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Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Microsoft tops Google for ‘world's largest biochar carbon removal' deal
This story was originally published on ESG Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily ESG Dive newsletter. Microsoft inked a deal Wednesday with biochar carbon removal company Exomad Green, which will remove at least 1.24 million tonnes of carbon dioxide for the tech company over 10-years. Exomad said in the May 21 releases that the deal is the 'world's largest biochar carbon removal agreement,' by volume, and one of the largest 'durable carbon removals to date.' The credits will be verified using digital infrastructure platform Carbonfuture's measuring, reporting and verification system. Microsoft and Exomad's biochar removal contract surpassed deals Google made with San Francisco-based Charm Industrial and Gujarat, India-based Varaha in January. Google signed deals with Charm and Varaha for 100,000 tonnes of removals each, which the search engine and tech conglomerate said at the time were separately and collectively 'the largest biochar carbon removals to date.' Microsoft's deal this week represents an expansion of its relationship with Exomad, having previously purchased 32,000 tonnes of biochar removal credits from the carbon removal company in 2023. According to a carbon removal market intelligence platform, Exomad, Microsoft and Carbonfuture currently represent the top deliverer, purchaser and service used for carbon removals, respectively. Exomad was also the largest supplier and deliverer of biochar carbon removals in Q1 of this year, according to a post last month, and is one of the largest global producers of biochar removal credits, according to the May 21 release. The Santa Cruz, Bolivia-headquartered company said Microsoft's commitment 'demonstrates biochar's ability as a scalable, effective climate solution. 'Microsoft has shown true climate leadership and commitment by seizing the immediate potential of biochar as a carbon removal solution that is measurable and scalable, while demonstrating significant co-benefits across communities and in improving soil quality,' Exomad CEO Diego Justinianio said in the release. Biochar is created by burning biomass like food scraps, wood chips and animal waste in the absence of oxygen. The mineralized black carbon byproduct can then be mixed with soil to increase the soil's ability to draw down and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to the Department of Agriculture's U.S. Agricultural Research Service. Exomad creates its biochar by utilizing forestry residue that would 'otherwise be incinerated in firepits,' according to the release. The company then distributes the biochar to local communities. Exomad hopes to sequester a megatonne of carbon dioxide annually by 2027. Carbonfuture's contractual involvement with the deal is 'a cornerstone of the agreement,' and Carbonfuture CEO Hannes Junginger-Gestrich said that it 'sets a new precedent for how quality is built into carbon removal from day one.' Recommended Reading Google inks pair of 'largest biochar carbon removal deals to date' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Japan Times
02-05-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Why investors are souring on this once red-hot climate tech
As political winds shift in the U.S. and big corporations pull back on their climate ambition, investors, too, are giving the cold shoulder to a nascent technology that will be vital to tackling climate change. U.S.-based startups developing direct air capture (DAC) — machines that suck planet-warming carbon dioxide straight out of the air — received about $58 million from venture capitalists in the first three months of 2025, a more than 60% decline from a year ago, according to market research firm Pitchbook. The dip stands in contrast to the overall U.S. climate tech sector, which saw a nearly 65% increase in investment during the same period. The decline is a worrisome sign for the DAC industry, which needs every dollar it can get to scale. DAC and other technologies delivered less than 320,000 tons of carbon removal credits last year, according to industry tracker By mid-century, though, the world will almost certainly need to clean up billions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere annually. Nevertheless, investors are becoming increasingly cautious, says Rajesh Swaminathan, a partner at Khosla Ventures who has witnessed the shifting sentiment firsthand. Not long ago, "everybody had a check box on one direct air capture investment,' Swaminathan says. "Now, people are stepping back and saying, 'Why didn't I look at the economics there?'' 'A grim patina' There are many ways to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, ranging from scattering special rocks in fields to enabling oceans to absorb more CO2. DAC is one of the most expensive carbon cleanup solutions: Pulling CO2 from the air and storing it permanently underground can cost about $1,000 per ton or more, and companies are struggling to bring costs down. It is easily verifiable and more permanent than other methods. Until recently, concerns about unproven economics were partly addressed by billions of dollars in tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. Former President Joe Biden's administration also launched a government-funded program to build DAC hubs in several U.S. states to help demonstrate the technology at commercial scale. Driven by government support, venture investment in U.S.