Carbon removal is a highly important problem to solve for the climate. But could grinding up rocks be the answer?
What’s happening:
- German-Brazilian carbon removal startup InPlanet has raised €5.6M in a new funding round
- The financing saw participation from notable venture capital funds including FoodLabs, Salvia, Mudcake, Carbon Removal Partners and more
How it works:
- InPlanet leverages a naturally occurring process in nature for capturing carbon which is rock weathering
- Rock weathering is a completely natural process that is a chemical breakdown of rocks that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
- This process can be scaled by grinding and spreading certain types of rocks onto farmland soil and essentially accelerating the natural process from taking millions of years to taking a decade
- When done precisely, this process can also regenerate the soil due to the nutrient addition caused by fresh rock minerals dissolving into the ground
Going deeper:
- InPlanet has established numerous partnerships with agriculture companies and farm operators in Brazil to supply their soil with their rock powder
- Early backers of InPlanet include Shopify, Stripe, Klarna and Frontier
By the numbers:
- InPlanet believes they will be able to remove 1M tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2026
- Their most recent funding round will largely go towards accelerating their plan to spread 200,000 tonnes of rock powder into farmland soil which will capture approximately 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide
