CO2 Mineralisation; US-China Climate co-operation
Webinar - How can mineralisation help fight climate change?
Building the thread from last week’s Notes, this webinar covers this recent report written by David Sandalow, Julio Friedman and other prominent climate scientists for the Innovation for Cool Earth Forum. Mineralisation, you may recall, is the process that Heirloom uses for the carbon capture component, when the calcium and magnesium silicates or oxides bind with atmospheric CO2 to form stable carbonates, basically rocks. Key quote: Julio Friedmann (naturally): “There are so many cool things to do in this space, we really are on the edge of a new continent.”
Key benefits of mineralisation:
The chemical process doesn’t require additional energy inputs
It is stable, permanent
The materials are abundant and widely distributed - potential to store in the order of 10GT per year
Challenges:
Slow process so needs to be interfered with to speed it up
The resources are not mapped with granularity
The output isn’t valuable [Friedmann: “You are literally making rocks.”]
Currently no policy support (only 1 out of 180 NDCs includes mineralisations - Iceland)
Difficult to measure and monitor
Two approaches to mineralisation: injecting CO2-rich liquid underground (like the CarbFix / Climeworks project in Iceland), or exposing crushed rocks to the air.
The crushed rocks approach or ‘enhanced weathering’ could involve exposing crushed magnesium/calcium-rich rock near mines, or spreading it on agricultural soils, where it can have additional benefits of improving the soil quality, although it runs the risks of accumulation of metals in the soil.
Can use mining and industrial by-products as inputs for mineralisation, especially China and India - billions of tonnes of these waste materials available that have been accumulated over decades - and will reduce the environmental footprint of what is currently pollution, e.g. fly ash from coal plants or old asbestos plants.
Methods of mineral extraction are now much more refined than in the past, so possible to use old industrial waste not only to capture CO2 but could also extract things like cobalt or nickel that are critical metals for the energy transition.
Pilot projects are essential - very little has been studied so far, we could take out a lot of uncertainty with just a handful of pilot projects.
Estimate that with strong policy support, mineralisation could scale to 1GT annually by 2035 and 10GT by 2050.
Costs: huge variability, but suggest there is a line of sight to <$50 tonne removed + stored for some methods, Heirloom specifically mentioned at $75-150 range
Comparison with DAC: both expensive, but paths to becoming cheaper; both scalable. Mineralisation has much lower energy requirements and some pathways have co-benefits, but more difficult to measure and monitor. From the report:
Mineralisation in the Middle East: 4401.earth - company in Oman. Oman and the UAE have the biggest resources of magnesium rich rocks that are near the coast (which is important because water is needed in the process for injection)
On policy - in the UK, the government said they would procure 5mm tonnes / year of CDR and named DAC and mineralisation specifically. In general there is just a lack of awareness, the companies looking at very limited in number and very nascent, so no industry to advocate for policy.
Cleaning Up - US-China w David Sandalow
As well as being the lead author of the above report on mineralisation, David Sandalow is the Inaugural Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy and co-Director of the Energy and Environment Concentration at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He founded and directs the Center’s U.S.-China Program. This is the second conversation with David Sandalow on US-China relations I’ve covered this year - the first one was after the US climate summit in April. US-China collaboration on climate is absolutely critical, from a direct emissions perspective as well as maintaining and building supply chains etc. It was encouraging that they managed a joint statement on collaboration at COP26, even in the context of a fraught relationship. Key takeaway: Despite not being on track, there is a positive direction of travel on emissions trajectory - an encouraging trajectory of trajectory, if you will.
COPs are important venues to enable countries to make high-level commitments on a regular basis. The expectation shouldn’t ever be that a COP will ‘solve climate change’, because it won’t happen. [More on that on this Twitter thread flagged by Liebreich.]
Liebreich suggests there are really 3 COPs going on at the event - the official COP with the negotiation teams from the countries drafting the agreement, the activists applying pressure for more action, and the other non-state corporate actors.
On the activists, Liebreich notes that the narrative that nothing has been done to stop climate change isn’t accurate - the BAU scenario has moved from something like 5 degrees warming to now likely under 3 degrees with emissions possibly already having peaked. Encouraging sign - never been more finance and business people at COP before - more hands definitely arriving at the pump.
Original US-China climate agreement in 2014 very important for getting the Paris Agreement. The recent bilateral agreement in Glasgow, has some very specific goals and roadmap around methane reduction.
On China’s motivations for climate action - want to address climate whilst balancing needs of economic development. There is some element of diplomatic soft power, by trying to establish a leadership(ish) position, including their standing in the G77 group of developing countries which counts a number of low-lying island nations. They also see the economic opportunity to be a leader in the clean energy technologies of the future, especially EVs.
There was much ado about the last minute change to the Glasgow agreement from ‘phasing out coal’ to ‘phasing down coal’, a change demanded by India and China. Island states in particular were very unhappy about it. However, Sandalow / Liebriech suggests that the semantics are probably less important than the signal that coal is on its way out - for financiers, for new human capital.
Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) - Liebreich now much more optimistic on V2G given advances and cost declines in batteries. EVs are going to provide a huge storage / grid services opportunity with wider adoption. Sandalow is an advisor to Fermata Energy in the V2G space.
School buses especially good resource for V2G - very low usage per day, sitting idle during peak sunshine hours, can charge on cheap solar.