Agriculture is responsible for more than 10% of global carbon emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But while agriculture is a massive carbon offender, it could now be part of a solution, as startups are trying new ways of using nature to save itself.
Farmers have long spread crushed lime on their fields to balance soil acidity, improve its structure and increase the nutrients available for crops. Startups such as Lithos, UNDO Carbon and California-based Eion are experimenting with several types of carbon-absorbing rocks that can accomplish what lime does while permanently removing carbon from the atmosphere at the same time. This is a process known as enhanced rock weathering.
Eion, for example, uses a volcanic rock called olivine. It grinds it up to make a dust.
“We apply a rock dust onto farms, and that helps farmers condition the soil or make the soil better for improvements,” said Anastasia Pavlovic, CEO of Eion. “Then over time, that manages to secure and sequester carbon, permanently removing it from the atmosphere.”
Olivine is similar to agricultural lime in terms of improving the soil, but when it rains, olivine goes through a chemical process that causes it to absorb carbon dioxide from the air permanently.
“By 2030, Eion will be removing about 2 million cars, the equivalent of 2 million cars, of carbon from the atmosphere every year,” Pavlovic said.
Eion gets its olivine from Norway, which makes it slightly more expensive, but by using different types of tax credits and carbon removal purchases, it is able to subsidize the cost for farmers, like Dan Prevost, who operates Prevost Farms in Mississippi.
“What I get is a discounted product that shows up on my farm at a 50% to 60% cost reduction over what I would pay for an equivalent product, so it’s an immediate financial benefit to me that has positive impacts for my bottom line,” Prevost said.
Eion has raised a total of $20 million from investors including utility company Exelon and agricultural company Growmark.
For now, Eion operates mainly in Mississippi, but the startup expects to expand into Illinois and more of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic, Pavlovic said. Now that Eion is out of the seed stage, Pavlovic said it expects to reach “hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue over the next five years.”
— CNBC producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.