New RMI Report: Mining and Carbon Dioxide Removal, A Responsible Path Forward

[Cara Nichole Maesano]

Hi Everyone,

The RMI CDR team and a large number of co-authors and contributors has just published a new report: Mining and Carbon Dioxide Removal, a Responsible Path Forward. 

This 148-page report assesses the opportunity for the mining industry to advance CDR at scale, and presents an action agenda to responsibly develop that opportunity. 

This report developed out of The Climate Map and the RMI CDR team’s earlier work on geochemical CDR, which itself built upon the pioneering work of many folk active on this list, including listmaster Greg Rau, Greg Dippel and his colleagues, the research of Phil Renforth and his team, Roger Aines’ team at LLNL, the research and entrepreneurial leadership of folk like Corey Myers and Laura Lammers, and many others.

Please check it out, and share with anyone interested. I and the RMI team look forward to this group’s reactions and questions, and thoughts on how to responsibly advance what could be a vital piece of the CDR puzzle.

Thanks!
Cara

 _____________________

Cara Nichole Maesano, Ph.D.

  |   cara.m...@gmail.com    |  +33 6 85 61 04 65 

[Greg Rau]

Thanks Cara for posting this. As I discuss over on Linkedin, yours is an impressive report, but I was disappointed in limiting the OAE-mining discussion only to Electrochemical Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement. This doesn't consider directly using waste alkaline rock for OAE (when safe to do so) or various processing steps that can make such waste alkalinity safe and effective for OAE. Why this matters is that, IMHO, OAE presents the largest potential consumer of alkalinity (if at the right price) on the planet, dwarfing any demand from OAE cousins ERW, WAE, RAE as featured in the report. Thus, if miners are interested in valorizing/selling their waste piles or products, the possibilities for OAE use need to be fully considered. 

Another factor is that OAE can do 60-80% more gross CDR per mass of alkalinity than in the case of "mineraleralization" where just carbonate mineral (rather than HCO3- + CO3--) is formed. Thus, the ease with which mineral CDR can be performed onsite at a mine should be compared against the value/revenue of performing CDR offsite (in the ocean). End of the day, miners (and policymakers) should go with/promote what provides the highest benefit/cost. I just hope that all of the possibilities will be fully considered in that calculation. 

Nice to know I may have helped inspire/inform the report, but apparently not enough. To be clear (to the list) I wasn't involved in creating or reviewing it.  Anyway, it will be interesting to see how the relationship between a potentially huge consumer of alkalinity (OAE) and a huge, potential supplier (miners) evolves in the coming years as the realities of long-lived, excess CO2 set in, and the need for CDR and CDR markets is then (finally) fully realized.

Thanks again,

Greg

 

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Greg H. Rau, Ph.D.

Senior Research Scientist
Institute of Marine Sciences
Univer. California, Santa Cruz
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Greg_Rau
Co-founder and manager, the Carbon Dioxide Removal Google group
Co-founder and Senior Scientist, Planetary Technologies, Inc.
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