Research

Here’s the reality check the CDR industry needs to sit with: a new paper in Communications Earth & Environment (Nature portfolio) finds that scaling negative emissions technologies to the gigatons could create serious resource and environmental bottlenecks — some of which nobody is planning for. The paper by Cobo, Galán-Martín, and Guillén-Gosálbez runs a comprehensive life-cycle assessment across the full CDR technology portfolio and identifies what the authors call “previously overlooked bottlenecks.” ...

A new paper in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment has mapped out the uncertainties that still plague enhanced rock weathering (ERW) as a carbon dioxide removal strategy. Meanwhile, Germany’s Thünen Institute — a federal agricultural research body — has gone further, calling ERW “not yet a reliable climate protection measure.” This is getting attention, and it should. But let’s read past the headlines. What the Paper Actually Says The Nature paper doesn’t claim ERW doesn’t work. It catalogs the variables that make precise quantification difficult: soil type, mineral grain size, local climate, microbial activity, and leaching dynamics all influence how fast basalt dissolves and how much CO₂ is actually captured and stored. ...