Enhanced Rock Weathering

Our initial focus is advancing the progress of enhanced rock weathering (ERW), underpinned by a strong scientific evidence base. We believe that ERW has great potential to play a part in both the world’s long-term durable carbon removal portfolio and sustainable agricultural practice toolkit. We are supporters of accelerated private and public investment in ERW, with an overriding focus on learning and evidence-building to refine our collective understanding of how to optimize the role that ERW could play over a long time horizon. Cascade is leading the following initiatives in ERW:

HIGHLIGHTS

Data sharing system to advance scientific research

To unlock a virtuous cycle of deployment-led learning, we are piloting the first-ever ERW data sharing system, the ERW Data Quarry, that connects researchers to data from commercial ERW deployments.

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ERW Metal Accumulation Calculator

We developed a free-to-use maximally conservative mass-balance model for assessing the risk of metal accumulation in soils.

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ERW Field Data Partnership Grant Awardees

In collaboration with the Grantham Foundation, Google, and Frontier, we are excited to announce the awardees for our ERW Field Data Partnership Grants: over $1.2M in funding across 9 projects.

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Policy priorities for ERW

We advance policies that support ERW innovation, provide financial assistance for responsible scale-up, and increase confidence of carbon removal buyers and investors to enter the market.

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Foundations for CDR Quantification in ERW Deployments

After a year-long process involving over 100 stakeholders, we produced a comprehensive technical reference on the “hows” of rigorous carbon removal quantification in an ERW deployment.

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ERW MRV cost estimator and database

We built a tool to help inform practitioners of the stacked costs of different analytical measurement choices in an ERW deployment, as well as a database of cost quotes to help practitioners compare costs for leverage.

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ERW Field Data Partnership Grants

Awardees announced here

Deadline passed in Dec 2024. We launched an RFP process to fund the collection of ERW field datasets on existing deployment sites, aimed at answering priority R&D questions.

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Oceans and Rivers

Cascade is expanding our work to help accelerate progress across the broader family of durable, natural system carbon removal pathways. We will have a particular, though not exclusive, focus on ocean and river alkalinity enhancement pathways that are the most immediately related ‘sibling’ pathways of ERW.

Just as Cascade did in the early days of its work on ERW, we are beginning work in new areas by learning from—and building trusted relationships with—those who have been working in these domains for years. The particular bottlenecks facing durable ocean and river pathways have some commonality with, but also some sharp differences from, those in ERW. Cascade will help strengthen shared learnings amongst researchers and practitioners, and accelerate the pace of progress across these alkalinity enhancement pathways.