Enhanced weathering with agriculture for atmospheric carbon dioxide removal

Dr Chris Reinhard is an Associate Professor of Biogeochemistry and Georgia Power Chair in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, where his research focuses on greenhouse gas biogeochemistry, Earth system science, and carbon dioxide removal. Dr Reinhard was awarded the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Ocean Sciences in 2015, a Sigma Xi Young Faculty Award in 2020, and the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 2021. Much of his current work focuses on the mechanisms, monitoring, and verification of carbon removal technologies that manipulate Earth’s alkalinity cycle, in parallel with exploration of holistic incentives for responsible greenhouse gas mitigation and carbon management.

Raymond received his BS from Marist College and his PhD from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (College of William and Mary). He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, received the Coastal and Estuarine Research Federations Cronin Award for Young Scientists, a ISI highly cited author, and a past Editor and Chief of the American Geophysical Union’s journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.

Isabel Patricia Montañez holds degrees in geoscience from Bryn Mawr College (BSc 1981) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute (PhD 1990). She was an assistant and associate professor in the Department of Earth Sciences, UC Riverside before joining the faculty in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at UC Davis in 1998, where she is currently a Chancellor’s Leadership Distinguished Professor. She serves as the Director of the UC Davis Institute of the Environment. Her research focuses on reconstructing past perturbations to global carbon cycling and regional climate change, in particular, during periods of warming and major transitions. Isabel is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (’21), a fellow of several professional societies (AAAS, AGU, The Geochemical Society, European Soc. of Geochemistry, GSA), a past Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, as well as the recipient of multiple national and international awards and medals (Arthur L Day Medal, Jean Baptiste Lamarck Medal, Francis J Pettijohn Medal). She served as President of The Geological Society of America from 2017 to 2018 and as Chair of the Board of Earth Sciences and Resources (2019-2024) and newly appointed Chair of the Division of Life and Earth Sciences at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Filip Meysman is research professor within the Department of Biology at the University of Antwerp (Belgium). He coordinates the newly founded Centre of Excellence on Microbial Systems Technology, and heads the GeoBiology research team, which investigates the biogeochemistry of the ocean floor, embracing interdisciplinary approaches (biology-chemistry-physics). In recent projects, he’s investigating how marine sediments can be used to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere via ocean alkalinization (www.coastal-carbon.eu) and he’s looking at the intriguing and exciting phenomenon of microbial electricity in the ocean floor (www.microbial-electricity.eu). Over his career, he has authored >170 research articles and received several awards recognizing scientific excellence (FWO Odysseus, ERC, NWO Vici, AIAS fellowship, Prigogine medal). Additionally, Filip Meysman is highly active in science communication and scientific outreach to the broader public, as coordinator of large-scale citizen science projects (www.curieuzeneuzen.be).

Elspeth has a background in environmental psychology and is interested in public risk perceptions and barriers to engagement with climate change and environmental issues. She is currently working on a project aimed at exploring how the public perceive carbon dioxide removal technologies with a focus on enhanced rock weathering. She completed her undergraduate and masters degrees in Psychology at the University of Aberdeen initially working on how types of information influenced public engagement with climate change. Her masters research investigated how trust in different information sources affected willingness to adopt pro-environmental behaviours. She obtained her PhD from Cardiff University where she worked on an interdisciplinary project using mixed methods to explore public risk perceptions of ocean acidification through a mental models approach.

Anu Khan is the founder and executive director of the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI), a nonprofit that provides technical assistance and capacity building for carbon removal policy, focused on carbon quantification. Anu previously led the Science & Innovation team at Carbon180, a DC-based policy think tank, and co-led climate grantmaking at Founders Pledge, a philanthropic fund focused on high-impact policy advocacy for energy innovation. An electrochemist by training, Anu holds a BS in chemistry from Princeton and an MS in chemistry from Caltech.

Karen Henwood (Professor, Social Sciences, Cardiff University) is a social psychologist by training who works as part of collaborative, multi-disciplinary teams on topics spanning different scales (local-global, domestic to industrial). She conducts low carbon, energy transition projects and net zero research, and is a specialist in qualitative social scientific and public engagement methodology. She is Co-I on two major UKRI investments [HiAct - Hydrogen Integration for Accelerating Energy Transitions’ (EPSRC) and GGR-ERW-D - Enhanced Rock Weathering for Land-based Carbon Removal (BBSRC)] and project PI for “Living well in low carbon homes: Resident experiences, responsive design and the SWITCH to Net Zero Buildings” (PBIAA - EPSRC).