-based DAC startups more than tripled last year from the 2023 levels to reach nearly $415 million, Pitchbook data shows. But with the administration changing hands this year, the tide is once again turning. "The U.S. direct air capture landscape right now is enveloped in this very grim patina,' says Brenna Casey, an analyst specializing in carbon removal at global consultancy BloombergNEF. "Political instability is a huge factor.' President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans have threatened to revoke or roll back parts of the IRA incentives. The U.S. Energy Department is also considering shutting down its Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which oversees the DAC hubs program. Among those projects on the chopping block is a pilot in Texas that was selected for an award of as much as $1.2 billion by the Biden administration. "From a federal perspective, the next four years are not looking so favorable for direct air capture,' Casey says. Carbon removal credits DAC startups are at risk of losing another important source of income: corporate purchases. To help create a new market, deep-pocketed corporations have agreed to pay for carbon removal services to offset their emissions. 1PointFive, the carbon capture arm of Occidental Petroleum, last year inked an agreement to sell 500,000 metric tons of carbon credits to Microsoft, for example. But a growing number of companies are starting to walk back their climate targets, raising an alarm about future demand. While all carbon offset businesses could take a hit from a potential slowdown in voluntary trading, "DAC is disproportionately affected because it relies on a small set of premium buyers willing to pay a high price per ton,' says Sophie Bakalar, a partner at Collaborative Fund. Whereas standard forest offset credits can be sold under $10 per ton, buyers pay an estimated average of $715 per ton for DAC services, according to "Without reliable government funding or robust voluntary markets, the capital stack for DAC projects looks shakier than it did even a year ago,' Bakalar says. DAC advocates argue that the lackluster quarterly funding is not sufficient to conclude the industry's long-term outlook is dim. "It's hard to project a trend from a single data point,' says Giana Amador, executive director of Carbon Removal Alliance, an industry association. In March, California-based Capture6 closed a funding round of $27.5 million from private investors, she pointed out. "We're still pretty bullish on the potential for direct air capture to continue to operate and raise funding and scale these solutions,' she says.
Time of India
02-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Why investors are souring on this once red-hot climate tech
As political winds shift in the US and big corporations pull back on their climate ambition, investors , too, are giving the cold shoulder to a nascent technology that will be vital to tackling climate change. #Pahalgam Terrorist Attack India's Rafale-M deal may turn up the heat on Pakistan China's support for Pakistan may be all talk, no action India brings grounded choppers back in action amid LoC tensions US-based startups developing direct air capture (DAC) — machines that suck planet-warming carbon dioxide straight out of the air — received about $58 million from venture capitalists in the first three months of 2025, a more than 60% decline from a year ago, according to market research firm Pitchbook. The dip stands in contrast to the overall US climate tech sector, which saw a nearly 65% increase in investment during the same period. The decline is a worrisome sign for the DAC industry, which needs every dollar it can get to scale. DAC and other technologies delivered less than 320,000 tons of carbon removal credits last year, according to industry tracker By mid-century, though, the world will almost certainly need to clean up billions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere investors are becoming increasingly cautious, says Rajesh Swaminathan, a partner at Khosla Ventures who has witnessed the shifting sentiment firsthand. Not long ago, 'everybody had a check box on one direct air capture investment,' Swaminathan says. 'Now, people are stepping back and saying, 'Why didn't I look at the economics there?'' Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track default , selected Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. 'A grim patina' There are many ways to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, ranging from scattering special rocks in fields to enabling oceans to absorb more CO2. DAC is one of the most expensive carbon cleanup solutions: Pulling CO2 from the air and storing it permanently underground can cost about $1,000 per ton or more, and companies are struggling to bring costs down. It is easily verifiable and more permanent than other methods. Until recently, concerns about unproven economics were partly addressed by billions of dollars in tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act. Former President Joe Biden's administration also launched a government-funded program to build DAC hubs in several US states to help demonstrate the technology at commercial scale. Driven by government support, venture investment in US-based DAC startups more than tripled last year from the 2023 levels to reach nearly $415 million, Pitchbook data show. But with the administration changing hands this year, the tide is once again turning. Live Events 'The US direct air capture landscape right now is enveloped in this very grim patina,' says Brenna Casey, an analyst specializing in carbon removal at global consultancy BloombergNEF. 