It began with the belief that Colombia has quite a lot of potential for local weather initiatives. Ludwig Ritter, along with Wilson Escobar and Professor Camilo Montes, co-founded Tropicarbon to take advantage of the truth that this area of the world holds a number of key facets optimum for enhanced weathering initiatives: a becoming local weather, the mandatory rocks, and agricultural work that may profit from EW even with out glancing at CDR certificates within the first place.
As we work to fight local weather change, growing new science presents just one facet of the equation. For significant carbon drawdown to happen, the options should be financially sustainable. So long as it prices extra to seize and retailer carbon emissions than to scale back them, drawdown won’t ever acquire sufficient traction for us to achieve carbon neutrality.
Tropicarbon determined to deal with agriculture, an trade with a few of the highest CO2 emissions. The objective? To remodel the trade from a carbon producer right into a “carbon sink,” absorbing extra carbon from the ambiance than the trade produces. How? Enhanced weathering (EW).
Why Enhanced Weathering?
Whereas many strategies of carbon seize and storage have been instructed, EW supplies an almost all-in-one resolution. By spreading rock mud throughout fields, rainwater—containing carbon dioxide from the ambiance—creates carbonates, which enter the groundwater and wash to the oceans.
Not like some carbon seize choices, weathering is completely pure. Rainwater already brings carbon dioxide to the bottom, and a few of it already will get saved within the rock soil and leads to the ocean. Enhanced weathering seeks to hurry up the method so it may be utilized at a significant scale.
It’s additionally a everlasting storage resolution, since carbon trapped throughout EW stays within the ocean. There’s no want to determine the way to transfer or recycle the collected carbon, and the answer doesn’t “kick the can down the road” and depart an issue for future generations to resolve.
In-built Colombia
Tropicarbon at present operates completely in Colombia, which presents a number of strategic benefits:
-
Optimum Local weather: The tropical local weather in Colombia accelerates rock weathering, making it an environment friendly area for EW.
-
Considerable sources: The geological range of the nation supplies ample provides of silicate rocks, best for EW, with minimal transportation distances (which reduces total emissions output).
-
Agricultural potential: Colombia’s acidic soils are perfect for EW purposes as they profit each the soil and farmers.
Present initiatives embrace a number of greenhouse and field-scale setups in numerous areas, equivalent to Córdoba and Barranquilla. The initiatives check varied rock blends and the potential affect on rock weathering charges, agronomic parameters (crop yield, soil pH, nutrient retention, and so on.), and heavy steel stabilization utilizing plant-based buffers.
The crew at Tropicarbon have developed and examined distinctive monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) expertise to quantify the outcomes of the initiatives and set up CDR charges in distant areas. The proprietary MRV expertise focuses on the aqueous part, making certain a exact, dependable measure of carbon seize in step with necessities for carbon credit score certifiers. The distinctive local weather of Colombia allowed the crew to validate their MRV expertise in a number of field-scale initiatives, drastically enhancing the transparency and accountability in EW as a rising trade.
That’s the larger image—to make EW a acknowledged viable choice for carbon seize and storage with real-life information.
