Boosting crops and soil whilst permanently locking up CO₂ with UNDO

Context

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is vital for limiting global warming to 1.5ºC. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), human activities need to be actively removing 10 Gigatonnes of atmospheric CO2 annually by the year 2050 in order to have a chance at meeting this warming target set by the Paris Climate Accords. Recent research using large-scale models shows that in the UK alone, enhanced rock weathering has the potential to remove up to 30 million tonnes of CO₂ per year – enough to address 45% of the UK’s annual emissions. ERW and other promising, high permanence carbon removal methods must complement deep decarbonisation efforts.

For millions of years, CO₂ has combined with rainwater to form carbonic acid. When this dilute acid falls on mountains, forests and grassland, the CO₂ interacts with rocks and soil, mineralises and is safely stored as solid carbon for hundreds of thousands of years. This natural weathering process is accelerated by spreading crushed silicate rock such as basalt on agricultural land, vastly increasing the surface area of the rock and therefore increasing its contact with CO₂. 

The crushed silicate rock that is spread is full of macro and micronutrients that slowly enriches the soil as it weathers. Acting as a soil enhancer, landowners can expect to see stabilised soil pH, increased crop yield and increased pest resistance over time as a result of spreading the material. 

Project

Ecologi is currently supporting UNDO’s UK projects, which focus on delivering operations with farmers in the north of England and Scotland.

To date, UNDO have spread 170k tonnes of basalt on 163 farms, totalling 8.6k hectares. This equates to approximately 30k tonnes of projected carbon removal.