Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches

Hi HN, I am Eric Matzner, the Co-Founder of Project Vesta and I have been responding to all of the questions on this thread and will continue to answer them, but I just wanted to say thank you for all of the interest. When YC posted their Carbon Removal Technologies Requests for Startups page[1] about 8 months ago, I responded to a comment on the post where @btilly[2] mentioned one of the research papers that our project is based on.[3] We were in stealth mode back then, as I was still putting the project together, but the positive response there helped energize and inform our operations, so thank all of you for that as well. I do not personally know the person who posted this today either, but thank you for posting it (although we were not prepared for this amount of inbound interest today). Please note that we will get back to everyone who submitted our &quot;Get Involved&quot; form over the next couple of days. Thank you to all who donated as well for your support, the HN community has been very generous and we appreciate your enthusiasm and support for the project.<p>I can also give you a project update that we have not announced anywhere else as of yet. After our launch on Earth Day in April, we received an individual contribution&#x2F;grant that has given us enough funding to take significant steps forward towards getting our pilot project on a beach. It has greatly accelerated our progress and we are now moving more rapidly to make this a reality. We are engaged with the Dutch independent institute for applied research in water and the subsurface, Deltares[4], to help us design the pilot project experiment.<p>Project Vesta is a non-profit, globally decentralized entity and we are looking for additional partner universities, groups, and others to team up with. We are looking for input on our experimental design from researchers, engineers, and experts in the fields related to this project (such as geochemistry and the marine sciences). The design of the experiment is crucial and has to be rigorous in terms of calculating the accelerated weathering rate of olivine in the open system of a beach and in terms of demonstrating marine safety so that the results will be accepted as definitive by the scientific community and the public.<p>Our greatest fear right now is that we will spend a year running a study and then when the results come back, the data will not be accepted for one reason or another and we are asked to go back to get more data. We and the planet frankly do not have the time to wait another year, so we want to make sure we do it right the first time around and have the right stakeholders involved before it is deployed. To make sure it is done properly, we want to run the experimental design by as many relevant parties as possible so that when the data comes back we have an accepted consensus that is irrefutable in terms of the weathering rate and safety data, so we can move forward with deployment.<p>If you want to join our scientific advisory board or just help give input on our experimental design, please reach out on our Get Involved [5] page -&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;get-involved&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;get-involved&#x2F;</a><p>We are also looking for additional donors&#x2F;family offices&#x2F;etc and partners who want to sidestep the climate change debate and move forward on taking direct action to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. While we are proponents of cutting emissions and agree it needs to be done, we want to get started removing as much CO2 from the atmosphere as we can until we are back down to Pre-Industrial CO2 levels. We believe that by making extremely effective, permanent, and cheap CO2 removal available, we can dramatically change the conversation and force action. Please reach out if you would like to help.<p>Thank you,<p>Eric<p>p.s. If you want to learn a bit more about the process and our organization, check out this interview with me on the Nori podcast [6] -&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nori.com&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;carbon-removal-newsroom&#x2F;project-vesta-for-olivine-drawdown-leaves-stealth-mode" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nori.com&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;carbon-removal-newsroom&#x2F;project-ve...</a><p>We are just launching our social profiles, but feel free to follow us for updates: Twitter -&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Project_Vesta" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;Project_Vesta</a> Instagram -&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;instagram.com&#x2F;projectvesta" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;instagram.com&#x2F;projectvesta</a> FB page -&gt; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;ProjectVestaCO2Removal&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.facebook.com&#x2F;ProjectVestaCO2Removal&#x2F;</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;carbon.ycombinator.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;carbon.ycombinator.com&#x2F;</a> [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18285606" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=18285606</a> [3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;science&#x2F;#dflip-df_77&#x2F;1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;science&#x2F;#dflip-df_77&#x2F;1&#x2F;</a> [4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.deltares.nl&#x2F;en&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.deltares.nl&#x2F;en&#x2F;</a> [5] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;get-involved&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;get-involved&#x2F;</a> [6] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nori.com&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;carbon-removal-newsroom&#x2F;project-vesta-for-olivine-drawdown-leaves-stealth-mode" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nori.com&#x2F;podcasts&#x2F;carbon-removal-newsroom&#x2F;project-ve...</a>

