Project Vesta
Formation2019 (2019)
TypePublic-benefit corporation
PurposeEnvironmentalism, Environmental science
Location
CEO
Tom Green
Key people
    • Kelly Erhart
    • Grace Andrews
    • Ryan Hostak
Websitevesta.earth

Project Vesta is a public benefit corporation that researches and performs accelerated weathering of the mineral olivine as a climate drawdown strategy to capture carbon in oceans.[1][2] The company hopes to be able to remove one ton of carbon dioxide for US$10 at a large scale.[2][3] The company wants to use olivine on 2% of continental shelves to sequester carbon, which they estimate would be enough to recapture all annual carbon dioxide emissions from humans.[4] It also wants to sell carbon credits.[5]

The company has been conducting experiments, toxicology tests, and planning for beach experiments.[5]

History

Project Vesta originated from the climate change-focused think tank Climitigation.[3][6] Kelly Erhart, who previously co-founded a waterless toilet company[3] and learned of accelerated weathering from a climate report,[1] co-founded Project Vesta in 2019 as a nonprofit headquartered in San Francisco.[7][6][8] Studies had been conducted in laboratory experiments on the process, but no beach experiments had been conducted prior.[1][3] The organization later changed from a non-profit to be a public benefit corporation.[5]

The payment processor Stripe pre-paid 3,333 tons worth of carbon sequestration from the company at $75 per ton.[2][3]

The company said in 2022 it could remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a rate of $35 a ton if the process is scaled up to the gigatonnes.[9]

In 2022, the town of Southampton, New York, in collaboration with Stony Brook University, and Cornell University’s Cooperative Extension, and Project Vesta, began a pilot project to place 500 cubic yards of olivine on a Southampton beach that has been eroding as sea levels rise.[10][9] As part of the pilot and other experiments, the company monitored whether their approach releases concentrations of toxins from the olivine.[3]

Process

Project Vesta is testing whether the olivine weathering process will mitigate coastal recession[10] and reduce ocean acidification.[3][2][11] The Project Vesta process mimics natural weathering processes to transform the olivine into silicates and other stable chemicals, like calcium carbonate which precipitate to the oceans bottoms as marine life consumes the naturally occurring chemical and die (see Carbon in the water cycle for further info).[2] The wave action of beaches on crushed olivine allows for more rapid weathering than other natural deposits of olivine, which only absorb limited amounts of carbon dioxide.[3]

Since the olivine weathering process creates molecular byproducts such as calcium carbonate that could alkalinize acidifying seawater or release metals such as bioavailable nickel, the organization also researches chemical composition and toxicology of affected water and aquatic life.[3][5] Project Vesta publishes their scientific findings and as of May 2020 made their methods open source.[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hopper, Nate; Lokting, Britta; Kavin, Kim (16 August 2022). "15 Young Founders Rethinking Everything From Artificial Intelligence to Carbon Removal, Sustainable Fashion to...Pizza!". Entrepreneur. ISSN 0163-3341. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Temple, James (June 22, 2020). "A Caribbean beach could offer a crucial test in the fight to slow climate change". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2020-11-06.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Peters, Adele (2020-05-29). "Ever been to a green sand beach? The newest geohack to fight climate change". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-11-06.
  4. ↑ Fleming, Amy (23 June 2021). "Cloud spraying and hurricane slaying: how ocean geoengineering became the frontier of the climate crisis". The Guardian. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Temple, James (30 March 2022). "Why using the oceans to suck up CO2 might not be as easy as hoped". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  6. 1 2 3 Delbert, Caroline (2020-06-11). "How This Strange Green Sand Could Reverse Climate Change". Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 2020-11-06.
  7. ↑ Purchia, Robyn (16 July 2022). "Let's keep the climate restoration movement growing". San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved 21 October 2022.
  8. ↑ Palmer, Phillip (20 October 2021). "Cutting-edge technology battles climate change by using sand to pull carbon dioxide from atmosphere". ABC7 San Francisco. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  9. 1 2 Agard, Sade (26 August 2022). "The mineral that could remove 1 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere". Interesting Engineering. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
  10. 1 2 Merrill, Kitty (26 May 2022). "Dredge Spoil + Olivine = A Nourished Beach In North Sea". 27East.com. Southampton Press. Retrieved 19 October 2022.
  11. ↑ Yeung, Peter (21 December 2021). "Could crushed rocks absorb enough carbon to curb global warming? A little-examined form of geoengineering takes what rocks normally do—lock up carbon—and spreads it through the oceans". National Geographic. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved 20 October 2022.
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