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Harnessing Carbon Mineralization: A Powerful Tool to Combat Climate Change

Posted on September 8, 2023 by dishanth

Carbon mineralization, the process that converts carbon dioxide into solid carbonate minerals, holds immense potential to combat climate change. While it occurs naturally, humans can accelerate this process through various methods.

By refining techniques such as biochar utilization, enhanced weathering, and ocean fertilization, we can unlock the power of carbon mineralization to effectively reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change.

There are many ways in which we can accelerate the amount of carbon we sequester using the process. Biochar, a form of charcoal derived from biomass, offers a sustainable solution to enhance carbon mineralization. When integrated into the soil, biochar amends its composition, enhancing its capacity to sequester carbon. The porous structure of biochar acts as a long-term reservoir, promoting carbon retention while fostering beneficial microbial activity in the soil. This method bolsters soil fertility and carbon storage, contributing to climate change mitigation and sustainable agriculture.

Enhanced weathering harnesses the natural process of rock breakdown to expedite carbon mineralization. Techniques involve accelerating rock weathering by introducing acidic or basic substances or fragmenting rocks into smaller particles. Carbon dioxide reacts with the minerals, forming stable carbonate compounds that can endure for centuries. By leveraging enhanced weathering, we can significantly augment carbon sequestration rates, offering a tangible solution to counteract rising carbon dioxide levels.

Ocean fertilization presents a compelling avenue to store carbon on a large scale. By introducing essential nutrients, such as iron or phosphorus, to the ocean, the growth of algae is enhanced. These algae act as carbon sinks, absorbing atmospheric carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Subsequently, when the algae die and sink to the ocean floor, they carry the sequestered carbon along, where it can remain locked away for centuries or even longer. Ocean fertilization holds promise in its ability to mitigate climate change while fostering marine ecosystems.

Carbon mineralization represents a powerful tool in the fight against climate change, offering several noteworthy advantages over other methods:

Substantial Carbon Removal: By accelerating carbon mineralization, we can remove billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually. This significant reduction in greenhouse gas concentrations would directly curb global warming and its associated impacts.
Leveraging Natural Processes: Carbon mineralization harnesses and enhances naturally occurring processes. By utilizing and accelerating these processes, we minimize the need for technologically complex and energy-intensive solutions, leading to a more sustainable approach to climate change mitigation.
Restoration of Carbon Balance: Historically, human activities such as deforestation and fossil fuel combustion have disrupted the carbon balance by releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Carbon mineralization offers an opportunity to restore this balance by actively sequestering carbon and reversing the damage caused by human-induced carbon emissions.

While carbon mineralization shows tremendous promise, these are early days. Implementing carbon mineralization techniques on a large scale requires substantial investment and infrastructure development. The costs associated with establishing and maintaining these methods may present challenges, necessitating collaborative efforts from governments, private sectors, and research institutions.

It is crucial to carefully assess the potential environmental impacts of carbon mineralization techniques. For instance, ocean fertilization may disrupt marine ecosystems if not executed responsibly. Thorough environmental impact assessments and regulatory frameworks are essential to ensure the sustainable deployment of carbon mineralization methods.

Carbon mineralization offers an innovative and promising approach to mitigating climate change by actively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Through methods like biochar utilization, enhanced weathering, and ocean fertilization, we have the potential to achieve substantial carbon sequestration, restore the carbon balance, and forge a more livable planet.

Source Happy Eco News

PepsiCo, looking ahead with its pep+ programme, gets ready

Posted on February 16, 2023February 16, 2023 by dishanth

In this interview with Roberta Barberi, Vice President, Global Water and Environmental Solutions, we hear about what PepsiCo is doing to adapt sustainably
For our readership, can you please explain what the new initiative PepsiCo Positive (pep+) is?

PepsiCo Positive (pep+) launched in 2021 and is our business transformation strategy that puts both sustainability and human capital at the center of everything we do. It is a holistic program that is shifting how we create growth and shared value for our stakeholders and shareholders, driving action across three main pillars: Positive Agriculture, which is focused on sourcing crops and ingredients in ways that restore the earth and farming communities; Positive Value Chain, which is helping to build a circular and inclusive value chain; and Positive Choices, which is inspiring people to make choices that create more smiles for themselves and the planet.

What prompted this new program and what do you hope to get out of it?

