UNDO Enhanced Rock Weathering – UK

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Purchase type

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.

Credit vintage

2033

Verified by

Puro.earth

Background

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a highly scalable carbon removal technology that locks up CO2 for 100,000+ years. Rainwater contains CO2 from the atmosphere. When it rains the CO2 interacts with silicate rocks such as basalt, locking it up as a solid bicarbonate, where it’s stored. However, natural rock weathering takes hundreds of thousands of years and there really is no time to wait. UNDO enhances and accelerates this process by using crushed basalt, which has a greater surface area, and spreading it on agricultural land.

Why did we choose this project?

Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is a high permanence (10,000 - 100,000+ years) solution with significant additional co-benefits such as improvement to soil health, crop health, and crop yield, as well as enhancing rural livelihoods. The advantage of ERW lies in utilising existing production, infrastructure, and delivery systems for rapid scaling and implementation. UNDO focuses on basalt because it is low in heavy metals, rich in minerals and safe for agricultural use; plus, it is a by-product of the quarrying industry, which means they aren’t using additional energy.

Star fact

UNDO focuses on using basalt, which has naturally low levels of trace metals, but also releases minerals into the soil as the weathering occurs. UNDO works closely with farmers in each region, who have already seen crop yield increases of up to 19% since applying UNDO’s basalt onto their crop land.