After a little break in our blog we are now back with news regarding the next steps to scale enhanced 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).
The past week was full of events that made us look into the future with a very positive feeling. The time we published our last blog post about the leading role of Brazil in enhanced weathering, about 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 agro-chemicals 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 a sustainable, regenerative and low carbon agriculture in Brazil. Besides having a fruitful meeting, we visited farmers with seringueira and orange plantations, areas for pilots for carbon removal with rock powders. Both parties agreed that pilots on more than 1000 ha should be implemented until 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. It was an extremely interesting 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 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, this way increasing the transparency and quality of each carbon removal credit issued.
Finally, we are happy to announce our participation in various initiatives regarding the development of policies, methodologies and protocols for enhanced weathering and carbon removal. We are one of the founding members of the carbon business council and do participate in the puro.earth working group on enhanced weathering. Also, we are one of the participants of a Nordic impact VCs’ autumn acceleration round (official announcement next week) and were chosen for 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 weathering project in Brazil with us, get in touch!
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