Erw

Last week we published a long write-up of the first CDI Symposium, where a room of soil scientists picked apart the world’s most-measured enhanced-rock-weathering experiment and landed on an uncomfortable conclusion: the rock dissolves, but the expected carbon-removal signal often doesn’t show up — and whether it does depends heavily on the specific soil. Enhanced rock weathering (ERW), the symposium suggested, is not a universal climate fix but a context-dependent one, and measuring it honestly is the whole ballgame. ...

Near the end of the first-ever Carbon Drawdown Initiative (CDI) Symposium, the man who paid for the whole thing stood up to thank everyone and said something you almost never hear from a project’s funder: “It’s now five years ago since we literally spread the first ton of rock on the field… and I still cannot tell if we’ve done CDR since then. That drives me nuts. And it’s just one field.” ...

A short feature on a CDI event you can watch from anywhere If you work on or follow Enhanced Rock Weathering - the CDR pathway that spreads finely-ground silicate rock onto soils to lock atmospheric CO₂ into stable bicarbonates - there is a date worth blocking on your calendar. On June 16, 2026, in Erlangen, Germany, Carbon Drawdown Initiative is hosting the Carbon Drawdown Symposium 2026, where roughly fifty invited researchers will present three years of greenhouse-experiment results. The tagline is honest about the scope: “400 Pots, Three Years, and the Results Are (Almost) In.” ...

A new Nature paper maps the uncertainties of Enhanced Rock Weathering — from toxic trace elements to carbon tracking gaps. Here’s what it means for CDR.