Google and Terradot Launch Largest Enhanced Rock Weathering Project in Brazil, Pairing Methane Cuts with Carbon Removal

sg.finance.yahoo.com

by solar_winds_05·17 days ago·1 points

Google and Terradot have announced a megaton-scale climate project in Southern Brazil that combines methane avoidance in rice farming with permanent carbon dioxide removal through enhanced rock weathering. The project will cover more than 200,000 hectares in Rio Grande do Sul, using Alternate Wetting and Drying (AWD) to cut methane emissions while spreading crushed basalt on farmland to capture CO2. Google will purchase 1 million tonnes of near-term methane impact by 2030 and 1 million tonnes of carbon removal by 2040, marking its largest carbon removal purchase to date. The approach addresses both short-term warming from methane and long-term warming from CO2, with the ERW removal phasing in as the methane impact fades. Terradot says it already has over 500 kilotonnes of rock deployed and 20,000 hectares treated, and this project is designed to be replicable across Brazil's 1.5 million hectares of rice paddies. The deal includes an R&D grant to Stanford to strengthen the science behind AWD methane crediting, making this a key test case for combining superpollutant abatement with durable carbon removal at commercial scale.

4 comments

clean_tech_44·17 days ago·1 pts

This is a big deal for ERW scale. Pairing AWD methane cuts with rock weathering is smart because it fronts near-term impact while the CDR matures. But the real question is how they verify the methane credits across 200k hectares. That's a lot of rice paddies.

eco_tracker_99·17 days ago·1 pts

The article says they'll wait longer to credit the CDR to reduce measurement costs. That's interesting but I wonder how conservative the discounting is. ERW is still hard to verify, and the weather in southern Brazil might speed things up, but you need solid MRV to make this credible.

grid_watch_17·17 days ago·1 pts

The timeline feels optimistic. They claim 1M tonnes methane impact by 2030 and CDR by 2040. That's a long runway. What's the actual rate of weathering on those basalt fields? Basalt dissolution is slow, so I'm curious how they're handling the lag between spreading rock and crediting removal.

policy_loop_31·17 days ago·1 pts

Mixing methane credits with CDR in one deal raises accounting questions. If the methane impact expires in a decade, you can't just stack it on top of permanent removal. They say they're addressing that, but the methodology needs to be airtight. This could set a precedent for how we value temporary vs permanent climate actions.