons of carbon removal from Terradot. Both companies declined to say how much that deal is worth.
If the cost is similar to the Frontier agreement – roughly $300 per ton of CO2 captured – it could add up to $60 million. However, Google says it expects the price to come down over time for this larger deal.
"It’s a big deal," said Oliver Jagoutz, a professor of geology at MIT. "I think it should go a little out of the academic world into the industrial world. And I wish these guys all the best."
Terradot: A Research Project Turned Startup
Terradot grew out of a research project at Stanford, where CEO James Kanoff and CPO Sasankh Munukutla were undergraduate students at the time. Shortly before graduating in 2022, they co-founded the company along with Kanoff’s former professor, Scott Fendorf, who is now Terradot’s chief scientist and technical advisor.
Before starting that research project, Kanoff had briefly dropped out of Stanford during the COVID-19 pandemic to co-found a nonprofit called the Farmlink Project that connects food banks to farms with excess produce. Kanoff met Sandberg through that initiative, which is how he was able to get the former Facebook COO’s support for Terradot as an investor.
"I’ve known James, the CEO, since long before this company started," Sandberg said in a press release. "These are proven leaders, which is rare to find in an early-stage company. They have the drive, the right technology and a strong focus on execution to succeed."
Carbon Dioxide Removal: A Suite of Strategies
Carbon dioxide removal encompasses a suite of strategies to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. These technologies could potentially help slow climate change by trapping some of the pollution fossil fuels have already released over the years.
However, there are still concerns about its costs, safety, and potential to delay a transition from fossil fuels to carbon pollution-free energy. Experts say carbon removal is no substitute for emissions reductions at all.
The Science Behind Terradot’s Method: Enhanced Rock Weathering
Terradot’s method involves using rocks to capture carbon dioxide through enhanced rock weathering. The process works as follows:
- Rock Collection: Terradot collects rocks from the ground and grinds them into a fine powder.
- Soil Application: The powdered rocks are then applied to the soil, where they react with water and release calcium and magnesium ions.
- Carbon Capture: The calcium and magnesium ions react with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to form bicarbonate ions, which are then absorbed by plants.
However, there is still uncertainty surrounding how much CO2 is actually captured through this process. Terradot plans to take soil samples to assess how much CO2 is captured based on how the rock degrades over time.
Limitations and Uncertainties
While Terradot’s method shows promise, there are still several limitations and uncertainties associated with it.
- Measurement Tools: There is currently a lack of rigorous measurement tools to determine how much CO2 is actually captured through enhanced rock weathering.
- Fertilizer Effects: Fertilizers in the soil can potentially limit how much carbon is captured through this process.
- Scalability: It is unclear whether Terradot’s method can be scaled up to make a significant impact on global CO2 emissions.
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Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels are already making heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, storms, and other climate disasters more dangerous. And 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.
When it comes down to it, switching to clean energy is the only effective way to stop climate change. Carbon removal, at best, is just an attempt to counteract some of a company’s legacy of pollution while they make that energy transition.
Even though Google says it signed the biggest ERW deal to date, 200,000 tons of carbon removal is still a small fraction of the 14.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide pollution it was responsible for last year.
"It’s very clear that this is not a substitute for emissions reductions at all… we need both of these tools," Kanoff says. "Any of the partners we’re even thinking about working with, they have some of the most aggressive emission reduction strategies of any of the companies really in the world. And those are the groups that we really want to partner with to advance carbon removal."
