S2E23: Can green sand beaches sequester carbon at scale?—w/ Kelly Erhart & Tom Green of Project Vesta Reversing Climate Change

Carbon dioxide levels are double what they were prior the Industrial Revolution. And we know that reducing emissions is simply not going to be enough to avoid widespread ecological collapse. We need strategies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere at scale. So, what if green sand beaches could provide a promising solution to climate change that is nature-based, affordable, and can be deployed around the globe?

Kelly Erhart and Tom Green are the Cofounder and Executive Director, respectively, of Project Vesta, an organization dedicated to capturing a trillion tonnes of excess CO2 in rock through coastal enhanced weathering. Kelly and Tom join Ross to explain how they are creating green sand beaches with olivine to remove CO2 from the atmosphere faster and store it in limestone on the sea floor. They discuss the benefits and potential risks of enhanced weathering in an aquatic environment as well as the permanence of Project Vesta’s sequestration process.

Kelly and Tom share the news of how Stripe came to be their first customer, describing how the nonprofit is funded and what’s behind their decision to make the technology open-source. Listen in to understand how the enhanced weathering process might help solve the ocean acidification problem and how Project Vesta sees their solution's scalability and cost-effectiveness.



Resources

Project Vesta

Project Vesta’s Research Page

Project Vesta on Instagram

Project Vesta on Facebook

Project Vesta on Twitter

Eric Matzner on Carbon Removal Newsroom EP018

Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide from Climate.gov

‘Exoskeleton Dissolution with Mechanoreceptor Damage in Larval Dungeness Crab Related to Severity of Present-Day Ocean Acidification Vertical Gradients’ in Science of the Total Environment

Stripe’s Negative Emissions Commitment

Stripe’s Partnership with Project Vesta

Air Miners

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