Hi HN, I am Eric Matzner, the Co-Founder of Project Vesta and I have been responding to all of the questions on this thread and will continue to answer them, but I just wanted to say thank you for all of the interest. When YC posted their Carbon Removal Technologies Requests for Startups page[1] about 8 months ago, I responded to a comment on the post where @btilly[2] mentioned one of the research papers that our project is based on.[3] We were in stealth mode back then, as I was still putting the project together, but the positive response there helped energize and inform our operations, so thank all of you for that as well. I do not personally know the person who posted this today either, but thank you for posting it (although we were not prepared for this amount of inbound interest today). Please note that we will get back to everyone who submitted our "Get Involved" form over the next couple of days. Thank you to all who donated as well for your support, the HN community has been very generous and we appreciate your enthusiasm and support for the project.
I can also give you a project update that we have not announced anywhere else as of yet. After our launch on Earth Day in April, we received an individual contribution/grant that has given us enough funding to take significant steps forward towards getting our pilot project on a beach. It has greatly accelerated our progress and we are now moving more rapidly to make this a reality. We are engaged with the Dutch independent institute for applied research in water and the subsurface, Deltares[4], to help us design the pilot project experiment.
Project Vesta is a non-profit, globally decentralized entity and we are looking for additional partner universities, groups, and others to team up with. We are looking for input on our experimental design from researchers, engineers, and experts in the fields related to this project (such as geochemistry and the marine sciences). The design of the experiment is crucial and has to be rigorous in terms of calculating the accelerated weathering rate of olivine in the open system of a beach and in terms of demonstrating marine safety so that the results will be accepted as definitive by the scientific community and the public.
Our greatest fear right now is that we will spend a year running a study and then when the results come back, the data will not be accepted for one reason or another and we are asked to go back to get more data. We and the planet frankly do not have the time to wait another year, so we want to make sure we do it right the first time around and have the right stakeholders involved before it is deployed. To make sure it is done properly, we want to run the experimental design by as many relevant parties as possible so that when the data comes back we have an accepted consensus that is irrefutable in terms of the weathering rate and safety data, so we can move forward with deployment.
If you want to join our scientific advisory board or just help give input on our experimental design, please reach out on our Get Involved [5] page -> https://projectvesta.org/get-involved/
We are also looking for additional donors/family offices/etc and partners who want to sidestep the climate change debate and move forward on taking direct action to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While we are proponents of cutting emissions and agree it needs to be done, we want to get started removing as much CO2 from the atmosphere as we can until we are back down to Pre-Industrial CO2 levels. We believe that by making extremely effective, permanent, and cheap CO2 removal available, we can dramatically change the conversation and force action. Please reach out if you would like to help.
Once you’re starting with this, you’ll get backlash from the public about turning beaches green.
Have you considered marketing the task as “putting olivine in shallow waters” instead of “putting olivine on beaches”?
“To carry out this plan, it will take a volume of 7 cubic miles of olivine rock placed on 2% of the world high-energy, tropical shelf-seas each year.”
To put this in perspective, the global annual oil production is about 1 cubic mile [1], and concrete production is about half a cubic mile [2], [3] (4.4 BN tons at 2.4 t/m3 = 1.83 cubic km = 0.44 cubic miles)
The first question that came to my mind was how much CO2 would be generated by moving this amount of rock (if they theoretically were able to produce it, of course)?
That’s to counteract for 100% of emissions, right? A more reasonable goal would be to go for 10%. Still very ambitious, but could be done and would have a pretty huge impact. Combine that carbon pricing, technological advancements, and other sequestration schemes, and targets for avoiding environmental catastrophe seem achievable.
What matters is not the volume but the cost. A back-of-the-envolope calculation shows that olivine rock is about 20 times cheaper than crude oil.
Olivine rock: 10-25$/ton
Crude oil: $60/barrel, so about $400/ton
Their website reads that "A volume of 7 cubic miles (11 km^3) of olivine, or around 30 Gigatons, is needed each year. This is less than half the volume of construction materials and less than that of fossil fuel equivalents mined yearly".
If olivine rock needs to be mined in comparable amount to fossil fuels to offset global CO2 production, it will cost about 5% of the fossil fuels, i.e., the price of oil will grow by about 5% globally, which is not much.
I would be significantly less skeptical about this if it were significantly less ambitious.