“To carry out this plan, it will take a volume of 7 cubic miles of olivine rock placed on 2% of the world high-energy, tropical shelf-seas each year.”<p>To put this in perspective, the global annual oil production is about 1 cubic mile [1], and concrete production is about half a cubic mile [2], [3] (4.4 BN tons at 2.4 t&#x2F;m3 = 1.83 cubic km = 0.44 cubic miles)<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cubic_mile_of_oil" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Cubic_mile_of_oil</a><p>[2]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archpaper.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;concrete-production-eight-percent-co2-emissions&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archpaper.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;01&#x2F;concrete-production-eight-perc...</a><p>[3]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypertextbook.com&#x2F;facts&#x2F;1999&#x2F;KatrinaJones.shtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hypertextbook.com&#x2F;facts&#x2F;1999&#x2F;KatrinaJones.shtml</a>

I would be significantly less skeptical about this if it were significantly less ambitious.<p>I&#x27;m sure there are low-hanging opportunities where this makes a good amount of sense. Places where there are olivine-rich mine tailings -- somehow uncontaminated by heavy metals -- adjacent to a tropical shoreline. In those instances, then yeah, I&#x27;m sure it makes good sense to just shove them over to the beach and let decomposition do its thing.<p>However, pitching this as THE solution to carbon sequestration is much more problematic. At gigaton scale, you&#x27;re going to run out of mine tailings quite quickly. After that, you&#x27;re talking about mining fresh olivine, from locations that are increasingly distant to tropical shorelines.<p>This would incur tremendous energy costs, and I&#x27;m skeptical that its balance would work in favour of olivine. How much does energy is required to mine a 1,000kg of olivine? How much energy is required to move it (say) 100km to the shore? If that net energy were applied to other forms of carbon capture, would it sequester more than 1,250kg of Co2? If so, then in that instance at least, olivine sequestration would be a bad idea.<p>Even if the energy balance works out favourably, I&#x27;m still not sure it&#x27;s a good idea. Mining doesn&#x27;t just have energy impacts, it has tremendous <i>land</i> impacts. 7 cubic miles per year of olivine is a very large amount of material. If you don&#x27;t like the local impacts of mining gold and copper and coal and shale and sand and gravel, then this would have an environmental impact similar to all of those put together. Which is too much impact. It is probably preferable to pursue a less-efficient sequestration strategy than to engage in something with this kind of side-effects.<p>So I&#x27;m afraid that the way this is being presented will trigger a lot of skepticism &#x2F; opposition. This is a shame, because in certain edge-cases I suspect it&#x27;s quite a good idea. Even if this only addresses a small percentage of the total problem, every little bit helps. I&#x27;d hate to see the baby get tossed out with the bathwater.

Dissolving olivine on beaches means releasing nickel into the environment. What is the effect of the release of many megatons of this element?

This is cool. I’ve thought about carbon sequestration a lot using big nuke plants&#x2F;solar plants+air liquidification+some plant to distill off and turn the CO2 into like methane or some hydrocarbon. My thought here was put half back in the ground and sell the other half to fund the installation&#x2F;make sure we don’t run out of hydrocarbons. The olivine process, though, is probably easier because it takes much less infrastructure and is more fire and forget. We need some method for sequestration running at scale now (probably multiple). With the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere already, the amount continuing to go in, and the amount of inaction we’re pretty fucked. The current solution (getting the whole damn world to reduce emissions) is unrealistic. Even if we stop putting more in, it’s already there and we’re already fucked. It’s a day late and a dollar short. The countries willing to face this need some way to save us without the cooperation of the countries with their heads in the sand. Sequestration is a good answer for that.

