Easier ideas can be the winner.
Certainly, that applies to the winners of the Xprize Carbon removal race announced on Wednesday. For thousands of years, Matty Carbon has won the $50 million grand prize for its enhanced rock weathering programme that shuts down carbon to the soil.
The Mask Foundation has accepted the award. The runner is Netzero and produces biochar. Vaulted Deep wastes and fills up biomass. Another reinforced lock weathering startup, carbon back. Mati defeated finalists across a variety of technologies, ranging from direct air capture to increasing ocean alkalinity.
“It was a real honor to be selected among the carbon removal celebrity competing for this award,” Shantanu Agarwal, founder and CEO of Mati Carbon, told TechCrunch.
Matty’s carbon removal technology, enhanced lock weathering is easy. The company crushes rocks that convert carbon dioxide into naturally stable minerals, helping to increase surface area and absorb carbon more quickly. The rock dust then mineralizes carbon and spreads to farms that contribute micronutrients to the soil.
Several different types of rocks work to enhance rock weathering, but Matty uses basalt, a volcanic rock available in many parts of the world. So the fine particles are often wasted from the aggregates used in construction.
Logistics is the key to weathering rocks that have been reinforced for carbon removal. Matty is applied free of charge to farmers’ fields. Costs are supported by a mix of grants and carbon removal credit sales. The company plans to provide approximately 5,000 to 6,000 tonnes of carbon removal credit this year.
Agarwal said Mati aims to sell credits for less than $100 per metric tonne by the early 2030s. In the long run, he expects prices to fall to $70-80 per metric tonne. To verify the credit, the company takes eight samples per three acres of farmland. As the database grows and the model improves accuracy, Mati expects to have far fewer samples.
Agarwal said about 200 million small farmers could benefit from adding basalt to their fields. Overall, small farms, generally less than 24 acres, support around 1 billion people.
“It’s about 800 million to 900 million acres of farmland,” he said. “You deploy it to carbon removal. You get more than a gigaton of removal each year, increasing the income of these very poor farmers.”
After the season, farmers usually increase productivity by 25% from fertile soil and gain 50% to 70% in degraded soil, Agarwal said. Soil modifications also improve moisture retention.
“The material is the difference between having crops and not having crops. I’ve seen it this year in Zambia. There were farmers who put this in half of the fields. Half of the fields seemed normal.
To reach all these farmers, Agarwal acknowledges that it is unlikely that Mathi will grow fast enough. Therefore, MATI plans to provide organizations with a free license to the Enterprise Resource Planning (EPR) platform if those organizations pledge to share at least 50% of their profits with the farmers they serve.
In addition to Zambia, Matti is also active in India and Tanzania. The company plans to add three more countries this year, and will eventually expand to include much of the southern part of the world, Agarwal said it is the term for developing countries.
Like many other Climate Tech startups, Mati is registered as a public benefits company. However, unlike many others, the company is managed by a nonprofit organization of Swahili initiative 501(c)(3).
“I want to build a market mechanism and expand nonprofits globally, which allows a large portion of the value to generate farmers,” Agarwal said. “This Xprize will go a long way in pushing us in that direction.”