Cascade Climate’s Post

A reminder that the deadline for Cascade Climate's RFP for Enhanced Rock Weathering Field Data Partnership Grants is next Friday, December 20th! We are soliciting research proposals between $20,000 and $200,000 that aim to collect high-quality ERW field datasets on existing deployments, which will help to address the R&D gaps laid out in our recently published “Foundations for Carbon Dioxide Removal Quantification in ERW Deployments”. Additional detail on the opportunity in the comments and original post below. John Sanchez Hara Wang Pritha G.

🌍 Today we are pleased to share that our Head of Science and Research, Dr. Christina Larkin, Ph.D. and our Impact and Science Lead, Dr. Philipp Swoboda are attending the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly next week! The annual EGU General Assembly is the largest and most prominent European geosciences event with over 16,000 scientists from all over the world each year. 🚀 Our scientists are leading the way in getting ERW science and the carbon industry on the same page. 📚 Dr Christina Larkin will present a talk on “Alignment of industry, regulation and academia for quantification of carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering”, as part of a session on “Enhanced Rock Weathering and River Alkalinity Enhancement for Carbon Dioxide Removal.” 🔬The presentation will explore the potential of Enhanced Weathering (EW) as a method for carbon dioxide removal, and how collaboration between industry and academia is essential to finding the best methods for tracking carbon removal and storage. 🌟 We are proud to participate and to pioneer the field of Enhanced Weathering, in order to develop a scalable solution for climate change! ➡ Find out more at: https://lnkd.in/e2ZX-5xc #ClimateScience #CarbonRemoval #ScienceConference #EnvironmentalResearch

Extreme climate events endanger groundwater quality and stability when rainwater evades natural purification processes in the soil. This was demonstrated in long-term groundwater analyses using new analytical methods, as described in a recent study in Nature Communications. As billions of people rely on sufficient and clean groundwater for drinking, understanding the impacts of climate extremes on future water security is crucial. In a novel experimental approach, Dr. Simon Schroeter and Gerd Gleixner from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry performed long-term groundwater analyses in Germany with a large research team from the German Collaborative Research Center #AquaDiva. https://lnkd.in/eGMH_w7K

Today, Cascade put out their “Foundations” document about quantifying carbon removal from enhanced rock weathering (ERW). It’s the culmination of months of learning and discussion across multiple stakeholders, including us. The process surfaced useful insights, such as centering the importance of data transparency from ERW deployments. It also highlighted that ERW quantification is a hard problem. We still have a lot to learn, but this document is an exciting step and we hope it sparks more important work in this area. https://lnkd.in/e7qK4ECD

New developments in Enhanced Rock Weathering (ERW) ➡️ ERW has emerged as one of the most exciting removal pathways today, with its potential for scale and high-durability through its acceleration of the natural carbon sequestration cycle. Last week Cascade Climate released its “Foundations for Carbon Dioxide Removal Quantification in Enhanced Rock Weathering Deployments”, a community-developed document focused on distilling the best available science and considerations for quantifying each component of ERW carbon and cation fluxes to drive quantification rigour behind ERW operations. Cascade followed up the Foundations document with its ERW Data Quarry, and its MRV Cost Estimator, pulling together >1,000 global measurement cost estimates from quarries, academic and commercial laboratories, and ERW suppliers. https://lnkd.in/e7qK4ECD Today, Puro.earth released an update to its ERW methodology, with more detail around key MRV requirements, and incorporating new developments in weathering science and field data. These augmented guidelines allow Puro-certified weathering projects to more confidently implement monitoring and reporting (MR), while simplifying the verification process for auditors (V). https://lnkd.in/gC7VFmXV #ERW #CDR

Largest Recorded Methane Leak Detected in Kazakh Oil Well. by Hugo Ritmico - Madrid, Spain (SPX) An international team led by Dr. Luis Guanter from the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV) has reported the largest methane leak ever documented in an oil well. The well, situated in the Karaturun East field in Kazakhstan, was the site of this unprecedented emission. Published in Environmental Science and Technology Letters and highlighted by Nature, the study uses satellite data from missions like TROPOMI, GHGSat, PRISMA, EnMAP, and EMIT, along with Sentinel-2 and Landsat multispectral radiometers, to quantify and monitor this significant methane release. The LARS group at IIAMA-UPV discovered that the incident, which created a 10-meter-high fire and a 15-meter-wide crater, surpassed previous notable leaks such as Aliso Canyon (2015), Ohio (2018), and Louisiana (2019). The leak, starting on June 9, 2023, released approximately 131,000 tonnes of methane over 205 days. "Thousands of tonnes of water were injected to seal the well. Finally, the gas flow was stopped on December 25, 2023, by injecting drilling mud," explained Luis Guanter. The study involved contributions from LARS-IIAMA researchers Javier Roger, Adriana Valverde, Itziar Irakulis, and Javier Gorrono, as well as experts from international institutions including the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Kayrros, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the United Nations Environment Programme. https://lnkd.in/dQd5M6T2

