REM: Google, Microsoft back Terradot, a carbon removal startup

The US carbon removal startup Terradot has launched with $58.2mn in funding to commercialise its technology. The funding is from well-known investors such as Alphabet’s Google, Microsoft, cleantech investment titan John Doerr and Sheryl Sandberg, formerly of Meta Platforms.

Terradot uses a novel technique called enhanced rock weathering (ERW), which is a process of spreading pulverised rock such as basalt on farmland to soak up and sequester CO2 and clean the atmosphere. The technique accelerates natural processes.

It “has immense scale potential because it’s piggybacking on top of an established natural process,” Randy Spock, Google’s head of carbon credits and removals, told Bloomberg.

“We know this can happen, and our quest is just to make it fast,” Scott Fendorf, Terradot’s chief scientific and technical advisor, also told the news service.

Terradot would buy the rock from quarries, sell it to farms to help balance the soil’s pH profile then sell the carbon credits. The selling of credits will start in mid-2025, said Terradot.

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