I'm sure there are low-hanging opportunities where this makes a good amount of sense. Places where there are olivine-rich mine tailings -- somehow uncontaminated by heavy metals -- adjacent to a tropical shoreline. In those instances, then yeah, I'm sure it makes good sense to just shove them over to the beach and let decomposition do its thing.
However, pitching this as THE solution to carbon sequestration is much more problematic. At gigaton scale, you're going to run out of mine tailings quite quickly. After that, you're talking about mining fresh olivine, from locations that are increasingly distant to tropical shorelines.
This would incur tremendous energy costs, and I'm skeptical that its balance would work in favour of olivine. How much does energy is required to mine a 1,000kg of olivine? How much energy is required to move it (say) 100km to the shore? If that net energy were applied to other forms of carbon capture, would it sequester more than 1,250kg of Co2? If so, then in that instance at least, olivine sequestration would be a bad idea.
Even if the energy balance works out favourably, I'm still not sure it's a good idea. Mining doesn't just have energy impacts, it has tremendous land impacts. 7 cubic miles per year of olivine is a very large amount of material. If you don't like the local impacts of mining gold and copper and coal and shale and sand and gravel, then this would have an environmental impact similar to all of those put together. Which is too much impact. It is probably preferable to pursue a less-efficient sequestration strategy than to engage in something with this kind of side-effects.
So I'm afraid that the way this is being presented will trigger a lot of skepticism / opposition. This is a shame, because in certain edge-cases I suspect it's quite a good idea. Even if this only addresses a small percentage of the total problem, every little bit helps. I'd hate to see the baby get tossed out with the bathwater.
We are not pitching this as "THE" solution, but as "a" solution that can scale up to and beyond the global level of yearly CO2 emissions. Even after the "low-hanging opportunities" it makes a good amount of sense, as mining olivine is not difficult and there are large reserves on every continent.
You are incorrect that olivine mining at a large scale would incur tremendous energy costs, it will not. I would suggest you check out this model of a 5,000 tonne per day open pit mining for porphyritic rock. (This model also includes 5,000 tonnes per day of "waste" rock which will likely not be wasted in our use case) http://costs.infomine.com/costdatacenter/miningcostmodel.asp...
In this model, which is not in any way optimized for environmental efficiency, it requires a diesel fuel quantity of around 4,751 liters/day to mine the 5,000 tonnes. At 2.68 kg of CO2 per 1 liter of diesel, that generates 12,732.68 kg of CO2 per day. That 12,732.68 kg = 12.73268 tonnes of CO2. The 5,000 tonnes of olivine mined will eventually weather and sequester 6,250 tonnes of CO2 (1 tonne of olivine sequesters 1.25 tonnes of CO2), for a net capture of 6,237 tons at the mine.
We have life cycle assessment that calculates the CO2 penalty and loss on efficiency, including milling and transport to locations less than 300 km (186 mi) at around a 4% loss [1].
Just for your information and for others, from a financial perspective the mining in that model costs $7.32 per ton, and then the transport and milling/crushing only costs about $3 per ton, so olivine could be transported to a beach at around $10/ton, with the price per ton of CO2 sequestered at less than $10.
You are also incorrect regarding the mining impact. The mining of things like shale requires fracking and the injection of sand and chemicals, our mining is simply open pit. Essentially, you open a pit on the surface and simply dig it up. As mentioned above, it is not all that energy intensive either.
For global CO2 level removal in terms of mining, it would likely require 30-50 mines in the wet tropics, preferably at a level of greater than 100 million tons/year (due to economies of scale).[2] There are large reserves on every continent and plenty near coastlines[3]. If you wanted to open fewer mines, you could theoretically find a few large reserves. For example, there is an open pit mine in Bingham Canyon that has an excavated volume of over 25 km^3, which would be the equivalent of 2-3 years worth of the volume of material needed.
Don't worry about this idea getting "tossed out with the bathwater," if anything we will actually be removing CO2 from the bathwater and de-acidifying it at the same time ;)
I would be less skeptical if they weren't selling jewelry.
It's a shame because the responses given here on HN seem well thought out, yet the site gave me the impression of making a quick buck on peridot necklaces. I mean, is that really going to fund anything meaningful?
