These days, proposals to leverage the chemistry of the oceans to buy the world time in the fight against climate change are raking in millions of dollars in venture capital funding and lucrative contracts to offset the emissions of some of the world’s biggest companies. The world’s oceans already function as an enormous carbon sink, absorbing about one quarter of humanity’s CO2 emissions. The new projects are pledging that they can amplify that ability, seemingly a godsend in a world plagued by runaway emissions, and with little time left to act.
But such proposals also occupy a tricky space in the climate world. No companies currently pledging to sequester carbon emissions, either on oceans or on land, are operating anywhere close to a scale that would make a difference. Even if they were to massively expand their machinery, technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere wouldn’t do much if it isn’t accompanied by deep emissions cuts. Some expert observers worry that focusing on the carbon removal technology is a distraction from the more crucial issue of reining in emissions.
The problem is, emission reductions aren’t happening fast enough. That makes it increasingly likely that the world will have to find some way of removing billions of tons of carbon emissions from the atmosphere within the next 30 years. To have any prospect of that technology being available on the gargantuan scale that may become necessary, we will need to begin investing in it now.
Much of the public focus to date has centered on land based carbon removal companies, like Switzerland-based Climeworks and Canadian startup Carbon Engineering, which have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. Those companies plan to build massive machines that will suck CO2 out of the air and store it deep underground. But in the past six months, start ups saying they can use the oceans to do much the same thing have been pulling in tens of millions of dollars in new funding. Others have begun signing deals to offset tens of thousands of tons of emissions from large companies. Still, questions remain about the effects that some of the approaches may have on ecosystems, and if all the carbon that some companies say they can put into the world’s oceans will really stay there.