Transforming U.S. agriculture with crushed rock for CO$_2$ sequestration and increased production
Abstract
Enhanced weathering (EW) is a promising modification to current agricultural practices that uses crushed silicate rocks to drive carbon dioxide removal (CDR). If widely adopted on farmlands, it could help achieve net-zero or negative emissions by 2050. We report detailed state-level analysis indicating EW deployed on agricultural land could sequester 0.23-0.38 Gt CO yr and meet 36-60 % of U.S. technological CDR goals. Average CDR costs vary between state, being highest in the first decades before declining to a range of \sim\_2{}^{-1}_2$ removal on intergenerational time scales. We additionally forecast mitigation of ground-level ozone increases expected with future climate change, as an indirect benefit of EW, and consequent avoidance of yield reductions. Our assessment supports EW as a practical innovation for leveraging agriculture to enable positive action on climate change with adherence to federal environmental justice priorities. However, implementing a stage-gating framework as upscaling proceeds to safeguard against environmental and biodiversity concerns will be essential.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2308.04302,
title = {Transforming U.S. agriculture with crushed rock for CO$_2$ sequestration and increased production},
author = {David J. Beerling and Euripides P. Kantzas and Maria Val Martin and Mark R. Lomas and Lyla L. Taylor and Shuang Zhang and Yoshiki Kanzaki and Christopher T. Reinhard and Noah J. Planavsky and Rafael M. Eufrasio and Phil Renforth and Jean-Francois Mecure and Hector Pollitt and Philip B. Holden and Neil R. Edwards and Lenny Koh and Dimitar Z. Epihov and Adam Wolf and James E. Hansen and Nick F. Pidgeon and Steven A. Banwart},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.04302},
year = {2023}
}