'Political instability is a huge factor.' President Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans have threatened to revoke or roll back parts of the IRA incentives. The US Energy Department is also considering shutting down its Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, which oversees the DAC hubs program. Among those projects on the chopping block is a pilot in Texas that was selected for an award of as much as $1.2 billion by the Biden administration. 'From a federal perspective, the next four years are not looking so favorable for direct air capture,' Casey says. Carbon removal credits DAC startups are at risk of losing another important source of income: corporate purchases. To help create a new market, deep-pocketed corporations have agreed to pay for carbon removal services to offset their emissions. 1PointFive, the carbon capture arm of Occidental Petroleum Corp., last year inked an agreement to sell 500,000 metric tons of carbon credits to Microsoft Corp., for example. But a growing number of companies are starting to walk back their climate targets, raising an alarm about future demand. While all carbon offset businesses could take a hit from a potential slowdown in voluntary trading, 'DAC is disproportionately affected because it relies on a small set of premium buyers willing to pay a high price per ton,' says Sophie Bakalar, a partner at Collaborative Fund. Whereas standard forest offset credits can be sold under $10 per ton, buyers pay an estimated average of $715 per ton for DAC services, according to 'Without reliable government funding or robust voluntary markets, the capital stack for DAC projects looks shakier than it did even a year ago,' Bakalar says. DAC advocates argue that the lackluster quarterly funding is not sufficient to conclude the industry's long-term outlook is dim. 'It's hard to project a trend from a single data point,' says Giana Amador, executive director of Carbon Removal Alliance, an industry association. In March, California-based Capture6 closed a funding round of $27.5 million from private investors, she pointed out. 'We're still pretty bullish on the potential for direct air capture to continue to operate and raise funding and scale these solutions,' she says.
Japan Times
19-04-2025
- Business
- Japan Times
Big bets on speculative carbon capture tech ignore today's solutions
The first step in reducing the risks of climate change is cutting carbon emissions. The world hit a notable milestone on that front, with global energy-related emissions likely peaking last year, according to a recent BloombergNEF report. Now, the world's carbon pollution is likely to begin a long, inexorable decline over the coming decades. But there's a catch: Emissions almost certainly won't fall fast enough to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, let alone meet the 1.5 C target set in the Paris Agreement. Increasingly, hitting that target looks like it will require the world to turn to technologies that can suck carbon straight from the air in a bid to turn the global thermostat down. Investors have spent years laying the groundwork to develop a sector that has the potential to undergird carbon markets that BNEF estimates could reach $1.1 trillion in the coming decades. Companies from Occidental Petroleum to Microsoft along with firms like BlackRock and Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures are among the investors throwing billions at startups. The U.S. government has been a significant patron, with the Energy Department committing more than $1 billion to get carbon removal off the ground. But funding and buyers of carbon removal services have so far targeted a narrow subset of techniques to clean the atmosphere. And U.S. federal support is now up in the air as the Donald Trump administration pursues funding cuts to all manner of climate programs. This is happening in what is shaping up to be a formative period for the carbon removal industry as companies attempt the perilous journey from pilot projects to commercialization, said Robert Hoglund, co-founder of carbon removal clearinghouse To ensure the industry has a fighting chance to reach the scale needed, it will need an enormous financial boost. "If we don't get new buyers, we're stuck in the seed stage,' he said. There are at least eight broad categories for removing carbon to clean up the atmosphere, with more than 900 startups trying different approaches. The money that's been rushing into the carbon chase has overwhelmingly backed a technique known as direct air capture (DAC), which involves using machines to suck up carbon. Firms are placing major bets on it even though the technology remains unproven at scale, inordinately expensive and energy intensive. Far less investor money is flowing to competing methods such as sequestering carbon dioxide in the ocean and using crushed rocks, a process known as enhanced weathering. Between 2020 to 2024, firms have bet $3.3 billion on DAC compared to $3.4 billion for all other novel approaches, according to publicly available data compiled by The technology receives a disproportionate amount of private