The threat of climate change is very real and we are already seeing the impacts on our business. We are a company built on agriculture and reliant on a steady supply of crops. We are already seeing growing conditions for the farmers we work with become more challenged due to climate change. We need to mitigate that impact and also build resilience for the future.

We also know consumers are demanding more of companies and have a growing interest in where the brands they buy come from and in ensuring they are sustainably produced. This presents opportunities for a company like PepsiCo as we have over one billion consumption moments a day and can play a key role in bringing consumers choice around the brands they buy.

What are some problems PepsiCo has with its suppliers in a way that makes the production process relatively unsustainable?

There are three main challenges when we think of Scope 3 and our supply base:

Capability and capacity: Outside of some of our large suppliers, there is a broad need across our supply chain for more education and capacity building to address climate change.
Technological unlocks and access to resources: achieving our goals will require our value chain partners to deploy new technologies. Some of these technologies are still on the horizon or in early stages of commercialization, requiring further investment and testing before scaling up.
Data management and sharing: as our value chain partners take action, they will need to report on progress. Data sharing is a challenge that we are working through as it has to be simple yet reliable and needs to be digitized and automated.

What are some of the programs that PepsiCo has implemented to support its suppliers?

We are working with farmers to drive the adoption of regenerative agricultural practices. To support this ambition we have launched the Positive Agriculture Playbook, which helps farmers set, achieve and report their own regenerative agriculture and climate goals. We are also financing innovation through a Positive Agriculture Outcomes Fund, providing a unique way to reduce the risk and cost of projects.
We are requiring our suppliers to set a Science Based Target on climate and to shift to renewable electricity. To help with that transition we have created pep+REnew, which provides resources to help suppliers better understand renewable electricity purchasing and jointly invest in renewable energy projects through group power purchase agreements.

With pep+ in place, and assuming it is effective, where does PepsiCo hope to be in the next five years?

We have set ambitious goals for our business to reach by 2030 across all three pillars of our pep+ initiative. A few of those goals include:

Positive Agriculture: Spreading the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices across 7 Million acres, approximately equal to our entire agricultural footprint around the world
Positive Value Chain: Reduce absolute greenhouse gas emissions across our direct operations (Scope 1 and 2) by 75% and our indirect value chain (Scope 3) by 40% (against a 2015 baseline)
Positive Choices: Develop and deploy disruptive and sustainable packaging solutions, such as bio-and paper-based packaging and reusable/no packaging options
Our vision is to be the global leader in beverages and convenient foods by winning with pep+ and using our global reach and expertise to drive solutions at scale.

Source edible

The ‘secret weapon’ in fight against climate change — planting eelgrass

Posted on September 22, 2022September 22, 2022 by dishanth

We’ve all heard of planting trees to combat climate change. Now, a team in Nova Scotia is working on “reforestation” for the ocean.

Dalhousie University and the Ecology Action Centre in Halifax are managing a project this summer to plant an often overlooked species — eelgrass — in the race to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

To the untrained eye, eelgrass looks like your average seaweed, but project lead Kristina Boerder says it’s much more.

“It’s a bit of a treasure, a secret treasure. Not a lot of people know about it,” said Boerder.

Eelgrass boosts biodiversity along shorelines by providing shelter for young fish, crustaceans and even food for some waterfowl. It also has many benefits for humans.

Eelgrass stores carbon and methane in its root system

“It protects our coasts from erosion. It’s good for water quality. And also it stores our emissions. So it’s a secret weapon in our fight [against] climate change,” she says.

Seagrasses on the whole absorb carbon and methane through photosynthesis and sequester them in their root systems. One study estimates an acre of seagrass can store over 335 kilograms of carbon per year — the equivalent of carbon emitted by a car driving from Yarmouth, N.S. to Dingwall, N.S. eight times.

Researchers are working to see how effective eelgrass is at carbon storage in Nova Scotia specifically.

The group is using different methods of planting eelgrass to see which is most effective.

Its carbon-storing root system also helps moderate levels of acid in the ocean, which are rising due to climate change and damaging the health of some marine life.

But eelgrass meadows are shrinking, according to researchers due to damage from coastal development, pollution, invasive species and some types of fisheries mooring and anchoring practices.

This loss of seagrass meadows is a global phenomenon. One study estimated the world loses up to two football fields worth of seagrass each hour. Boerder says something needs to be done.