It costs about $1 to transport an oil barrel 1000 miles.<p>35 billion oil barrels are transported each year.<p>So transporting that olivine rock will cost an order of $250B.<p>This will compensate for the yearly co2 emissions , ~38B tons.<p>With carbon offsets priced at $15-$40 per ton - so there&#x27;s potential for profitability .

I&#x27;m sceptical. Are there calculations on shipping for the olivine? If it&#x27;s primarily mined in certain parts of the world it&#x27;s going to have a big cost in shipping - there&#x27;s a reason why regular sand is sourced as locally as possible. It weighs a lot, which means that it&#x27;s expensive for both the wallet and the environment to ship.

With the ability to reduce pH levels in the surrounding water this seems like something the Australian Government would be very interested in investing in to save the Great Barrier Reef.<p>That could be a good pilot site as the government has said they&#x27;re going to spend $500MM on saving the reef so money is already available if the technology works.

So we need to mine and strip the earth of materials at rates far beyond anything we’ve ever done before, then load it up on a fleet of ships larger than anything we have today, all burning the filthiest bunker fuel there is at unprecedented rates to manage the largest shipping operation ever, and dump it all on isolated, natural beaches far from human eyes. Plus we need to check the purity of all of this to ensure no nickel wipes out life as we know it, since inspecting a quantity of stone greater than our entire global fuel harvest operations is a reasonable expectation.<p>I’m sure no cost cutting or harm would come about from this. These companies would definitely be ethical with their operations from start to finish, and they’d be held to high environmental scrutiny.<p>Alternatively, we plant trees, reduce meat consumption, and buy local so that we’re not shipping shit back and forth from across the planet.

At first I read this and was like &quot;okay, you want to dump 30 Gigatons of Olivine per year for &#x27;a number of years&#x27; on tropical beaches&quot;<p>That sounds crazy, considering we pump out +10Gigatons of CO2 per year as it is. But, does the science actually make sense in that if we actually did that, we&#x27;d end up with less CO2 in the atmosphere, and subsequently the oceans? That would seem to make this a great tool (possibly among many) to clean up our mess once&#x2F;if&#x2F;when we stop putting so much CO2 out there in the first place.<p>Edit: I do wonder if this process would raise the alkalinity of the ocean too much in the other direction. I can&#x27;t find the info on this on their site, there is so much to read!

Hey, we are fucking up the environment by altering such a complex system way too fast for it to keep balance. Maybe if we alter it on a whole new scale with our limited understanding of the consequences, we can fix things up?<p>To be more constructive, this is exactly the kind of hubris that gets me very wary of technoscience.<p>Let&#x27;s assume Project Vesta is run by well intentionned folks and has the potential to offer a net positive in a distant future. Even in those conditions, such a project serves the toxic political agenda of not facing the elephant in the room: our growth based economic model is <i>not</i> sustainable and we need to transition away from it.

Hey, heads up to anyone associated with Project Vesta... currently your webshop shows an empty store[0].<p>Also, if executed right then this project could market itself. Travel &quot;influencers&quot; love to show off unique beaches and destinations, and uniquely coloured beaches are always a huge hit. By marketing these beaches appropriately it will generate a lot of attention and (hopefully) a lot of funding for the project.<p>Good luck! I&#x27;ll definitely support the project once there are more items in the store.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;shop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;shop&#x2F;</a>

I didn&#x27;t see the cost breakdown [1] mention how much they expect to pay countries for dumping olivine in their beaches&#x2F;waters. Would a country, especially those near the equator, willingly agree to take part in an experiment like this for free? The referenced papers have explained how the project is safe, but I don&#x27;t think communities or their representatives will see it that way.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;#phaseIV" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;projectvesta.org&#x2F;#phaseIV</a>

This actually seems to have some promise - I&#x27;d be worried about other side effects (another article I was reading mentioned possible effects on marine life due to dissolved iron and nickel), but it seems like a technology that merits further exploration and rollout on at least a small scale.