We are aware of potential issues with nickel contamination in olivine and will be testing/monitoring for it. Nickel is found in formations of olivine where nickel replaces some of the magnesium ions in their crystal lattices, however, if we do have a large reserve with high content of nickel, we have a technique available to plant nickel hyperaccumulating plants above the crushed olivine to phytomine the nickel content. It is then possible to put the plants in a furnace and get 10% ore back, which we would then sell and use to further fund operations...
"In simple laboratory tests small nickel ingots were produced from the plant ashes. Sowing these plants on appropriate soils and harvesting them at the end of the growing season makes for an environmentally friendly way of recovering nickel. Because these plants extract nickel from the olivine lattice, for every ton of nickel in the plants 330 tons of olivine must weather, equivalent to a capture of 400 tons of CO 2 . Weathering proceeds faster under vegetation. The introduction of this method could revolutionize the nickel mining industry."
See page 8-9 of the Green Cookery Book here for more in-depth information on the technique: https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_103/9/
Or see this paper specifically on the topic: Schuiling, R.D. (2013) Farming nickel from non-ore deposits, combined with CO2 sequestration.
Reminds me of The Simpsons episode where they let Lizards get rid of the pigeons, then plan to have snakes kill the lizards, then have gorillas eat the snakes. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9yruQM1ggc
"massive application of olivine in agriculture may cause imbalances in plant nutrition, notably at low Ca availability, and will bring Ni into the food chain."
This is cool. I’ve thought about carbon sequestration a lot using big nuke plants/solar plants+air liquidification+some plant to distill off and turn the CO2 into like methane or some hydrocarbon. My thought here was put half back in the ground and sell the other half to fund the installation/make sure we don’t run out of hydrocarbons. The olivine process, though, is probably easier because it takes much less infrastructure and is more fire and forget. We need some method for sequestration running at scale now (probably multiple). With the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere already, the amount continuing to go in, and the amount of inaction we’re pretty fucked. The current solution (getting the whole damn world to reduce emissions) is unrealistic. Even if we stop putting more in, it’s already there and we’re already fucked. It’s a day late and a dollar short. The countries willing to face this need some way to save us without the cooperation of the countries with their heads in the sand. Sequestration is a good answer for that.
I'm sceptical. Are there calculations on shipping for the olivine? If it's primarily mined in certain parts of the world it's going to have a big cost in shipping - there's a reason why regular sand is sourced as locally as possible. It weighs a lot, which means that it's expensive for both the wallet and the environment to ship.
With the ability to reduce pH levels in the surrounding water this seems like something the Australian Government would be very interested in investing in to save the Great Barrier Reef.
That could be a good pilot site as the government has said they're going to spend $500MM on saving the reef so money is already available if the technology works.
So we need to mine and strip the earth of materials at rates far beyond anything we’ve ever done before, then load it up on a fleet of ships larger than anything we have today, all burning the filthiest bunker fuel there is at unprecedented rates to manage the largest shipping operation ever, and dump it all on isolated, natural beaches far from human eyes. Plus we need to check the purity of all of this to ensure no nickel wipes out life as we know it, since inspecting a quantity of stone greater than our entire global fuel harvest operations is a reasonable expectation.
I’m sure no cost cutting or harm would come about from this. These companies would definitely be ethical with their operations from start to finish, and they’d be held to high environmental scrutiny.
Alternatively, we plant trees, reduce meat consumption, and buy local so that we’re not shipping shit back and forth from across the planet.
At first I read this and was like "okay, you want to dump 30 Gigatons of Olivine per year for 'a number of years' on tropical beaches"
That sounds crazy, considering we pump out +10Gigatons of CO2 per year as it is. But, does the science actually make sense in that if we actually did that, we'd end up with less CO2 in the atmosphere, and subsequently the oceans? That would seem to make this a great tool (possibly among many) to clean up our mess once/if/when we stop putting so much CO2 out there in the first place.
Edit: I do wonder if this process would raise the alkalinity of the ocean too much in the other direction. I can't find the info on this on their site, there is so much to read!
Hey, we are fucking up the environment by altering such a complex system way too fast for it to keep balance. Maybe if we alter it on a whole new scale with our limited understanding of the consequences, we can fix things up?
To be more constructive, this is exactly the kind of hubris that gets me very wary of technoscience.
Let's assume Project Vesta is run by well intentionned folks and has the potential to offer a net positive in a distant future. Even in those conditions, such a project serves the toxic political agenda of not facing the elephant in the room: our growth based economic model is not sustainable and we need to transition away from it.
