Enhanced Rock Weathering’s Scaling Bottleneck Is Proof, Not Rock Artwork

Climate Confident - Practical Climate Solutions That Cut Emissions

Climate Confident is for business leaders, climate professionals and policymakers who need to understand what is actually cutting emissions—and what it takes to make those solutions work at scale.

Each Wednesday, technology and sustainability analyst, keynote speaker and former SAP Global VP Tom Raftery speaks with the executives, engineers, scientists, founders and policymakers turning climate ambition into measurable progress. Together, they examine the technologies, business models, policies and implementation strategies reshaping energy, transport, industry, supply chains, food and finance.

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Climate Confident - Practical Climate Solutions That Cut Emissions

Enhanced Rock Weathering’s Scaling Bottleneck Is Proof, Not Rock

October 07, 2026 • Tom Raftery • Season 1 • Episode 297

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Enhanced rock weathering looks deceptively simple: crush suitable rock, spread it on farmland and let chemistry remove CO₂. The harder question is whether you can prove that removal reliably enough to make the economics work.

I speak with Chris Zair, Director of Partnerships at UNDO, about what happens when enhanced rock weathering moves from controlled trials into real fields. For buyers, investors and policymakers, the stakes are practical: measurement and verification can account for roughly half the cost stack, and weak data can stop credible carbon removal from becoming financeable infrastructure.

We look at why disappearing rock creates an unusual MRV problem, what changes when carbon-credit contracts pay only on delivery, and why having plenty of rock and farmland still does not guarantee scale. We also examine the trade-off between durability, cost and speed - including why particle size can radically alter how quickly CO₂ is removed.

Listen now to understand what is really holding back enhanced rock weathering - and what has to change for carbon removal to become measurable, financeable and repeatable at scale.

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