investment because it's backed by U.S. federal tax credits and grants, according to Danny Cullenward, a senior fellow with the University of Pennsylvania Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. That support isn't because the government decided DAC is the best way to remove carbon, he said, but "because the political economy of the oil and gas industry is much more powerful than these other emerging industries.' Carbon removal buyers looking to meet their climate targets have also not diversified their portfolios. Almost 60% of all purchases tracked by between 2019 and 2024 are for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). It involves burning wood to run power plants, then capturing and sequestering the resulting emissions underground. Hence, the CO2 the trees and plants pull from the atmosphere during their lifetimes stays put. Despite the interest, research has found that cutting down and transporting feedstock can emit more carbon than it sequesters, making carbon accounting a big challenge. BECCS made up about 85% of Microsoft's 8.2 million metric ton portfolio for novel carbon removal through 2024 tracked by The technique "offers attractive costs with an achievable scale inside the 2030 timeline,' said Brian Marrs, the company's senior director of energy and carbon removal. Bioenergy plants already exist, and retrofitting them for carbon capture is arguably faster than building and scaling novel carbon removal technology. Since 2024, Microsoft has only added to its BECCS portfolio, signing a landmark 6.75 million ton deal with Houston-based developer Fidelis New Energy earlier this month to purchase removal from a plant being built near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's the largest deal for novel carbon removal to date. The company also recently added another 3.7 million ton purchase from CO280 Solutions, which captures CO2 from pulp and paper mills, reflecting Microsoft's aggressive expansion of its climate commitments. Microsoft takes a "portfolio approach' to procuring carbon removal, balancing costs, deployment timelines and scale potential for different methods, Marrs said, adding that the company also purchases nature-based carbon credits in addition to engineered removals. BECCS's dominance is not to say DAC or other technologies haven't seen big purchases. According to Oxy subsidiary 1PointFive has sold 1.3 million tons of carbon removal services to companies including Microsoft, and Airbus, making it the largest DAC purveyor. Its next-closest competitors, Heirloom Carbon Technologies and Climeworks, have each sold a bit more than a quarter of that amount. A person points at a stack of trays holding treated limestone, used to absorb carbon dioxide form the air, at a plant in Tracy, California, in 2023. | Heirloom Carbon / via REUTERS Yet these approaches have yet to live up to their promise. Through 2024, DAC delivered around 1,200 tons of CO2 removal — less than 0.2% of all carbon removed over that time frame — and BECCS has delivered 10,000 tons — less than 1.7% of the total — per Just a handful of companies are buying the bulk of carbon removal credits. Microsoft alone is responsible for the majority of carbon removal purchases to date, though Alphabet's Google and Stripe are also among major buyers. That's because durable removal isn't cheap. Using DAC can cost upwards of $1,000 per ton of CO2. Compare that to standard forest carbon credits, which are often sold for under $10. "The only way to make this scale is to make it mandatory,' said Wim Carton, an associate professor of sustainability science at Lund University in Sweden. Carbon removal is a public good governments should treat as akin to a "trash removal service,' said Vikrum Aiyer, Heirloom's head of global public policy and external affairs. That approach should also include sticks, he added, much like littering results in a fine. But with Trump — who has called former President Joe Biden's climate legislation "the green new scam' — the odds of the U.S. doubling down on climate regulation are low. What climate scientists want investors and entrepreneurs to understand is that carbon removal has a narrow set of appropriate use cases. The first is cleaning up legacy emissions. Decades of humanity's CO2 is lingering in the atmosphere, warming the planet. If the Earth were an overflowing bathtub, turning the faucet off — cutting emissions — wouldn't be enough to stop the water from spilling over. You also need to open the drain. The second use is for the unavoidable, steady drip of CO2 for decades from sectors like agriculture and aviation. All other applications of carbon clean-up technologies could do more harm than good since they risk slowing down emissions cuts today by promising removals down the road, Carton said. That's especially true for using captured CO2 to extract more fossil fuels, a practice that climate researchers agree needs to be rapidly wound down. Exactly how much carbon the world needs to remove from the atmosphere depends on how quickly that happens. In a scenario where humanity dramatically curbs emissions, scientists estimate that 4.8 billion tons of CO2 removal will be needed annually by mid-century to keep the climate stable with all of it coming from conventional methods like planting trees. In what's an increasingly likely scenario of continuing to burn fossil fuels, the planet will require almost 9.8 billion tons annually to compensate for the