As of 2021, 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.
A new type of CDR Company
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.
Designed from the ground up, to bring carbon from the sky down
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
Launched in 2018, Vesta is a gigatonne-scale potential CDR project that places sand composed of olivine on beaches and in coastal areas. The continuous and free power of wave energy is harnessed to accelerate (enhance) the weathering rate of the this magnesium-silicate mineral, which reacts to bind carbon in solution for thousands of years, also contributing to a counteraction of ocean acidification. This pilot project is the world's first demonstration of Coasteal Enhanced Weathering (CEW).
Olivine in Oceans
Taking into account the footprint of limited transport and grinding, each 1 tonne of olivine can technically remove around 1 tonne of CO2.
This is a nature-based process that is essentially accelerating the Earth's natural regulatory mechanism of the longterm carbonate silicate cycle.
Current Status:
A pilot project is currently underway on a Carribean island to determine the ecological safety, such as the risks from the release of trace metals like nickel contained in the minerals. After overseeing the launch, initial fundraising, hiring, world's first sale of CEW, deploying the pilot beach project and more, Project Vesta has spun out into own entity and is now independent of Climitigaiton.