Enhanced weathering

In the context of increasing pressures due to climate change, a proper assessment of CO₂ emissions mitigation strategies is more than ever needed. Among existing approaches for carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere, enhanced weathering represents a promising methodology, which is, as such, identified on the portfolio of the Swiss Climate Policy (FOEN, Beuttler et al., 2019). As for most of the CDR technologies, enhanced weathering is, however, in its early stage of evaluation and implementation. Current estimates of the its overall efficiency and related operational costs, although optimistic, are based on extremely simplified representations of mineral weathering and surface transport processes, either from small-scale experiments or global-scale models. This overly simplistic representation of enhanced weathering processes could potentially lead to inaccurate estimates, counterproductive investments and unanticipated environmental consequences.

The main goal of this project is to provide an exhaustive and comprehensive state-of-the-art of the current knowledge about enhanced weathering approaches and to scrutinize the data and modelled processes on which assessments of its efficiency are based. This seed initiative is first aimed at supporting a critical synthesis paper assessing whether the efficiency assessment of enhanced weathering rely on the best- and upto-date environmental knowledge, but also at identifying major avenues of research that should be investigated within a larger interdisciplinary project. It should also feed a societal reflection by proposing to stakeholders and decision makers the most comprehensive information on the relevance of enhanced weathering implementation.