Agreed, but climate change is a monumental issue and even if we assume the government can act in a timely manner to shift the economic model to one that is more environmentally friendly, that won't be enough to fix the problem. I don't think this should be viewed as a cop out, or an alternative to economic change, but rather as something that augments it and moves us in the right direction.
Could you explain more what you mean about our growth based economic model not being sustainable? This is a topic that I'm fairly new to and the only substantial thing I've read about it is Tyler Cowen's "Stubborn Attachments" which presented what I found to be a very compelling argument that long term economic growth is very good and is in fact the only sustainable way forward.
I've been hoping to read some counter arguments to that idea to round out my exposure to the topic.
Hey, heads up to anyone associated with Project Vesta... currently your webshop shows an empty store[0].
Also, if executed right then this project could market itself. Travel "influencers" love to show off unique beaches and destinations, and uniquely coloured beaches are always a huge hit. By marketing these beaches appropriately it will generate a lot of attention and (hopefully) a lot of funding for the project.
Good luck! I'll definitely support the project once there are more items in the store.
Hi, if you'd like to donate at this point please check out https://projectvesta.org/donate where we currently have our "Grain of Hope" necklace available. It is a single grain of olivine, suspended in a sand timer vial, to symbolize that although time is ticking, it is not too late to stop (and reverse) the damage.
Since we do not have a beach yet where we can place olivine, we were originally not planning to offer the additional jewelry yet. That said, we are seeing demand for additional pieces at this point, so as long as people are clear that we don't have our $25 spent -> 1 ton of olivine on the beach process going yet, and that the donation is going to fund operations and to get our pilot project onto the beach, we will be happy to put them up. For now, I have removed the Cart from the menu, which I am guessing allowed you to work your way to the empty shop :)
And also you are right on target about the beaches and influencers. While we will be working on a top-down policy level with government and other groups to deploy the beaches, the plan is to simultaneously work from the bottom up to create a global movement of people who want to take action on climate change through influencers and ambassadors visiting the beach and also wearing the jewelry to spread the message.
I didn't see the cost breakdown [1] mention how much they expect to pay countries for dumping olivine in their beaches/waters. Would a country, especially those near the equator, willingly agree to take part in an experiment like this for free? The referenced papers have explained how the project is safe, but I don't think communities or their representatives will see it that way.
Many tropical countries already buy sand to replenish their beaches which are carried away by currents. Would a country accept sand for free instead of paying for it, especially in a color and with an environmental impact that would make the beach a popular tourist attraction? I don't see why not.
This actually seems to have some promise - I'd be worried about other side effects (another article I was reading mentioned possible effects on marine life due to dissolved iron and nickel), but it seems like a technology that merits further exploration and rollout on at least a small scale.
Even if this is actually feasible and does not have negative environmental impacts, I don't see countries implementing it on their beaches where a lot of tourism is located.
For example in Mexico Riviera Maya, Cancún, Holbox, etc, the main selling point are the white beaches and turquoise sea.
Our goal is not to cover up existing tourist beaches. You would be surprised how much coastline around the world is undeveloped and not even accessible by roads etc, those beaches are likely to be the places where we go first.
That said, we believe that green sand beaches will become their own tourist attractions as the naturally occurring ones, such as Papakolea in Hawaii, are (which is the beach pictured on our site). They are beautiful and we are considering ways we could create ecotourism hubs for climate change education etc.
Because most rivers are now damned and sediment flows impeded, many beaches in developed areas are eroding away with no sources of replenishment. Beach replenishment/nourishment is a huge industry and there are not only sand shortages, but even sand mafias who steal sand. So as resorts have to replace their sand, in the future, they might consider creating olivine sand beaches.
We have had early interest from a few parties who own resorts with rocky beaches and would consider replacing their beach with green sand, but at this time, that is not our focus.
We are focused right now on getting a pilot project deployed that can definitively and irrefutably prove the minimum accelerated olivine weathering rate on a real-world, high-energy tropical beach.
The questions of ecotourism and specific beaches is what we will be dealing with as we move to Phase II-III. See an outline of our deployment plan here -> https://projectvesta.org/plan/
I didn't read the whole site in detail so maybe i missed it, but does this plan require replacing white sand beaches with green sand, or would it also work to dump green sand on rocky beaches? I don't see too many countries objecting to more sandy beaches.
