Zeke Hausfather: Today Frontier announced a $58.3M offtake for 152,480 tons of permanent carbon removal by 2027 with Vaulted Deep. This is a good example of turning harmful waste like biosolids previously spread on fields or incinerated into safe CDR: frontierclimate.com/writing/vaul...

Today Frontier announced a $58.3M offtake for 152,480 tons of permanent carbon removal by 2027 with Vaulted Deep. This is a good example of turning harmful waste like biosolids previously spread on fields or incinerated into safe CDR: frontierclimate.com/writing/vaul...

Frontier buyers sign $58.3M in offtake agreements with Vaulted Deepfrontierclimate.com Vaulted Deep will permanently remove 152,480 tons of CO₂ by 2027 on behalf of Frontier buyers.

Biosolids are nasty stuff. They are whats left over from wastewater treatment or manure management, and contain high levels of contaminants. Incinerating them or land apply them rapidly releases CO2, while landfilling sludge results in massive CH4 emissions.

Vaulted Deep's innovation is to use the dramatic cost reductions in deep drilling over the past decade to put these biosolids in EPA-regulated geologic storage where the carbon will remain out of the atmosphere for millennia (and likely millions of years).

In addition to announcing this new purchase, we've released a new set of sustainable biomass principles that will govern both this and future biomass-based CDR activities. You can find them here (and more about those in a separate thread!) frontierclimate.com/assets/bioma...

frontierclimate.com

But they also contain a LOT of phosphorus that we are trying to circulate back onto our agricultural lands. How does this interface with the folks advocating for a more circular economy around phosphorus? e.g., doi.org/10.1038/s442...

Realising the circular phosphorus economy delivers for sustainable development goals - npj Sustainable Agriculturedoi.org npj Sustainable Agriculture - Realising the circular phosphorus economy delivers for sustainable development goals

There is still no lack of manure spreading on fields (and there are other sources of phosphorous if needed). But things like PFAS contaminated human waste that are currently spread on our agricultural field are a real problem.

But, more broadly, the Isometric protocol that is being followed for this offtake requires calculating and netting out any additional emissions (e.g. through more fertilizer application) associated with the counterfactual use of the feedstock today. registry.isometric.com/protocol/bio...

Biomass Geological Storage v1.0.4 — Isometricregistry.isometric.com

Yes, PFAS is certainly a wrench that has been thrown into the P recycling conversation. And the problem with manure P is that it is either in excess or non-existent and replaced by GHG intensive mineral P fertilizer. There's not much in between. We still need to work towards re-distributing manure P

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