added emissions with 3.5 billion of that from novel techniques like DAC. The world is nowhere near that. Through 2024, about 13 million tons of carbon removal credits have been sold since began tracking the market for novel carbon removal, what Cullenward called "a rounding error.' The clock is ticking on scaling that up. "We're far too late, and we've eaten up too much of the carbon budget to say that we don't need it,' said Sabine Fuss, co-chair of the Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. While DAC and BECCS are attracting the most investment and purchases respectively, they're crowding out other promising carbon removal technologies. Some startups use clever engineering to accelerate natural processes, like increasing the ocean's alkalinity. Others are electrolyzing seawater and spreading crushed basalt rock over farmland. These methods promise greater durability, verifiability and effectiveness of storing CO2 than simply planting trees. Another method has provided the majority of all carbon removal delivered: biochar. It's done so without the support of U.S. tax credits, large purchases from brand-name buyers or billions in investments. In some ways, biochar is the "unrecognized star' of carbon removal, said Carton. Compared to other methods, it's cheap and doesn't require much upfront capital expenditure or high-tech research and development. Making it requires kilns to heat biomass, and the resulting charcoal-like product can also be used to help improve soil fertility. But like all carbon removal techniques, there are downsides, the biggest being uncertainty about how much CO2 stays sequestered when it's added to different soils. That's an area of active investigation for researchers. "It's got so much potential, but it's inconclusive,' said Ben Kolosz, an assistant professor in renewable energy and carbon removal at the University of Hull in the U.K. Still other methods like ocean alkalinity enhancement and enhanced rock weathering hold even greater promise to capture and store vast amounts of CO2. But they are not as "approachable' or "intuitive' as technologies like DAC, which may give investors and would-be buyers pause, said Anu Khan, founder and executive director of the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative. Hoglund compared the carbon removal industry's efforts to the pharmaceutical industry's pursuit of new drugs. "You need huge upfront investments for it to work,' said Hoglund, who is also the manager of the Milkywire Climate Transformation Fund, an organization that supports carbon removal, decarbonization and nature-based projects. That ultimately means securing committed buyers with deep pockets. "We need many Microsofts to start scaling this,' he said.
Nahar Net
21-03-2025
- Business
- Nahar Net
Ocean dumping or climate solution? Growing industry bets on ocean to capture carbon
by Naharnet Newsdesk 21 March 2025, 16:08 From the grounds of a gas-fired power plant on the eastern shores of Canada, a little-known company is pumping a slurry of minerals into the ocean in the name of stopping climate change. Whether it's pollution or a silver bullet that will save the planet may depend on whom you ask. From shore, a pipe releases a mixture of water and magnesium oxide — a powdery white mineral used in everything from construction to heartburn pills that Planetary Technologies, based in Nova Scotia, is betting will absorb more planet-warming gases into the sea. "Restore the climate. Heal the ocean," reads the motto stamped on a shipping container nearby. Planetary is part of a growing industry racing to engineer a solution to global warming using the absorbent power of the oceans. It is backed by $1 million from Elon Musk's foundation and competing for a prize of $50 million more. Dozens of other companies and academic groups are pitching the same theory: that sinking rocks, nutrients, crop waste or seaweed in the ocean could lock away climate-warming carbon dioxide for centuries or more. Nearly 50 field trials have taken place in the past four years, with startups raising hundreds of millions in early funds. But the field remains rife with debate over the consequences for the oceans if the strategies are deployed at large scale, and over the exact benefits for the climate. Critics say the efforts are moving too quickly and with too few guardrails. "It's like the Wild West. Everybody is on the bandwagon, everybody wants to do something," said Adina Paytan, who teaches earth and ocean science at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Planetary, like most of the ocean startups, is financing its work by selling carbon credits — or tokens representing one metric ton of carbon dioxide removed from the air. Largely unregulated and widely debated, carbon credits have become popular this century as a way for companies to purchase offsets rather than reduce emissions themselves. Most credits are priced at several hundred dollars apiece. The industry sold more than 340,000 marine carbon credits last year, up from just 2,000 credits four years ago, according to the tracking site But that amount of carbon removal is a tiny fraction of what scientists say will be required to keep the planet livable for centuries to come. Those leading the efforts, including Will Burt, Planetary's chief ocean scientist, acknowledge they're entering uncharted territory — but say the bigger danger for the planet and the oceans is not moving quickly enough. "We need