It strikes me as imminently doable, and as an additional benefit would eliminate the issue of ocean acidification as well, which in my view is a much larger problem than simply temperature change. Like a human extinction scale problem.
I skimmed through the site. I didn’t see how they convince countries to have their beeches altered. I can understand the assumption that countries would be eager to receive something which will benefit them directly, but they also know that they are serving as a “commons” as well and may want compensation for that.
If they're altering the beaches for free, the countries would enjoy a portion of the common benefit without any cost. In fact, the new 'green' (literally and figuratively) beaches would probably be a greater tourist attraction, so if anything I'd expect it to be beneficial, plus secondary economic benefits from the work being done.
The wording of "less than half the volume of construction materials" mined each year seems hand wavy as a justification that this is possible. If I'm reading the chart right that would suggest we'd need a roughly 25% increase in the amount of global mineral extraction.
That is not meant to be "hand wavy," as there is no "hand-wavy" way to gloss over the fact that humans are putting out massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. It is now on the order of over 45,000,000,000 tonnes (45 Gt) yearly, meaning we need at least 36 Gt of olivine to offset it. That is no small amount of rock and we do not plan to start at that level. The reason we mention those numbers is to let you know that it is more than possible to acquire that much material each year, as we are doing it for multiple other industries each year.
Olivine mining is open-pit near the surface and is neither labor nor energy intensive. Based on current olivine (dunite) mining in Norway, where they mined 3.4 million tonnes of dunite with only 141 employees[1], it can be extrapolated that the 36 GT of olivine needed could be mined by less than 1.5 million people working at the same capacity globally.
To put that in perspective for you, the Chinese coal market employeed 5.29 million people in 2013, and based on a 2017 report, they are trying to remove 2.3 million people from the industry[2]. So there are plenty of people who could do this, it is about creating the demand for the mineral.
There are many developing countries around the world lacking other valuable exports, yet that have olivine reserves, and we look at helping them create "green" jobs as a potential benefit.
The question of the impact of mining has been talked about in the thread. But there's another important: what could be the local ecological impact of dropping large quantities of artificial olivine sand on beaches where it was not present, particularly on the local flora and fauna?
[+] [-] matznerd|6 years ago|reply
I can also give you a project update that we have not announced anywhere else as of yet. After our launch on Earth Day in April, we received an individual contribution/grant that has given us enough funding to take significant steps forward towards getting our pilot project on a beach. It has greatly accelerated our progress and we are now moving more rapidly to make this a reality. We are engaged with the Dutch independent institute for applied research in water and the subsurface, Deltares[4], to help us design the pilot project experiment.
Project Vesta is a non-profit, globally decentralized entity and we are looking for additional partner universities, groups, and others to team up with. We are looking for input on our experimental design from researchers, engineers, and experts in the fields related to this project (such as geochemistry and the marine sciences). The design of the experiment is crucial and has to be rigorous in terms of calculating the accelerated weathering rate of olivine in the open system of a beach and in terms of demonstrating marine safety so that the results will be accepted as definitive by the scientific community and the public.
Our greatest fear right now is that we will spend a year running a study and then when the results come back, the data will not be accepted for one reason or another and we are asked to go back to get more data. We and the planet frankly do not have the time to wait another year, so we want to make sure we do it right the first time around and have the right stakeholders involved before it is deployed. To make sure it is done properly, we want to run the experimental design by as many relevant parties as possible so that when the data comes back we have an accepted consensus that is irrefutable in terms of the weathering rate and safety data, so we can move forward with deployment.
If you want to join our scientific advisory board or just help give input on our experimental design, please reach out on our Get Involved [5] page -> https://projectvesta.org/get-involved/
We are also looking for additional donors/family offices/etc and partners who want to sidestep the climate change debate and move forward on taking direct action to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While we are proponents of cutting emissions and agree it needs to be done, we want to get started removing as much CO2 from the atmosphere as we can until we are back down to Pre-Industrial CO2 levels. We believe that by making extremely effective, permanent, and cheap CO2 removal available, we can dramatically change the conversation and force action. Please reach out if you would like to help.
Thank you,
Eric
p.s. If you want to learn a bit more about the process and our organization, check out this interview with me on the Nori podcast [6] -> https://nori.com/podcasts/carbon-removal-newsroom/project-ve...
