In this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop, Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart sit down with Cara Maesano, lead author of RMI's new report Mining and Carbon Dioxide Removal: A Responsible Path Forward, to dig into an industry the carbon removal world has barely talked about. Cara's starting point is striking: with the land, materials and engineering know-how that mines already have, almost every form of carbon removal could run on a mine site. But only one approach, she argues, really has to.
Much of the conversation centres on surficial mineralisation, where reactive mine waste absorbs CO2 from the air and locks it away as stable minerals. Cara walks through the new research hub at Thetford Mines in Quebec, set up by Frontier and Carbon Removal Canada on a legacy of asbestos waste the local community wants gone, and explains how churning and activating tailings could push carbonation far deeper than the surface layer. She is clear that these are not cookie-cutter projects, and why.
The hosts also press on the numbers. Cara is candid that the report's headline potential and $80 to $300 price range rest on theoretical and price-based estimates rather than hard cost data. On policy, she explains why permitting is a bigger hurdle than mining's vast footprint suggests: mines are permitted to do specific things with their waste and rarely deviate, which is why building carbon removal in from the very start of a mine's life may be easier than adding it later.
They close on the business case. Thin profit margins per ton of CO2 mean miners are unlikely to buy durable removals, but they may have strong reasons to deliver them on site, from green premiums to tax credits to the environmental liabilities sitting in their tailings piles. Tune in to hear the one thing Cara says is holding the industry back.
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