to understand if it's going to work or not. The faster we do, the better." Vacuuming carbon into the sea Efforts to capture carbon dioxide have exploded in recent years. Most climate models now show that cutting emissions won't be enough to curb global warming, according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The world needs to actively remove heat-trapping gases, as well — and the ocean could be a logical place to capture them. Money has already poured into different strategies on land — among them, pumping carbon dioxide from the air, developing sites to store carbon underground and replanting forests, which naturally store CO2. But many of those projects are limited by space and could impact nearby communities. The ocean already regulates Earth's climate by absorbing heat and carbon, and by comparison, it seems limitless. "Is that huge surface area an option to help us deal with and mitigate the worst effects of climate change?" asked Adam Subhas, who is leading a carbon removal project with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, based on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. On a Tuesday afternoon along the edge of Halifax Harbour, Burt stashed his bike helmet and donned a hard hat to give two engineering students a tour of Planetary's site. A detached truck trailer sat in a clearing, storing massive bags of magnesium oxide mined in Spain and shipped across the Atlantic to Canada. Most companies looking offshore for climate solutions are trying to reduce or transform the carbon dioxide stored in the ocean. If they can achieve that, Burt said, the oceans will act "like a vacuum" to absorb more gases from the air. Planetary is using magnesium oxide to create that vacuum. When dissolved into seawater, it transforms carbon dioxide from a gas to stable molecules that won't interact with the atmosphere for thousands of years. Limestone, olivine and other alkaline rocks have the same effect. Other companies are focused on growing seaweed and algae to capture the gas. These marine organisms act like plants on land, absorbing carbon dioxide from the ocean just as trees do from the air. The company Gigablue, for instance, has begun pouring nutrients in New Zealand waters to grow tiny organisms known as phytoplankton where they otherwise couldn't survive. Still others view the deepest parts of the ocean as a place to store organic material that would emit greenhouse gases if left on land. Companies have sunk wood chips off the coast of Iceland and are planning to sink Sargassum, a yellowish-brown seaweed, to extreme depths. The startup Carboniferous is preparing a federal permit to place sugarcane pulp at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, also referred to as the Gulf of America as declared by President Donald Trump. Though Planetary's work can sound like some "scary science experiment," Burt said, the company's testing so far suggests that magnesium oxide poses minimal risks to marine ecosystems, plankton or fish. The mineral has long been used at water treatment plants and industrial facilities to de-acidify water. Halifax Harbour is just one location where Planetary hopes to operate. The company has set up another site at a wastewater treatment plant in coastal Virginia and plans to begin testing in Vancouver later this year. According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, the industry needs to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide per year by mid-century to meet climate goals set nearly a decade ago during the Paris climate agreement. "The whole point here is to mitigate against a rapidly accelerating climate crisis," Burt said. "We have to act with safety and integrity, but we also have to act fast." 'Twisted in knots' While there's broad enthusiasm in the industry, coastal communities aren't always quick to jump on board. In North Carolina, a request to dump shiploads of olivine near the beachside town of Duck prompted questions that downsized the project by more than half. The company Vesta, formed in 2021, promotes the greenish-hued mineral as a tool to draw down carbon into the ocean and create mounds that buffer coastal towns from storm surges and waves. During the permitting process, officials at the state Wildlife Resources Commission, Division of Marine Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service raised a long list of concerns. "As proposed, the project is a short term study with the potential for long term impacts and no remediation plans," a field supervisor for the Fish and Wildlife Service wrote. The agencies said olivine could smother the seafloor ecosystem and threaten a hotspot for sea turtles and Atlantic sturgeon. Vesta CEO Tom Green said the company never expected its original application to be approved as written. "It's more the start of a dialogue with regulators and the community," he said. The project went forward last summer with a much smaller scope, a restoration plan, and more detailed requirements to monitor deep-water species. Eight thousand metric tons of olivine shipped from Norway are now submerged beneath North Carolina's waves. Green said he understands why people are skeptical, and that he tries to remind them Vesta's goal is to save the environment, not to harm it. It's the company's job, he says, "to show up in local communities, physically show up, and listen and share our data and build trust that way." Fishing communities have opposed another