We are just launching our social profiles, but feel free to follow us for updates: Twitter -> https://twitter.com/Project_Vesta Instagram -> https://instagram.com/projectvesta FB page -> https://www.facebook.com/ProjectVestaCO2Removal/
[1] http://carbon.ycombinator.com/ [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18285606 [3] https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_77/1/ [4] https://www.deltares.nl/en/ [5] https://projectvesta.org/get-involved/ [6] https://nori.com/podcasts/carbon-removal-newsroom/project-ve...
[+] [-] konschubert|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tigerlily|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gamblor956|6 years ago|reply
(Happens on both Firefox and Chrome.)
[+] [-] p0nce|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skydv|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] credit_guy|6 years ago|reply
To put this in perspective, the global annual oil production is about 1 cubic mile [1], and concrete production is about half a cubic mile [2], [3] (4.4 BN tons at 2.4 t/m3 = 1.83 cubic km = 0.44 cubic miles)
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_mile_of_oil
[2]https://archpaper.com/2019/01/concrete-production-eight-perc...
[3]https://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/KatrinaJones.shtml
[+] [-] rob74|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baron816|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pms|6 years ago|reply
Olivine rock: 10-25$/ton Crude oil: $60/barrel, so about $400/ton
Their website reads that "A volume of 7 cubic miles (11 km^3) of olivine, or around 30 Gigatons, is needed each year. This is less than half the volume of construction materials and less than that of fossil fuel equivalents mined yearly".
If olivine rock needs to be mined in comparable amount to fossil fuels to offset global CO2 production, it will cost about 5% of the fossil fuels, i.e., the price of oil will grow by about 5% globally, which is not much.
[+] [-] matznerd|6 years ago|reply
In terms of construction materials, these 2009 calculations give 2005 numbers of over 60 Gt...
Growth in global materials use, GDP and population during the 20th century - http://www.vegetal-e.com/fichiers/2009-krausmann-al_14696916...
[+] [-] Aloha|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] NeedMoreTea|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nkoren|6 years ago|reply
I'm sure there are low-hanging opportunities where this makes a good amount of sense. Places where there are olivine-rich mine tailings -- somehow uncontaminated by heavy metals -- adjacent to a tropical shoreline. In those instances, then yeah, I'm sure it makes good sense to just shove them over to the beach and let decomposition do its thing.
However, pitching this as THE solution to carbon sequestration is much more problematic. At gigaton scale, you're going to run out of mine tailings quite quickly. After that, you're talking about mining fresh olivine, from locations that are increasingly distant to tropical shorelines.
This would incur tremendous energy costs, and I'm skeptical that its balance would work in favour of olivine. How much does energy is required to mine a 1,000kg of olivine? How much energy is required to move it (say) 100km to the shore? If that net energy were applied to other forms of carbon capture, would it sequester more than 1,250kg of Co2? If so, then in that instance at least, olivine sequestration would be a bad idea.
Even if the energy balance works out favourably, I'm still not sure it's a good idea. Mining doesn't just have energy impacts, it has tremendous land impacts. 7 cubic miles per year of olivine is a very large amount of material. If you don't like the local impacts of mining gold and copper and coal and shale and sand and gravel, then this would have an environmental impact similar to all of those put together. Which is too much impact. It is probably preferable to pursue a less-efficient sequestration strategy than to engage in something with this kind of side-effects.
So I'm afraid that the way this is being presented will trigger a lot of skepticism / opposition. This is a shame, because in certain edge-cases I suspect it's quite a good idea. Even if this only addresses a small percentage of the total problem, every little bit helps. I'd hate to see the baby get tossed out with the bathwater.
[+] [-] matznerd|6 years ago|reply
You are incorrect that olivine mining at a large scale would incur tremendous energy costs, it will not. I would suggest you check out this model of a 5,000 tonne per day open pit mining for porphyritic rock. (This model also includes 5,000 tonnes per day of "waste" rock which will likely not be wasted in our use case) http://costs.infomine.com/costdatacenter/miningcostmodel.asp...