Boerder, along with students from Dalhousie and volunteers from the Ecology Action Centre, have spent the summer with snorkels and wetsuits out in the water, working to regenerate this precious plant.

Amy Irvine is a marine biology masters student involved with the project who endures long, muddy, cold days to plant the eelgrass.

“When you see all the trees around you, you recognize how important they are. But then when you come to the ocean, you don’t think about this,” she said, holding up a piece of the eelgrass.

The study

The team’s days are long. Starting at 7 a.m. and going until 6 in the evening.

They meet at Cherry Hill Beach to harvest eelgrass from a lush bed where they suit up, wade in and fill buckets with the green grass.

“This is actually the easiest part of the day,” said Irvine. This area is shallow and warm compared to the area where the eelgrass is transplanted.

The planters swim out, with Boerder following them in a boat. She hands them the grass and they dive down through the cloudy water to plant it.

They are trying different planting methods to see which is most effective.

“We don’t know what works best for Nova Scotian Water. So we’ve got to explore that first,” said Boerder.

The experiment consists of four different methods: planting seeds on their own, planting seeds in burlap sacks, planting sods, or the full plant with its roots, and planting shoots. They’ve planted over 6,000 eelgrass plants using these methods.

When it comes to improving biodiversity, planter Lauren La Porte says she’s already seeing some results.

“Every time we’re snorkeling, we see little critters swimming along in there, we see crabs and lobsters, and those are super beneficial to our local fisheries. ”

Civilian science
Jordy Thomson, the senior marine coordinator for the Ecology Action Centre, is happy to see volunteers coming out to help plant the eelgrass.

“We want to build up public momentum for an interest in conservation of eelgrass as a really critical coastal species for us here in Nova Scotia.”

Thomson says community involvement has been key for the project. People offered up their private land for the group to provide access to ocean beds, and volunteers have been helping collect data on eelgrass by filming from their kayaks.

Many people have also been sending information about eelgrass through the iNaturalist app.

INaturalist is an app that encourages citizen science and the Ecology Action Centre asks people to upload photos of eelgrass beds to the app to help map their distribution and better understand their health throughout the province.

“We really are looking for anybody in Nova Scotia who lives or spends time along the coast to get involved and to send in some photos of eelgrass meadows in their area,” Thomson said.

Source CBC

China’s Five-Year Plan ‘Underwhelming’ on Climate

Posted on March 9, 2021 by dishanth

On Friday, China set out an economic blueprint for the next five years, which was expected to substantiate the goal set out last fall by President Xi Jinping for the country to reach net-zero emissions before 2060 and hit peak emissions by 2030.

While the plan calls for a “major push” on clean energy development, a few aspects have left climate experts with questions about how exactly the world’s largest emitter will hit its stated climate goals. For example, the plan did not include a ban on new coal projects, nor did it set a “carbon cap” to define what peak emissions will be, instead setting a carbon intensity target that is the same as in the previous five-ear plan.

However, some are hopeful that the government will announce more detailed regulations on carbon-intensive construction and manufacturing industries later this year, and that more details will be laid out in an upcoming separate five-year plan for the energy sector. Fan Dai, director of the California-China Climate Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, told Quartz that the plan is “simply aggregating existing targets from last year.”

Dai added that “[t]here’s a lot of room for further development and ambition, especially around those targets that were missing that we hoped would be included.”

As reported by The Guardian:

China will reduce its “emissions intensity” – the amount of CO2 produced per unit of GDP – by 18% over the period 2021 to 2025, but this target is in line with previous trends, and could lead to emissions continuing to increase by 1% a year or more. Non-fossil fuel energy is targeted to make up 20% of China’s energy mix, leaving plenty of room for further expansion of the country’s coal industry.

Swithin Lui, of the Climate Action Tracker and NewClimate Institute, said: “[This is] underwhelming and shows little sign of a concerted switch away from a future coal lock-in. There is little sign of the change needed [to meet net zero].”

Zhang Shuwei, chief economist at Draworld Environment Research Centre, said: “As the first five-year plan after China committed to reach carbon neutrality by 2060, the 14th five-year plan was expected to demonstrate strong climate ambition. However, the draft plan presented does not seem to meet the expectations. The international community expected China’s climate policy to ‘jump,’ but in reality it is still crawling.”

Source Eco Watch