Lithos Enhanced Rock Weathering

This project is a pre-purchase for carbon credits that will be generated in the future and can be retired when issued at a future date.

Lithos specialises in Enhanced Rock Weathering, a carbon removal method that involves applying up-cycled volcanic rock fines to actively managed land. Lithos partners with quarries that produce millions of tons of basalt dust as a waste byproduct, and carefully sources materials that are appropriate for rapid carbon capture in 2-3 years. Lithos then works with farmers to rapidly decarbonise the crops grown and improve soil health, while paying farmers carbon revenue. To ensure verified removals, Lithos only delivers ex-post and empirically quantified carbon removal.

Their nutrient-rich dust prioritises safety and cascading co-benefits for farmers. Basalt replaces liming, an essential aspect of farming to balance acidic soils, and releases many micronutrients not present in limestone. Their partner farmers accrue significant benefits including drought and pest resistance, crop yield increases of up to 40%, and topsoil regeneration. Lithos provides an easy-to-adopt path for underserved rural communities to tap into an additional, permanent and durable form of carbon removal.

When rainwater falls on the exposed basalt, it reacts and dissolves the rock, kicking off a chemical process that traps the CO₂ as bicarbonate. It makes its way into the oceans where it supports corals and shellfish and counteracts ocean acidification, ultimately turning into solid limestone under the ocean floor. In this form, it remains permanently locked away from the atmosphere. The technology developed by Lithos provides site-specific guidelines to maximise the amount of CO2 captured per ton of basalt and optimise each site’s crop yields.

Lithos has developed a simple, robust, and cost-effective approach based on measuring the abundance of trace and major elements in a soil sample. Its software and isotope trace model were built and tested live over several years of development by world-class researchers and scientists at Yale University and Georgia Tech. Lithos has sold permanent carbon removal to leading organisations in the field such as Frontier Climate, an industry-leading advance market commitment between Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey, and Microsoft.

3 Jul 2023

Seattle Washington, USA