In this model, which is not in any way optimized for environmental efficiency, it requires a diesel fuel quantity of around 4,751 liters/day to mine the 5,000 tonnes. At 2.68 kg of CO2 per 1 liter of diesel, that generates 12,732.68 kg of CO2 per day. That 12,732.68 kg = 12.73268 tonnes of CO2. The 5,000 tonnes of olivine mined will eventually weather and sequester 6,250 tonnes of CO2 (1 tonne of olivine sequesters 1.25 tonnes of CO2), for a net capture of 6,237 tons at the mine.
We have life cycle assessment that calculates the CO2 penalty and loss on efficiency, including milling and transport to locations less than 300 km (186 mi) at around a 4% loss [1].
Just for your information and for others, from a financial perspective the mining in that model costs $7.32 per ton, and then the transport and milling/crushing only costs about $3 per ton, so olivine could be transported to a beach at around $10/ton, with the price per ton of CO2 sequestered at less than $10.
You are also incorrect regarding the mining impact. The mining of things like shale requires fracking and the injection of sand and chemicals, our mining is simply open pit. Essentially, you open a pit on the surface and simply dig it up. As mentioned above, it is not all that energy intensive either.
For global CO2 level removal in terms of mining, it would likely require 30-50 mines in the wet tropics, preferably at a level of greater than 100 million tons/year (due to economies of scale).[2] There are large reserves on every continent and plenty near coastlines[3]. If you wanted to open fewer mines, you could theoretically find a few large reserves. For example, there is an open pit mine in Bingham Canyon that has an excavated volume of over 25 km^3, which would be the equivalent of 2-3 years worth of the volume of material needed.
Don't worry about this idea getting "tossed out with the bathwater," if anything we will actually be removing CO2 from the bathwater and de-acidifying it at the same time ;)
[1] Environmental Life Cycle Assement of CO2 Sequestration Through Enhanced Weathering of Olivine https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_978/1/ [2] https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_77/9/ [3] https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_90/25/
[+] [-] mNovak|6 years ago|reply
It's a shame because the responses given here on HN seem well thought out, yet the site gave me the impression of making a quick buck on peridot necklaces. I mean, is that really going to fund anything meaningful?
[+] [-] pfdietz|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matznerd|6 years ago|reply
"In simple laboratory tests small nickel ingots were produced from the plant ashes. Sowing these plants on appropriate soils and harvesting them at the end of the growing season makes for an environmentally friendly way of recovering nickel. Because these plants extract nickel from the olivine lattice, for every ton of nickel in the plants 330 tons of olivine must weather, equivalent to a capture of 400 tons of CO 2 . Weathering proceeds faster under vegetation. The introduction of this method could revolutionize the nickel mining industry."
See page 8-9 of the Green Cookery Book here for more in-depth information on the technique: https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_103/9/ Or see this paper specifically on the topic: Schuiling, R.D. (2013) Farming nickel from non-ore deposits, combined with CO2 sequestration.
[+] [-] sigmar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6d6b73|6 years ago|reply
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3415406/
[+] [-] crazydoggers|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mveety|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petra|6 years ago|reply
35 billion oil barrels are transported each year.
So transporting that olivine rock will cost an order of $250B.
This will compensate for the yearly co2 emissions , ~38B tons.
With carbon offsets priced at $15-$40 per ton - so there's potential for profitability .
[+] [-] cupofjoakim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TimJRobinson|6 years ago|reply
That could be a good pilot site as the government has said they're going to spend $500MM on saving the reef so money is already available if the technology works.
[+] [-] fiblye|6 years ago|reply
I’m sure no cost cutting or harm would come about from this. These companies would definitely be ethical with their operations from start to finish, and they’d be held to high environmental scrutiny.
Alternatively, we plant trees, reduce meat consumption, and buy local so that we’re not shipping shit back and forth from across the planet.
[+] [-] 24gttghh|6 years ago|reply
That sounds crazy, considering we pump out +10Gigatons of CO2 per year as it is. But, does the science actually make sense in that if we actually did that, we'd end up with less CO2 in the atmosphere, and subsequently the oceans? That would seem to make this a great tool (possibly among many) to clean up our mess once/if/when we stop putting so much CO2 out there in the first place.
Edit: I do wonder if this process would raise the alkalinity of the ocean too much in the other direction. I can't find the info on this on their site, there is so much to read!
[+] [-] tgirod|6 years ago|reply
To be more constructive, this is exactly the kind of hubris that gets me very wary of technoscience.
