May 8, 2024   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Silicate Named as Finalist in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal Competition

Silicate, a terrestrial enhanced weathering company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, today announced that it has been named as one of 20 finalists in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition. The contest, which is funded by the Musk Foundation, evaluated teams across key areas of operations, sustainability, and cost, whittling down a list of around 200 entrants to just 20 finalists, who are now competing for a $50 million grand prize.

Silicate’s carbon dioxide removal approach leverages existing agricultural value chains to durably sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide as dissolved bicarbonate by enhancing a natural and permanent carbon removal pathway – weathering. Silicate is the first terrestrial enhanced weathering company globally to focus on carbonate-bearing materials, such as returned concrete and limestone.

Research by the company in Ireland and the U.S. Midwest in collaboration with academics from University College Dublin and Northwestern University, with the support of Breakthrough Energy Fellows, has helped the company to progress on milestones critical to enabling enhanced weathering to become a carbon removal pathway with climate-relevant potential.

“Being selected as a finalist in this prestigious competition is an exciting opportunity for our team to demonstrate the potential of terrestrial enhanced weathering with carbonate-bearing materials to durably sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide,” said Silicate founder and director, Maurice Bryson.

“XPRIZE’s recognition and support of our work is a boon to our mission to leverage agricultural value chains to durably remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while increasing soil productivity through pH amendment.”

The top 20 finalists were evaluated and selected by the XPRIZE Carbon Removal team and a group of qualified judges to move forward into the final stage of the competition. To win the grand prize, teams must demonstrate a working solution at a scale of at least 1,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide removed per year; model their costs at a scale of 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide removed per year; and show a pathway to achieving a scale of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide removed per year in the future.

Last year, humans emitted a record 35.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (Liu et al., 2024). Limiting global warming to 1.5°C - we are currently at ~1.1°C (Lee and Romero, 2023) – will require not just urgent decarbonisation of the global economy, but also permanent removal of 20-660 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2100 (Shukla et al., 2022).

About Silicate

Silicate is a terrestrial enhanced weathering company accelerating a natural geological process – the weathering of minerals – to durably sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide and amend soil pH in farmland. The company mills alkaline materials, applies them to farmland, and measures the carbon removal it enables, facilitating companies to achieve their net zero ambitions, and agribusinesses to reduce and remove greenhouse gas emissions in their value chain, while also helping farmers to increase productivity by optimising soil pH for crop growth. Silicate is part of the Breakthrough Energy Fellows programme, and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with operations in Illinois, US.

About XPRIZE Carbon Removal

XPRIZE Carbon Removal is funded by the Musk Foundation, and is aimed at tackling the biggest threat facing humanity - fighting climate change and rebalancing Earth’s carbon cycle. This four-year, $100 million global competition invites innovators and teams from anywhere on the planet to create and demonstrate solutions that can pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans and sequester it durably and sustainably.