Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
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Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#2Mine olivine rock, spread it on a small percentage of tropical marine beaches with high levels of tide energy, remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
What could possibly go wrong?
Edit: not sure why the downvotes. Perhaps I should have explained my skepticism more clearly? Any geo-engineering initiative almost always fails to predict the unintended consequences for the environment - e.g. perhaps one day we'll discover that too much olivine rock on beaches destroys ecosystems, or something else.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#3I'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.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#4Mine olivine rock, spread it on a small percentage of tropical marine beaches with high levels of tide energy, remove CO2 from the atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Edit: not sure why the downvotes. Perhaps I should have explained my skepticism more clearly? Any geo-engineering initiative almost always fails to predict the unintended consequences for the environment - e.g. perhaps one day we'll discover that…
> What could possibly go wrong?
Nothing. It already happens in nature, but at a far smaller scale. It is not a self-renewing or runaway process. The point is to distribute the correct amount of olivine to stabilize CO2 at ~200 PPM which is close to its pre-industrial level.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#5This 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.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#6I'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.
From Their Site:
What is the Life Cycle Analysis Costs of CO2 Incurred in the Mining, Milling and Transport? The Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of the release of CO2 from mining, milling, and transport of olivine creates an approximately 4-6% loss on CO2 removed. We will always work to minimize the transport distance from the source of olivine, and utilize low impact transit such as rail and boats. Further, many tons of olivine are already mined because the deposits are found above other valuable minerals, such as diamonds (found in a rock formation called Kimberlite). Utilizing these piles of waste rock, known in the industry as tailings piles, will allow us to harvest olivine without causing a significant CO2 output. Further, the dust from mining itself can contribute to the offset of the entire mine, as well as the very ground where the olivine is exposed. It starts weathering right away, and many ultramafic mineral mines, abandoned or active, eventually offset their own footprint and even go towards negative emissions. On of our olivine weathering rate sources is actually these tailings piles. See these studies:
Carbon Dioxide Fixation within Mine Wastes of Ultramafic-Hosted Ore Deposits: Examples from the Clinton Creek and Cassiar Chrysotile Deposits, Canada
Integrated Mineral Carbonation of Ultramafic Mine Deposits—A Review
LATERITIC EVOLUTION OF THE JACUPIRANGA ALKALlNE COMPLEX
Koornneef JM, Nieuwlaar E (in prep.) Environmental life cycle assessment of CO 2 sequestration through enhanced weathering of olivine. Working paper, Group Science, Technology and Society, Utrecht University
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#7This 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 say it's all for hydrocarbon fuels, and they're cheap, so 30 gallons of fuel. Let's make it 50 gallons, because I'm lazy. A gallon of fuel produces 20 pounds of CO2[3], so 1000 pound of CO2. That's half a ton.
* Let's assume for reasons beyond our ken we'll spend another quarter ton of CO2 on this. Likely due to people arguing on the Internet.
That still leaves us with half a ton of CO2/ton of Olivine.
Maybe do at least back-of-napkin calculations before claiming things will certainly fail.
[1] https://projectvesta.org/ [2] http://business.edf.org/blog/2015/03/24/green-freight-math-h... [3] https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/contentIncludes/co2_inc.htm
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#8Mine olivine rock, spread it on a small percentage of tropical marine beaches with high levels of tide energy, remove CO2 from the atmosphere. What could possibly go wrong? Edit: not sure why the downvotes. Perhaps I should have explained my skepticism more clearly? Any geo-engineering initiative almost always fails to predict the unintended consequences for the environment - e.g. perhaps one day we'll discover that…
> What could possibly go wrong?
As the water level rises we're gonna need to lose some of the cynicism around geo-engineering.
Unless you're convinced that society will somehow value the stability of our climate over economics? I feel like there's more evidence (given our snail-like progress over the past few decades) to demonstrate that's a not gonna work out compared to attempting _some_ form of geo-engineering.
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#9This 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.
"The Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of the release of CO2 from mining, milling, and transport of olivine creates an approximately 4-6% loss on CO2 removed. We will always work to minimize the transport distance from the source of olivine, and utilize low impact transit such as rail and boats. Further, many tons of olivine are already mined because the deposits are found above other valuable minerals, such as diamonds (found in a rock formation called Kimberlite). Utilizing these piles of waste rock, known in the industry as tailings piles, will allow us to harvest olivine without causing a significant CO2 output. Further, the dust from mining itself can contribute to the offset of the entire mine, as well as the very ground where the olivine is exposed. It starts weathering right away, and many ultramafic mineral mines, abandoned or active, eventually offset their own footprint and even go towards negative emissions. On of our olivine weathering rate sources is actually these tailings piles."
Re: Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches
#10This 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.
The article addresses this.