Marine Geoengineering:
Carbon markets are driving open-ocean geoengineering
experiments
Two weeks ago today state and
industry representatives came together in Barcelona for the Ocean Decade Conference, a multilateral UN event aiming to
"create a new foundation to
strengthen sustainable ocean management and drive science-based
innovation." There was one
glaring omission from the agenda: Marine Geoengineering.
In recent years there has been a
rapid increase in the number of geoengineering experiments taking
place in the open ocean and other marine environments globally. These
range from altering the chemistry of seawater to make it absorb more
carbon dioxide (Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement
(OAE)), dumping wood and seaweed into
the ocean so that it sinks to the sea floor (biomass sinking) and covering Arctic ice with billions of
hollow glass balls to reflect sunlight (Arctic ice management).
Carbon markets are the principal
driver behind many of these experiments and are incentivising the
deployment of Marine Geoengineering projects at increasingly larger
scales. Numerous companies cite the lucrative potential of selling
carbon - and now "cooling" - credits to polluting industries looking to
offset their emissions. For example, 1,000 seaweed-covered buoys were recently
sunk in exchange for carbon
credits sold to tech company
Shopify, and aviation giant Boeing has signed an
agreement to buy credits from a company that uses a highly resource and energy-intensive
process to draw carbon dioxide
out of the atmosphere and into the ocean. Another project is planning to sell cooling
credits based on a scheme
that pumps seawater onto sea ice in order to increase its
albedo.
Despite the rapid roll-out of
Marine Geoengineering projects there are still serious concerns about
the impacts that they will have on marine environments. Furthermore,
the science simply doesn't back-up claims made by companies that their
technologies can safely remove carbon from the atmosphere or
effectively reflect sunlight back into space. In fact, numerous
studies show that Marine Geoengineering projects could actually have
the opposite effect of what they are trying to achieve, such as
biomass sinking projects that could lead to the production of
methane, a much more potent
greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Geoengineering Monitor has just
published extensive new updates on the status of more than 50 Marine
Geoengineering schemes world-wide, providing an up-to-date assessment
of the principal forms of Marine Geoengineering, their likely impacts
and the direction they are heading in. These updates focus on the
three main categories of Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, biomass sinking and Arctic ice management, but also include other schemes such as
spraying iron salt aerosols over
oceans, and growing algae in seawater-filled
ponds to then bury in
landfill sites (and sell carbon credits in the process, of
course).
In case you missed it, ETC Group
also recently published The Seaweed
Delusion,
which breaks-down why the
kind of industrial seaweed production proposed by many Marine
Geoengineering projects will not cool the climate or save nature.
You can keep up with all the
latest geoengineering developments globally by going to the Geoengineering Map, which covers literally hundreds of
projects and companies, and on the Geoengineering Monitor
website, where regular
technology updates are published.
OAE experiments and
commercial-scale projects aiming to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by reducing the acidity
of seawater are proliferating in open ocean, coastal and nearshore
areas globally. The promise of generating revenue through the sale of
carbon credits is the driving force behind many OAE projects, and
pre-purchase agreements for offsets have already been signed,
including with Boeing.
Keep reading...
A growing number of companies are
dumping seaweed and terrestrial biomass (such as wood) into the ocean
so that it and the carbon it contains sinks to the ocean floor.
Increasing numbers of projects are sinking biomass in this way on a
commercial scale, despite
fears that this will negatively
impact ocean ecosystems, biogeochemistry and marine food webs,
especially if carried out on a large scale.
Keep reading...
The Arctic Ice Project (AIP) proposes to cover Arctic land and sea ice
with billions of tiny hollow glass balls in order to slow melting
and/or restore ice. API
describes the layer of floating
reflective material that it is using as "an amorphous glass primarily composed of
silicon dioxide ("silica")." It adds that "silica is an inert compound made of two of the earth's most
abundant materials" and a
"major constituent of
sand."
Keep reading...
The
Seaweed Delusion: Industrial seaweed will not cool the
climate or save nature
As the world scrambles for a
climate fix, seaweed - or "macroalgae" - has
been thrust into the limelight. Buoyed by hype and hundreds of
millions of dollars of so-called "green" investment, a new "blue
carbon" seaweed industry is invading coasts and seas. Under close scrutiny, most of the arguments
being used to promote these "blue carbon" seaweed
projects - which include industrial-scale farming and
sinking seaweed, through to "rewilding" and restoration
projects - fail to stack up.
Download ETC Group's report
here.
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