Livia Fritz is a researcher at the Center for Energy Technologies at Aarhus University (Denmark). As an environmental social scientists, she explores the interfaces between science, policy, and society in the field of climate, with a particular focus on power dynamics public engagement. As part of the European projects GENIE and UPTAKE she currently works on the social and political dimensions of carbon dioxide removal methods.

Nick is a social scientist who holds a Chair in environmental psychology and risk at Cardiff University where he directs the Understanding Risk Research Group. In his early career he investigated the human and organisational preconditions of large-scale disasters. Latterly he has worked on public engagement with environment and climate change, net zero technologies, and new technology risks. He has researched a range of social and ethical issues associated with geoengineering and carbon removal since 2009, and is a Co-Investigator of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation investigating public perceptions and engagement with enhanced rock weathering in North America, the UK, and South East Asia. In 2006 Nick chaired the UK’s Cross-Party Parliamentary inquiry ‘Is a Cross-Party Consensus on Climate Change Possible – or Desirable?’ which recommended the setting up of the UK Climate Change Committee. He was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to climate change and energy security awareness and became a Fellow of the British Academy in 2023.

Susan Owens is Emeritus Professor of Environment and Policy, University of Cambridge and a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research lies in the field of environmental governance, focusing on the role of knowledge and expertise in policy formation and change. Her book Knowledge, Policy, and Expertise (OUP 2015) explored these issues through an in-depth analysis of the practices and influence of the former Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP). She chairs the Programme Advisory Board for the five-year ESRC ACCESS project (Advancing Capacity for Climate and Environmental Social Science) and is a member of Defra’s Science Advisory Council (chairing one of its sub-groups, the Social Science Expert Group) and of the Board of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. Previously, she has chaired the Science Advisory Council of the Stockholm Environment Institute and been member of RCEP, as well as serving on a range of other advisory bodies.

Rachael James is Professor of Geochemistry and Director of the NERC IGNITE Doctoral Landscape Award in the School of Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton, UK. She is renowned for the development and application of novel chemical and isotopic techniques to improve understanding of ocean and earth processes and to address critical environmental and societal challenges. As part of the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation she leads the development of methodologies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere by enhanced rock weathering. Rachael serves on the scientific advisory councils of the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences and the multi-institute research mission Marine Carbon Sinks in Decarbonisation Pathways and is a member of the awards committee of the European Association of Geochemistry (EAG). She was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2006, an EAG Distinguished Lectureship in 2014 and was the Marie Tharp Lecturer in 2022.

Dr Clarkson has been the Head of Carbon at InPlanet since 2022, bridging business and science to advance climate solutions. His academic background encompasses Geology, Geochemistry, and Earth Systems Science, with a BSc from Durham University, MSc from RHUL and UCL, and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. His postdoctoral work at the University of Otago (NZ) and ETH Zurich focused on Earth System recovery; developing, refining and applying novel geochemical isotope tools and geochemical modelling to link terrestrial and oceanic carbon cycles. He particularly embraces the inherent complexity of geochemical tracing to investigate various components within intricate systems. At InPlanet, he utilises this approach with systems thinking to lead MRV and carbon credit certification.

Zeke Hausfather is Climate Research Lead for Stripe. He is a climate scientist whose research focuses on observational temperature records, climate models, carbon removal, and mitigation technologies. Zeke also works as a research scientist with Berkeley Earth and is a science contributor to Carbon Brief. He was previously the senior climate analyst at Project Drawdown, the director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute, the lead data scientist at Essess, the chief scientist at C3.ai, and the cofounder and chief scientist of Efficiency 2.0. He has masters degrees in environmental science from Yale University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a PhD in climate science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Noah Planavsky is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale University. He studies the connections between the evolution of Earth-system processes, biological innovation, and ecosystem change—foremost in Earth’s early history. His research integrates field, petrographic, and geochemical work. A central theme of his research has been trying to piece together the history and effects of Earth’s oxygenation. He has also worked on reconstructing the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels through Earth’s history. Current projects include coupling paleoredox proxies, calibrating novel metal isotope systems in modern aqueous systems and disentangling the distribution and diagenetic history of traces metals in sedimentary rocks.