Accelerated Mineral Carbonation Technology for Land Reclamation: A Bridge to Link Mitigation and Adaptation Actions

With current greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to human activities already exceeding 40 Gt CO₂e per year, there is a large demand for CO₂ mitigation technologies. Unfortunately, despite the pledges, various recent studies agree that current efforts laid out in each country’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are insufficient to meet the 2°C, much less the 1.5°C, target. It is estimated that the plans outlined in the current NDCs would still likely lead to a global warming scenario of up to 3.8°C in 2100, ultimately resulting in significant and catastrophic impacts on humanity. One of the most critical consequences of global warming is the rise in sea levels (SLR) due to melting ice from glaciers and the Earth’s polar regions. The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) projected a global SLR of up to 98 cm in 2100, but more recent studies suggest that the increase in SLR could be much higher than that due to collapsing ice sheets. This is a sobering warning, especially for coastal cities and low-lying areas that would be threatened by inundation and flooding from SLR. A higher SLR would certainly impact even more people and cause even greater losses.

This paper describes our effort over the past ten years to develop an integrated mineral carbonation (MC) technology, where the bulk carbonation process; producing carbonated materials could be used for land reclamation. In addition, the mineral upgrading technology also has been developed; this makes the whole process potentially to be self-funding through income generated from value-added products derived from minerals. Furthermore, instead of treating mitigation and adaptation as two mutually exclusive ideas, we propose a climate change policy based on a synergy between these two. This synergy is achieved through the development and implementation of MC technologies. Not only does MC have the capacity to sequester gigatonne-levels of CO₂, it can also produce materials such as mineral carbonates and silica that are useful for land reclamation purposes or the construction of dykes and raised river banks to protect inhabited areas against SLR and flooding. Thus, MC can contribute to both mitigation and adaptation measures simultaneously. MC Tech becomes more economically feasible and practical. In this paper, we present an in-depth discussion of the costs of MC and synergy between mitigation and adaption, as well as its benefits of protecting against the damage of SLR. Aspects that are crucial for the success of this synergy, such as process design and selection, material suitability, economics, public sector support and industry/commercial interests will also be discussed.