From Woonderlands to InPlanet

After a little break in our blog, we are now back with news regarding the next steps to scale Enhanced Rock Weathering in Brazil. First of all, as you might have noticed in our URL (www.inplanet.earth), we changed our name to InPlanet because we did notice that “Woonderlands” does not represent a good fit with our activities and values anymore. After all, we are investing our effort and time in planet earth, to keep it livable and healthy. Check out our new landing page to learn more about our company’s vision, mission, values, technology, and team. Also follow us on our new social media channels to stay tuned about the latest developments (Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter).

Partnership with producers of natural rock powder

The past week was full of events that made us look into the future with a very positive feeling. By the time we published our last blog post about the leading role of Brazil in Enhanced Rock Weathering, 27 mines had been producing certified rock powders. Currently, we are at 40 mines with the number expected to reach 50 at the end of the year. A favorable situation where our incentive mechanism for farmers to realize the transition from synthetic agrochemicals to natural rock powders comes just with the right timing. In this regard, we are especially happy to be able to announce our partnership with the EMBRAFEN (Empresa Brasileira de Fertilizantes Naturais), an endeavor led by a visionary group of Brazilian entrepreneurs. We saw that our agendas and values are very aligned and consequently closed a partnership in order to accelerate the transition to sustainable, regenerative, and low-carbon agriculture in Brazil. Besides having a fruitful meeting, we visited farmers with seringueira and orange plantations, and areas for pilots for carbon removal with rock powders. Both parties agreed that pilots on more than 1000 ha should be implemented by the end of this year.

Moreover, on Friday of the past week, representatives from ABREFEN (Associação Brasileira dos Produtores de Remineralizadores de Solo e Fertilizantes Naturais), EMBRAFEN, BlueTEC, and InPlanet met in Sorocaba, SP to discuss synergies between actors involved in the whole value chain of remineralizers and enhanced weathering in Brazil. This was a very important meeting where the participants could get to know a sophisticated technology, exclusively made in Brazil, for the comminution of rocks in order to produce a very high-quality rock powder. BlueTec’s technology is at the beginning of the rock powder supply chain and allows it to significantly reduce costs and the carbon footprint of the production of rock powders for agriculture. They are offering custom solutions for mines that want to start producing rock powders in the most energy and material-effective way. The connection with BlueTec allows InPlanet to create high-quality Life Cycle Assessments of the production process of the applied rock powders, hereby increasing the transparency and quality of each carbon removal credit issued.

Figure 3: Meeting with Embrafen in Sorocaba with (from left to right)  Patrick Rabelo Staniak (BlueTec), Wilson Favieri (Embrafen), Welington Dal Bem (Abrefen), Krzysztof Staniak (BlueTec), Niklas Kluger (InPlanet)

Collaborating to advance Enhanced Rock Weathering Research globally

Finally, we are happy to announce our participation in various initiatives regarding the development of policies, methodologies, and protocols for Enhanced Rock Weathering and carbon removal. We are one of the founding members of the Carbon Business Council and participate in the puro.earth working group on Enhanced Rock Weathering. Also, we are one of the participants of a Nordic impact VCs’  autumn acceleration round (official announcement next week) and were selected to join the Catalyst program from Carbonfuture (they will announce us on NY sustainability this week), which allows us to increase our pilot investments in Brazil and create more comprehensive projects, combining MRV research with activities at scale.

If you are interested in starting an Enhanced Rock Weathering project in Brazil with us, get in touch! Reach out and start making a difference today.