For other mitigations to climate change, see Project Drawdown: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.drawdown.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.drawdown.org&#x2F;</a>

Even if this is actually feasible and does not have negative environmental impacts, I don&#x27;t see countries implementing it on their beaches where a lot of tourism is located.<p>For example in Mexico Riviera Maya, Cancún, Holbox, etc, the main selling point are the white beaches and turquoise sea.

I first read about this idea here:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;innovationconcepts.eu&#x2F;res&#x2F;literatuurSchuiling&#x2F;olivineagainstclimatechange23.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;innovationconcepts.eu&#x2F;res&#x2F;literatuurSchuiling&#x2F;olivine...</a><p>Estimates in this paper put it at 250bn per year.<p>It strikes me as imminently doable, and as an additional benefit would eliminate the issue of ocean acidification as well, which in my view is a much larger problem than simply temperature change. Like a human extinction scale problem.

I skimmed through the site. I didn’t see how they convince countries to have their beeches altered. I can understand the assumption that countries would be eager to receive something which will benefit them directly, but they also know that they are serving as a “commons” as well and may want compensation for that.

The wording of &quot;less than half the volume of construction materials&quot; mined each year seems hand wavy as a justification that this is possible. If I&#x27;m reading the chart right that would suggest we&#x27;d need a roughly 25% increase in the amount of global mineral extraction.

The question of the impact of mining has been talked about in the thread. But there&#x27;s another important: what could be the local ecological impact of dropping large quantities of artificial olivine sand on beaches where it was not present, particularly on the local flora and fauna?

Curious question why not also study the naturally occurring green sand beaches in Hawaii?

Is there an issue with replacing light-colored beaches, which reflect a great deal of sunlight, with Olivine, which presumably absorbs more of it?

Can this be targeted to areas with lots of erosion that may welcome a bunch of additional rock&#x2F;sand as a barrier?<p>E.g. Florida, New Orleans?

We&#x27;ll ultimately need a bunch of techniques working together. I suspect this would even be effective with less than 1.<p>But really, what&#x27;s the cost? That&#x27;s the main factor. It may be a reasonable way to shove money at poorer countries to do manual work to solve the rich countries&#x27; problems.

This is related to one of my &#x27;scary emergency solutions&#x27; governments might adopt if they wake up to the emergency too late: Detonate nukes in shallow bore holes in silicate heavy regions and launch enormous quantities of the stuff into the atmosphere that way.

Let&#x27;s assume the Pilot is a smashing success, let&#x27;s also say math works out in some country to do it for 0.2% of their GDP.<p>How do the logistics of policy adoption work for the first &quot;pilot&quot; country?<p>1. You would need environmental clearance and the government&#x27;s own stud(ies) on it. How do you get a government to do this assessment?<p>2. If you have to get Costa rica(or any listed potentials on the page) to show interest do you go to the Environment Ministry and do a power point and ask &quot;So?&quot;.<p>2.1. Do you get them to do this as part of implementing some climate pledge. And in this case what are you mostly competing with for the fixed size pot of $$?

Interesting! I didn&#x27;t know olivine was that plentiful.<p>There is said to be a problem with shortage of construction sand leading to beaches being stripped for sand. So this would solve a secondary problem at the same time.

Mine olivine rock, spread it on a small percentage of tropical marine beaches with high levels of tide energy, remove CO2 from the atmosphere.<p>What could possibly go wrong?<p>Edit: not sure why the downvotes. Perhaps I should have explained my skepticism more clearly? Any geo-engineering initiative almost always fails to predict the unintended consequences for the environment - e.g. perhaps one day we&#x27;ll discover that too much olivine rock on beaches destroys ecosystems, or something else.