climate project led by Subhas of the Woods Hole research center that has generated 10 months of conversation and debate. The project as proposed last spring would have poured 66,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide solution into ocean waters near Cape Cod. Woods Hole later proposed downsizing the project to use less than 17,000 gallons of the chemical, with federal approval still pending. In two separate reviews, the Environmental Protection Agency said it believes the project's scientific merit outweighs the environmental risks, and noted it doesn't foresee "unacceptable impacts" on water quality or fishing. But fifth-generation fisherman Jerry Leeman III wants to know what will happen to the lobster, pollock and flounder eggs that float in the water column and on the ocean surface if they are suddenly doused with the harsh chemical. "Are you telling all the fishermen not to fish in this area while you're doing this project? And who compensates these individuals for displacing everybody?" he said. Subhas' team expects the chemical's most potent concentrations to last for less than two minutes in the ocean before it's diluted. They've also agreed to delay or relocate the project if schools of fish or patches of fish eggs are visible in the surrounding waters. Sarah Schumann, who fishes commercially for bluefish in Rhode Island and leads a campaign for "fishery friendly" climate action, said after attending four listening sessions she's still unsure how to balance her support for the research with the apprehension she hears in the fishing community. "If I was actually trying to decide where I land on this issue, I'd be twisted in knots," she said. And Planetary, which has seen little pushback from locals along Halifax Harbour, faced a series of protests against a climate project it proposed in Cornwall, England. In April last year, more than a hundred people marched along a beach carrying signs that read "Keep our sea chemical free." Sue Sayer, who runs a research group studying seals, said she realized in discussions with Planetary that "they had no idea about what animals or plants or species live in St. Ives Bay." The company's initial release of magnesium hydroxide into the bay, she said, fired up a community that is "massively, scientifically passionate about the sea." David Santillo, a senior scientist with Greenpeace Research Laboratories at the University of Exeter, took issue with how Planetary proposed tracking the impact of its work. According to a recorded presentation viewed by AP, the company's baseline measurements in Cornwall were drawn from just a few days. "If you don't have a baseline over a number of years and seasons," Santillo said, "you don't know whether you would even be able to detect any of your effects." An audit commissioned by the United Kingdom's Environment Agency found that Planetary's experiments posed a "very low" risk to marine life, and a potential for significant carbon removal. Still, the company put its proposal to pump another 200 metric tons of minerals on pause. Following a government recommendation, Planetary said it would search for a source of magnesium hydroxide closer to the Cornwall site, rather than shipping it from China. It also assured locals that it wouldn't sell carbon credits from its past chemical release. Sara Nawaz, research director at American University's Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal, said she understood why scientists sometimes struggle to connect with communities and gain their support. Early research shows the public is reluctant to the idea of "engineering" the climate. Many people have a strong emotional connection to the ocean, she added. There's a fear that once you put something in the ocean, "you can't take it back." The great unknowns It's not just locals who have questions about whether these technologies will work. Scientists, too, have acknowledged major unknowns. But some of the principles behind the technologies have been studied for decades by now, and the laboratory can only simulate so much. During a recent EPA listening session about the Woods Hole project, a chorus of oceanographers and industry supporters said it's time for ocean-scale tests. "There's an urgency to move ahead and conduct this work," said Ken Buesseler, another Woods Hole scientist who studies the carbon captured by algae. Even so, the ocean is a dynamic, challenging landscape to work in. Scientists are still uncovering new details about how it absorbs and recycles carbon, and any materials they add to seawater are liable to sink, become diluted or wash away to other locations, challenging efforts to track how the ocean responds. "It's so hard to get the ocean to do what you want it to," said Sarah Cooley, a carbon cycle scientist who has worked for the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy and the federal government. Katja Fennel, chair of the oceanography department at Dalhousie University, works on modeling how much carbon Planetary has captured in Halifax Harbour— a number that comes with some uncertainty. She co-leads a group of academics that monitors the company's project using water samples, sensors and sediment cores taken from locations around the bay. Some days, her team adds a red dye to the pipes to watch how the minerals dissolve and flow out to sea. The models are necessary to simulate what would happen if Planetary did nothing, Fennel said. They're also necessary because