Let's assume Project Vesta is run by well intentionned folks and has the potential to offer a net positive in a distant future. Even in those conditions, such a project serves the toxic political agenda of not facing the elephant in the room: our growth based economic model is not sustainable and we need to transition away from it.
[+] [-] alikim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesbvaughan|6 years ago|reply
I've been hoping to read some counter arguments to that idea to round out my exposure to the topic.
[+] [-] asauce|6 years ago|reply
Also, if executed right then this project could market itself. Travel "influencers" love to show off unique beaches and destinations, and uniquely coloured beaches are always a huge hit. By marketing these beaches appropriately it will generate a lot of attention and (hopefully) a lot of funding for the project.
Good luck! I'll definitely support the project once there are more items in the store.
[0] https://projectvesta.org/shop/
[+] [-] matznerd|6 years ago|reply
Since we do not have a beach yet where we can place olivine, we were originally not planning to offer the additional jewelry yet. That said, we are seeing demand for additional pieces at this point, so as long as people are clear that we don't have our $25 spent -> 1 ton of olivine on the beach process going yet, and that the donation is going to fund operations and to get our pilot project onto the beach, we will be happy to put them up. For now, I have removed the Cart from the menu, which I am guessing allowed you to work your way to the empty shop :)
And also you are right on target about the beaches and influencers. While we will be working on a top-down policy level with government and other groups to deploy the beaches, the plan is to simultaneously work from the bottom up to create a global movement of people who want to take action on climate change through influencers and ambassadors visiting the beach and also wearing the jewelry to spread the message.
[+] [-] numakerg|6 years ago|reply
1. https://projectvesta.org/#phaseIV
[+] [-] tom_mellior|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krisrm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scorchin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TimJRobinson|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pier25|6 years ago|reply
For example in Mexico Riviera Maya, Cancún, Holbox, etc, the main selling point are the white beaches and turquoise sea.
[+] [-] matznerd|6 years ago|reply
That said, we believe that green sand beaches will become their own tourist attractions as the naturally occurring ones, such as Papakolea in Hawaii, are (which is the beach pictured on our site). They are beautiful and we are considering ways we could create ecotourism hubs for climate change education etc.
Because most rivers are now damned and sediment flows impeded, many beaches in developed areas are eroding away with no sources of replenishment. Beach replenishment/nourishment is a huge industry and there are not only sand shortages, but even sand mafias who steal sand. So as resorts have to replace their sand, in the future, they might consider creating olivine sand beaches.
We have had early interest from a few parties who own resorts with rocky beaches and would consider replacing their beach with green sand, but at this time, that is not our focus.
We are focused right now on getting a pilot project deployed that can definitively and irrefutably prove the minimum accelerated olivine weathering rate on a real-world, high-energy tropical beach.
The questions of ecotourism and specific beaches is what we will be dealing with as we move to Phase II-III. See an outline of our deployment plan here -> https://projectvesta.org/plan/
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/insid... [2] https://smile.amazon.com/World-Grain-Story-Transformed-Civil...
[+] [-] notatoad|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] QuickToBan|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsr_|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empath75|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rland|6 years ago|reply
http://innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/olivine...
Estimates in this paper put it at 250bn per year.
It strikes me as imminently doable, and as an additional benefit would eliminate the issue of ocean acidification as well, which in my view is a much larger problem than simply temperature change. Like a human extinction scale problem.
[+] [-] mc32|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tempestn|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsky_goog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matznerd|6 years ago|reply
Olivine mining is open-pit near the surface and is neither labor nor energy intensive. Based on current olivine (dunite) mining in Norway, where they mined 3.4 million tonnes of dunite with only 141 employees[1], it can be extrapolated that the 36 GT of olivine needed could be mined by less than 1.5 million people working at the same capacity globally.
To put that in perspective for you, the Chinese coal market employeed 5.29 million people in 2013, and based on a 2017 report, they are trying to remove 2.3 million people from the industry[2]. So there are plenty of people who could do this, it is about creating the demand for the mineral.
There are many developing countries around the world lacking other valuable exports, yet that have olivine reserves, and we look at helping them create "green" jobs as a potential benefit.
[1] Mineral Resources Norway: The Norwegian Mining and Quarrying Industry in 2004 [pdf] https://www.ngu.no/FileArchive/227/2005_042.pdf [2] https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/9967-2-...
[+] [-] wazoox|6 years ago|reply