From the pictures it makes the beach look like its covered in algae or seaweed. I don&#x27;t think people will be very receptive to the idea if it looks like that.

I see a lot of comments about not harming luxury tourist beaches. But I would (perhaps naively) imagine there’s a lot of garbage beaches along the equator. Is this reasonable? Perhaps in polluted areas that aren’t especially valuable anyway?

Amazing! When you&#x27;re team is hiring or looking for volunteers, let me know and I&#x27;ll throw you some free job post credits to use on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;climate.careers" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;climate.careers</a> :)<p>- Evan

My personal opinion is that, every time we try to do something that would not naturally happen, we&#x27;re making things worse. Especially on a grand scale such as this.<p>You can&#x27;t introduce a massive new variable to an environment, and not expect there to be some kind of negative effect. You&#x27;re changing the environment this ecosystem has adapted to, in a radical way.<p>I think humans are still coming to terms with the possibility that we can&#x27;t live like we do, with the number of individuals we have. And absolutely no one wants to hear that we either have to take their electricity, or let them die of cancer, metaphorically speaking.<p>You can&#x27;t have seven billion lions, and expect there to be any gazelle. Exponentially so when the lions have laser guided ballistic missiles.

Anyone have a sense of the cost comparison to carbon sequestration via <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;carbonengineering.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;carbonengineering.com&#x2F;</a>

Trees get mentioned a lot for mitigation (as they should), but should we also be looking at kelp plantations too? A bonus would be addressing ocean acidification.

Now I&#x27;m curious where I can buy a ton of olivine. I&#x27;ve got $30 in my pocket and would love to build me a giant carbon-scrubbing sandbox.

What happens if we do this but we also reduce planetary carbon emissions in other ways? Will we cause another ice age?

Whoever cares about climate should also read about the biotic pump theory.

I&#x27;m recently in the camp of &quot;Deep Adaptation&quot;

your entire operation revolves around CO2 and you can&#x27;t even bother to typeset the &quot;2&quot; in subscript on your webpage?

Where does one buy one ton of olivine in the US?

Well jeez. I know it&#x27;s not a popular thought on HN, but climate change is a problem of such scale that it&#x27;s going to need government-level funding and oversight to find and validate geoengineering solutions, and global-level funding and coordination to implement them. This third-way aspiration to a non-government solution just seems like a pipe dream.

It seems these folks think km = miles. They also seem to think that &quot;porphyritic&quot; and &quot;olivine&quot; are rocks (one is an adjective and the other is a mineral).<p>From the FAQ: &quot;We currently put out a significant amount of CO2 per year, so we need a volume of 7 km^3 of rock.<p>The equivalent amount of hydrocarbons acquired each year is currently greater than a volume of 10 km^3.&quot;

What if we accidentally trigger an ice age.

Seems like a get rich quick scheme.

I have this invention that runs on solar power and water, removes carbon from the atmosphere day and night, lowers the nearby temperature of the Earth dramatically, is bio-degradable, and best of all, it self replicates.<p>I&#x27;m calling it Tree and I&#x27;ll sell you it for $0.

&quot;The Last 3 Ice Ages Were Caused By Volcanic Rock Weathering Near the Equator [...] Project Vesta seeks to mimic this natural process but to greatly accelerate it because we do not have millions of years to wait.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m afraid that too many these proposed geoengineering projects will actually take place, and nobody will really know how much of the CO2 is removed from the atmosphere. If that happens we will end up with another Ice Age (we&#x27;re due for one soon anyway), or something worse.<p>I know it&#x27;s easy to make CO2 the villain, but let&#x27;s not forget that the life on this planet is not possible without it.

If you work backwards, climate change is a giant man-made disaster that literally can only be countered by a just-as-big man-made solution.<p>Green sand on a beach is like, not as big as millions of cars on roads.

This seems like it would fail energetically; the amount of energy required to mine and transport a bunch of rock to a beach would surely exceed the amount of CO2 sequestered.