Founded in late 2016, Climitigation is a think do tank dedicated to mitigating climate change. We are firm believers in the need for rapid and full decarbonization of the economy as soon as possible, but recognize that even if it was immediate, limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) or less will require many hundreds of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere.
Our first project, Project Vesta, has successfully started a pilot project for coastal enhanced weathering and Climitigation’s founder, Eric Matzner, has now stepped away from Project Vesta to work on developing and deploying the next permanent, gigatonne scaleable CDR technology. The next project will be focused on developing a CDR company with a business model that generates valuable and in-demand co-products, so it is self-sustaining and not reliant on voluntary carbon markets to scale up to Gt levels.
As of 2021, Climitigation is working on a stealth carbon dioxide removal company, founded to create a novel, permanent, and inexpensive method of CDR that has no unreasonably insurmountable scaling limitations to reaching gigatonne scale per year levels, while at the same time not being dependent on revenue from the carbon dioxide removal credit market. We have raised significant capital in order to make this project a reality and have had great success demonstrating it in 2022 and are preparing to expand in 2023.
As our second forray into the CDR field, this time as a company instead of a research focused non-profit, we have been able to design in a compelling, high-growth business model so that the entity is not solely reliant on the current carbon dioxide removal credit markets in order to scale up.
That said, our methodology and CDR process has been developed from the ground up to meet the most desired characteristics of the major carbon dioxide removal markets, including: net-negative lifecycle efficiency, longterm permanence, verifiability, low price, highly-scaleable, and more.
Project Vesta is a project to sequester carbon by accelerating the weathering of a specific type of rock called olivine. When olivine interacts with water and CO2, it creates a bicarbonate and alkaline solution that eventually sequesters the carbon as rock in the sea floor and deacidifies the ocean.
While this rock is abundant and cheap, all of the unweathered sources of it are underground. The plan is to mine it, grind it, and spread it on beaches to harness the free energy of wave motion to further tumble the rocks and accelerate the weathering process. We will be creating a global network of green sand beaches to end global warming.
1 ton of olivine sequesters 1.25 tons of carbon. A volume of 7km^3 spread over the world's 2% most tidally active areas would off-set all of humanity's yearly CO2 output.
Olivine (Mg2SiO4) + 4 CO2 + 4 H2O −→ 2 Mg^2+ + 4HCO3^- + H4SiO4
CO2 is consumed, and Mg2+, Fe2+, H4SiO4 and HCO3^- are produced
Climitigation seeks to highlight the technologies and ideas that have the potential to radically shift the current equation on climate change back to neutral or in even in our favor. We seek to put a spotlight on those technologies and ideas that we think will be most impactful, so they can reach their full potential. If you think you can help out in your area of specialty, please reach out.
If you are interested in helping out with Climitigation, whether by submitting a technology advising in your area of expertise, please let us know.
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