What happens if we do this but we also reduce planetary carbon emissions in other ways? Will we cause another ice age?
Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
61–70 of 341 posts
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#62I'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.
Hi, co-founder of Project Vesta here. Based on a CO2 life cycle assessment, to minimize CO2 created during transport, the idea is to utilize mines within 300 km (186 mi) of the destination beach. Including mining, milling, and transport, we can hopefully maintain only a 4% efficiency loss in terms of CO2.[1] This paper has a few examples of models where it is 93% efficient for mines within 1,000 km. [2] Fortunately,…
please address the release of nickel into the environment. That stuff can be trouble, especially for people with sensitivities.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#63This seems like it would fail energetically; the amount of energy required to mine and transport a bunch of rock to a beach would surely exceed the amount of CO2 sequestered.
It seems like you didn't read the paper, or really anything on this. But, to make it easy for you: * 1 ton of Olivine will absorb 1.25 tons of CO2[1] * Transportation cost is 161.8 grams of CO2 per ton mile[2] * They are looking at mines within a 300km[1] (or ~190 miles) radius. That's a maximum transportation cost of ~31kg CO2. That's a rounding error. * Mining cost for a ton of Olivine is ~$30/ton right now. Let's…
You're right, I didn't read enough or do enough back-of-the-napkin math. I read more; this seems plausible in life cycle terms, but now I have doubts about the economics. At $30/ton, 30Gtons becomes $900 billion a year. For comparison US discretionary spending is $1.4 trillion. It's not clear to me where this level of spending is going to come from (jewelry sales?), for an activity that has no useful economic output other than sequestering carbon. In addition I'm not sure that $30/ton is an accurate estimate of all of the capital outlays and so on required - entire industries have to be created to facilitate this process at scale. Much of this activity has to be done in decentralized fashion, i.e., it is not a single polity or entity that must partake in olivine mining to make this viable, which adds cost and political overhead.
I'm also not clear on what putting 30 gigatons of rock onto coastal sea shelves each year is going to do in terms of ecosystem impact, and how tolerant local polities will be of this. For example, Costa Rica gets something like 6% of its GDP from tourism, a lot of which is ecotourism; it seems unlikely they will be happy about a significant mining and rock-dumping operation taking over its beaches.
EDIT: Also, on the life cycle question, I'm unclear on how real the "1 ton for 1.25 tons of CO2" claim is - would a real beach weathering actually produce this much absorption per ton? Would it happen on a 1-year time scale so that we could actually offset this much every year? Uncertain; if you have citations demonstrating this please post them, if you're not above arguing on the Internet.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi Eric, How do you plan to compensate countries who own the beaches or waters targeted by the project? Do you have an estimate of how receptive a community will be to having their beach turned green, especially if they rely on it for a portion of their income? A country outside of the world's economic powers might want financial insurance in the event that the the project causes ecological damage and hurts their eco…
Several California cities are already spending millions annually to dump sand and rocks and to build/expand seawalls, to try to stave off the ocean taking prime beachfront real estate (and it's not working, in the long run). Those cities (though not in the ideal location for this project, I guess) would likely be ecstatic to have subsidized assistance (though who subsidizes it?). They're losing the beaches no matter…
My main point was about developing countries. Eric himself noted that "the idea is to utilize mines within 300 km (186 mi) of the destination beach" and "or many of the first beaches, we will be looking to use tailings piles (waste rock) from previously dug and developed mines, as well as the infrastructure from those mines, such as rail for transport". The idea is summarized in this image [1], which shows mines and their associates beaches that the project intends to target due the proximity.
Most of those beaches are in developing countries. If nourishing the beaches with olivine has some unforeseen, negative ecological consequence, those countries might not be financially equipped to deal with the cleanup. How are those beaches going to be insured?
In the case of California, I'm not familiar with their beach nourishing process, but I assume they are using sand that is more similar in content to what was naturally present. If the beaches have been replenished for years, then we at least have some idea about the short-term effects.
1. https://projectvesta.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Image-59...
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#65What happens if we do this but we also reduce planetary carbon emissions in other ways? Will we cause another ice age?
We are so massively far away from being able to do that, it's not worth worrying about. Especially since active carbon capture methods can easily be switched off long before we approached any "dangerous" level.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#66This 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.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#67What happens if we do this but we also reduce planetary carbon emissions in other ways? Will we cause another ice age?
We already have fairly functional knobs for increasing carbon emissions.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#68Now I'm curious where I can buy a ton of olivine. I've got $30 in my pocket and would love to build me a giant carbon-scrubbing sandbox.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yikes... I know coral and other invertebrates are very sensitive to heavy metals like nickel.
We will be testing the sources of olivine for nickel, and as posted upstream, we have potential solutions for phytomining the olivine reserves for nickel with nickel hyper-accumulating plants, and then burning plants, retrieving the nickel ore and using the proceeds it to further fund operations...
I hope you would still run tests to determine how much left over Nickel is getting into the ocean.
Not just coral will be effected by Nickel, but other important invertebrates as well such as amphipods which play an enormous role in the food chain and health of reef environments.
And we’re talking parts per billion (ppb) when heavy metals can start to become toxic.
And correct me if I’m wrong, but Manganese is another element often found in olivine, which is another metal that can be toxic to marine life.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#70What if we accidentally trigger an ice age.
We can just burn down some forests.