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Environment

Huge amounts of rock dust are being spread across farms to capture CO2

Companies around the world are spreading crushed rocks on farms to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a process called enhanced weathering, but the hard part is measuring how much is stored

By James Dinneen

23 January 2024

Rock powder being spread on a field in Brazil

MOSKOW/Giselle Carr/Inplanet GmbH

The following is an extract from our climate newsletter Fix the Planet. Sign up to receive it for free in your inbox every month.

All you need to remove a lot of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is an open field and piles of crushed-up rock. That is the promise of what may become one of the primary ways to durably remove billions of tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere, helping the world reach net zero on time and avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change.

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