I finally get to share publicly something that I've been keeping under wraps for months: a policy project for reducing data centers' water consumption in the Great Salt Lake Basin! As you've seen in the news, data centers use gobs of electricity. Less known is that they also use massive amounts of water for cooling. Rebecca Kilberg, Mary-Clare Bosco, and I chose to focus on the Great Salt Lake Basin because it has attracted dozens of data centers (it has been nicknamed the "silicon slopes"), and it is markedly water stressed. The potential collapse of the Great Salt Lake has been called an "environmental nuclear bomb." Three million people live close to the lake, and 10 million migratory birds depend on it annually. It's the lifeblood of Salt Lake City's economy. If the lake dries up, arsenic in the lake bed will poison the air and render Salt Lake City uninhabitable. This is a water crisis that has the potential to become a climate crisis, public health crisis, and economic crisis all at once. Data centers are still a relatively small piece of the water-use pie here compared to farming and mineral extraction, but the industry—as we all know—is growing rapidly. There are about two dozen private data centers and the huge NSA Utah Data Center in the Great Salt Lake Basin. We couldn't find any public data about data center water usage in Utah, and we were rebuffed by company PR folks and the NSA media desk (never expected to be emailing them but here we are). So, we put on our investigative journalist hats and used a tool called a GRAMA Request (Government Records Accountability and Management Act, essentially the whimsically named Utah-specific version of the Freedom of Information Act) and we requested water use information for all of the data centers. We compiled the first (!) data center water usage database for Utah and used this to provide recommendations to the Great Salt Lake Commission—tasked with maintaining a strategic plan for the lake as well as coordinating work between the government agencies. We recommended that the Commission set a target for data center water usage effectiveness and also collaborate with local partners to continue the data gathering work we started. We were lucky to have such a wonderful stakeholder in Tim Davis, Deputy Great Salt Lake Commissioner. Thanks for your initial guidance and for embracing our recommendations! Thanks also to the Aspen Policy Academy for supporting this project, and especially to Betsy Cooper Maitreyi Sistla Brooke Hunter Andrew Lewis Kateri G. Constance Moore for being so wonderful to work with. Thanks for the resources and help along the way Marisa Weinberg Data Center Map Nate Carlisle Shaolei Ren and the many city clerks who dealt with my GRAMA requests! Link here: https://lnkd.in/edvMPkjC #datacenter #water #climate #policy #Utah

Many of us have heard that data centers require a tremendous amount of energy (which results in huge CO2 releases). This is an important look at the massive water usage of these data centers too— especially in Water stressed regions. Great work Jonathan Gilmour and team!

After a thorough public consultation with hundreds of comments, Isometric today certified the world’s most comprehensive protocol for durable carbon removal through Enhanced Weathering (EW). The protocol details how Enhanced Weathering technologies—which accelerate natural chemical weathering of rocks—can be monitored, reported on, and verified so that buyers can purchase Enhanced Weathering carbon credits with confidence. Innovative project developers Eion and InPlanet have signed up to the protocol. Previous methods of measuring Enhanced Weathering have relied primarily on desk-based modeling to estimate the quantity of carbon removal. Isometric’s protocol is the first to set out in detail the direct measurements of weathering and bicarbonate storage needed in order to issue carbon credits that represent genuine climate impact. All Isometric protocols are developed in line with the Isometric Standard, the world’s most stringent set of rules for carbon removal. This protocol was created in collaboration between Isometric’s in-house Science Team and reviewers from Isometric’s independent network of over 200 scientists. It was also informed by the outputs of a workshop with key enhanced weathering academics and industry participants, hosted by Isometric in San Francisco in December. With this certified protocol, any Enhanced Weathering supplier who is signed up can conduct carbon removal activities and—if measurement, reporting, and verification is successful—Isometric will then issue credits.

NEW #PAPER PUBLISHED: A Review on Mathematical Modeling of Microbial and Plant Induced Permafrost Carbon Feedback 🌍✍️ Authors: Niloofar Fasaeiyan, Sophie Jung, Richard Boudreault P.Phys., MEng, MBA, Sust. D., Lukas Arenson, and Pooneh Maghoul (Sustainable Infrastructure and Geoengineering Lab (SIGLab), and BGC Engineering Inc.) We are thrilled to announce our latest publication in Science of the Total Environment (STOTEN), which explores the critical roles of #microbial activity and #plant interactions in the release of #carbon from #thawing #permafrost, a significant contributor to global #climate dynamics. This comprehensive #review synthesizes experimental findings and theoretical approaches, emphasizing the necessity for advanced #modeling tools to accurately predict the dynamics of permafrost carbon feedback. This study examines a variety of modeling techniques, from established soil #respiration models to those specifically tailored for permafrost, revealing the complex interplay of #biogeochemical processes. We advocate for the adoption of integrated models that encompass thermo-hydro-biogeochemical processes, essential for understanding the nuanced behavior of permafrost #ecosystems under the influence of climate change. 🔗 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/e4mqR6Gj