[jeffdavis]

I read about project vesta on HN a while back, and it seemed promising. Why do these approaches not get more attention?

Project vesta has the additional benefit that it works directly on the oceans, which may be the more pressing problem.

[mdorazio]

I'm donate to project vesta yearly. Personally, I think the lack of attention is due to its relatively slow pace (compared to the typical news cycle) and the fact that it's simply not going to ever be a revenue generator.

[ProjectVesta]

We have already generated $250,000 in revenue from our first customer, Stripe. '

See their blog post announcement: Stripe’s first negative emissions purchases https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases

Our post: Stripe and Project Vesta, and what this means for us https://projectvesta.org/stripe-and-project-vesta-and-what-t...

Reuters coverage of the purchase: Stripe picks $1 million in carbon-removal projects to spur industry https://www.reuters.com/article/climate-change-stripe/stripe...

[jeffdavis]

What is the financing and implementation plan? Will it be donor-funded, publicly-funded, or are they looking into some revenue options?

If I donate now, what will the money be used for? Will it put green sand on beaches, or be used for bureaucratic paperwork, or be used for marketing to raise awareness?

[ProjectVesta]

Hi, Project Vesta is a non-profit focused on advancing the science and logistics for deployment of coastal enhanced olivine weathering. Right now, your money will be going to fund our Phase I experiments focused on demonstrating the safety of the process, along with weathering rate and dissolution kinetics. The goal of our Phase I experiments is to use the data to create an open-source model that brings all of the relevant parameters together into a single model. We plan to create an algorithm called the Coastal Enhanced Weathering Integrated Assessment Model (CEWIAM) that will be able to take inputs related to a specific beach site, and combine the Weathering Rate and Safety Data with a Life Cycle Assessment so that it can output a "Net $ cost per tonne of CO2 removed per year" from a given site. The model will be open-sourced and peer-reviewed by the scientific community, in additional to having it validated by 3rd parties so that it can be the foundation for an entirely new field of carbon dioxide removal. It is our belief that once this model exists and is validated and demonstrated successfully, massive projects would be financed by the private sector potentially for carbon dioxide removal credits, etc, as well as enabling governments to deploy this on potential gigatonne scales as beach nourishment projects that also help them make up for the shortfall in their Paris Agreement emissions commitments.

[ipsum2]

> not going to ever be a revenue generator.

They could sell carbon credits to companies.

[ProjectVesta]

Correcgt! We have already generated $250,000 in revenue from our first customer, Stripe. Even though we are a non-profit focused on advancing the science, we can still generate all the revenue required, and we hope our project will be self-sustaining...

See the Stripe blog post announcing the purchase: Stripe’s first negative emissions purchases https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases

Our post: Stripe and Project Vesta, and what this means for us https://projectvesta.org/stripe-and-project-vesta-and-what-t....

Reuters coverage of the purchase: Stripe picks $1 million in carbon-removal projects to spur industry https://www.reuters.com/article/climate-change-stripe/stripe....

[ProjectVesta]

Thank you for your kind words! We have been getting a decent amount of attention lately, but we are very much heads down, working on our science and deployment of our experiments. We announced in April, on Earth Day, that we have found a pair of bays in the Caribbean where we will run our first experiment(s). And in May, Stripe announced their selection of CDR purchases and we were selected for 3333.33 tonnes @ $75.

There was a lot going on in the world at the time when it was announced (and for whatever reason Stripe's post or the following article didn't receive traction on HN), but that announcement made it into Reuters-> Stripe picks $1 million in carbon-removal projects to spur industry https://www.reuters.com/article/climate-change-stripe/stripe...

This was our first bigger article, that came from our poster in December at the American Geophysical Union with our plan to take our coastal enhanced weathering "from the lab to the beach"-> Could putting pebbles on beaches help solve climate change? https://www.sfchronicle.com/environment/article/Could-puttin...

Recently, we were in MIT Technology Review - How green sand could capture billions of tons of carbon dioxide https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/22/1004218/how-gree...

Fast Company -> Ever been to a green sand beach? The newest geohack to fight climate change https://www.fastcompany.com/90510254/ever-been-to-a-green-sa...

Popular Mechanics -> How This Strange Green Sand Could Reverse Climate Change https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a327992...

Inhabit -> Can manufacturing green sand beaches save our planet? https://inhabitat.com/can-manufacturing-green-sand-beaches-s...

And more are on the way! That said, we are working really hard right now to have our pilot projects and foundational research completed, published, peer-reviewed, and CDR process certified in time for the UN IPCC's first global stocktake in 2023. At that time, countries will have to take account for how they will meet their targets and update their plans. We are working to make sure our process is ready to go by then for deployment.

>"The Paris Agreement offers a dynamic but durable framework for increasing climate action over time. One of the sources for this dynamism is the “global stocktake“ – a moment every five years for all countries to pause and account for what has been achieved so far, and what must still be done, to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement." https://www.wri.org/blog/2017/05/insider-designing-global-st...

[ncmncm]

Can you please explain where all the olivine is found? I can't think where I have seen any amount of it, other than on a few beaches in Hawaii. Descriptions of the project seem to suggest it is extremely abundant somewhere. Where?

[ncmncm]

I looked it up. Apparently bits of olivine are embedded in lots of kinds of rock, particularly basalt.