the ocean is so large and deep it's impossible to collect enough data to give a complete picture of it. "We can't measure everywhere all the time," she said. Questions also linger about how long the carbon capture will last. It's a point especially important to companies working with algae, wood chips, or other organic materials, because depending on where they decompose, they could release carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The deeper the plants and algae sink, the longer the carbon stays locked away. But that's no easy feat to ensure. Running Tide, a now-shuttered company that sank nearly 20,000 metric tons of wood chips in Icelandic waters, said carbon could be sequestered for as long as three millennia or as little as 50 years. Even if these solutions do work long term, most companies are operating on too small of a scale to influence the climate. Expanding to meet current climate goals will take massive amounts of resources, energy and money. "The question is, what happens when you scale it up to billions of tons every year?" said David Ho, co-founder and chief science officer of the nonprofit (C)Worthy, which works on verifying the impact of ocean-based carbon removal. "And that's still to be determined." Planetary's Burt imagines a future in which minerals are pumped out through power plants and water treatment facilities on every major coastline in the world. But that would require a large, steady volume of magnesium oxide or similar minerals, along with the energy to mine and transport them. Seaweed and algae growth would need to expand exponentially. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has estimated that nearly two-thirds of the world's coastline would need to be encircled by kelp to even begin to make a dent in global warming. The company Seafields, which is running tests in the Caribbean, says it envisions building a Sargassum farm between Brazil and West Africa more than 200 miles wide. There's the risk that these expansions exacerbate environmental harm that isn't detectable in small trials, and because of global water circulation, could be felt around the world. But the alternative to never trying, Ho said, is unabated climate change. Running out of time Late last year, Planetary announced that its Nova Scotia project successfully captured 138 metric tons of carbon – allowing it to deliver exactly 138 carbon credits to two of the company's early investors, Shopify and Stripe. Monetizing the work is uncomfortable for many who study the ocean. "On one hand, it's encouraging more research and more science, which is good. On the other hand, it's opening doors for abuse of the system," said Paytan, the Santa Cruz professor, who has been contacted by several startups asking to collaborate. She pointed to companies that are accused of drastically overestimating the carbon they sequestered, though they bragged of restoring rainforests in Peru and replacing smoke-producing stoves in Africa. But absent more government-funded research, several companies told AP there's little way for the field to advance without selling credits. "Unfortunately, that's the way we've set things up now, is that we put it in the hands of these startups to develop the techniques," said Ho. Back in his shipping container office along Halifax Harbour, Burt said he understood the unease around selling credits, and said Planetary takes seriously the need to operate openly, responsibly and cautiously. But he also says there's a need for startups that can move at a faster pace than academia. "We cannot study this solution at the same rate that we've been studying the problems," he said. He says there's not enough time. Last year marked the hottest year in Earth's history, even as global carbon emissions are projected to reach another all-time high. "We need to reduce emissions urgently, drastically," said Fennel, the researcher studying Planetary's project. "Any removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is much more difficult and costly than avoiding CO2 emissions to begin with." The industry continues to push forward. Planetary said in February that it had sequestered a total of 1,000 metric tons of carbon in the ocean, and Carboniferous completed its first test of sinking sugarcane to the seafloor. Early this year, Gigablue signed a deal for 200,000 carbon credits for dispersing nutrient-filled particles in the ocean. A growing number of companies are also using electricity to alter seawater molecules, with the same goal of prompting the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide. The startup Ebb Carbon recently struck a deal with Microsoft to provide up to 350,000 carbon credits, and Captura, which is funded in part by investors affiliated with oil and gas production, expanded its operations from California to Hawaii. It's unclear whether the U.S. government will stall or support ocean climate work going forward. The policy landscape continues to shift as the Trump administration seeks to roll back a wide range of environmental regulations and reconsider the scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health. Though White House adviser Musk has downplayed some of his past statements about global warming, four years ago his foundation committed $100 million to fund a competition for the best solution for carbon capture, of which Planetary is in the running for the top prize. The winner will be announced April 23 — the day after Earth Day.
