Plan Sea: Ocean Interventions to Address Climate Change

This new episode features two OAE researchers and their insights from conducting field research as well as a special request to you, our listeners!

In this edition of Plan Sea, hosts Anna Madlener and Wil Burns are joined by two leading ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) researchers: Dr. Jaimie Palter from the University of Rhode Island’s School of Oceanography and Dr. Dariia Atamanchuk from Dalhousie University’s Department of Oceanography. Palter and Atamanchuk both lead field research sites studying OAE and are part of Carbon to Sea’s Field Research Steering Committee. 

Palter and Atamanchuk discuss their work leading field research sites studying OAE in coastal lagoon and ocean harbor settings, respectively, and share initial findings. The Plan Sea hosts and this episode’s guests underscore the importance of field research guiding the recommendation for scientifically robust, yet affordable and actionable monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) processes, and encourage greater collaboration between projects and across the sector.

Also: we would like to hear from you, our listeners, before our next episode! Let us know what 2024 milestone we should be celebrating or what you hope to see in 2025 by leaving us a voice message here that may be used in our next episode!

Acronyms used throughout the episode: 

• NOAA NOPP –  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Oceanographic Partnership Program (1:47) 
• AGU - American Geophysical Union (2:00)
• MRV - Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (13:25)
• pCO2 - Partial pressure of carbon dioxide (34:58)
• EPA - Environmental Protection Agency (56:27)

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

In this edition of Plan Sea, hosts Anna Madlener and Wil Burns are joined by Captura CEO Steve Oldham to discuss Direct Ocean Capture technology. Captura is a Pasadena, CA-based company that is exploring the use of renewable energy to remove carbon from the ocean as a low-cost, large-scale climate solution.

Learn more about Captura’s DOC approach and propriety technology on their website here. 

Listen to our previous episode with Banyu Carbon’s Co-Founder & CEO Alex Gagnonon here.

Acronyms used throughout the episode:

• DAC - Direct Air Capture (6:38)
• RD&D - Research, Development, and Demonstration (21:21)
• KPIs - Key Performance Indicators (22:17)
• MRV - Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (35:34)

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

In this edition of Plan Sea, hosts Anna Madlener and Wil Burns are joined by returning guest Mike Kelland, CEO and co-founder of Planetary Technologies, as well as Dr. Will Burt, Planetary’s Chief Ocean Scientist. Planetary is an ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) startup based in Halifax, Canada.

Link to Planetary's webinar on recent trial results here.

Listen to our first episode with Mike Kelland here.

ACRONYMS / CONCEPTS:

• NOAA (19:39): National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association
• MRV (32:39): Monitoring, Reporting and Verification
• ROMS (34:35): Regional Ocean Modeling System
• EPA (53:06): Environmental Protection Agency
• London Convention and Protocol (53:41)

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

In today's episode, hosts Anna Madlener and Wil Burns are joined by Grace Andrews from Hourglass Climate. They discuss Hourglass' work on environmental monitoring and carbon removal quantification of Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE)  trials as a research non-profit.

To view the Ocean Visions webinar referenced on the podcast, click here: LINK.

Acronyms:

• MRV (1:42) 
• mCDR (3:28)
• USGS (18:51)
• EPA (19:32)
• NOAA (20:51)
• LCA (23:09)
• pCO2 (25:02)

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

In this edition of Plan Sea, hosts Anna Madlener and Wil Burns discuss a novel sunlight-driven approach to marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) with Alex Gagnon, co-founder and CEO of Banyu Carbon, a direct ocean removal startup based in Seattle, WA.

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

Hosts Anna Madlener and Wil Burns discuss the evolving landscape of marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) with Rory Jacobson, Acting Division Director for Carbon Dioxide Removal at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

Plan Sea dives into the world of carbon removal certification, joined by experts Sophie Gill, Jing He, and Jennifer Yin from Isometric — a carbon credit certification platform and registry focused on high-quality carbon removal.

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

Carbon to Sea & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal announce a new collaboration for the second season of “Plan Sea” — a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions. Plan Sea will release episodes on a semi-weekly basis throughout Fall 2024, and is hosted by Wil Burns and Anna Madlener.

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

Our guests today, Lennart Bach, at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, and Veronica Tamsitt, Head of Oceanography at the mCDR MRV company, Submarine, are two of the authors of a very interesting research article recently published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, titled “Identifying the Most (Cost-)Efficient Regions for CO2 Removal With Iron Fertilization in the Southern Ocean.” 

Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) is really the “OG” of marine-based CDR approaches, with the Ocean Iron Hypothesis being advanced by oceanographer John Martin in the 1980s, and 13 field experiments ensuing over the course of two decades, beginning in 1993, with the last experiment conducted in 2009. 

It’s fair to say that interest in OIF largely fell into abeyance for a protracted period of time. However, recently, largely due to the efforts of researchers at Woods Hole, including Ken Buesseler, who we interviewed on a previous episode, as well as a spate of recent high-profile publications, OIF seems to be front and center again in the discussion of mCDR methods.

In this episode we discuss some of the most pertinent issues to assessing the potential role of OIF in a marine CDR portfolio, including costs, risks, and legal considerations. We hope this interview can do justice to some of the article’s most important conclusions.

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

Our guest today is Freya Chay, Carbon Removal Program Lead at CarbonPlan, a non-profit organization in the US working on data and science for climate action by improving the transparency and scientific integrity of climate solutions with open data and tools. 

Carbon Plan and Freya have produced a number of stellar publications and tools, widely regarded in the field and insightfully crafted. Notably, the CDR primer is a bibliography of crucial concepts to understand if one wants to enter the world of CDR. Similarly, the CDR Verification Framework is an insightful and informative tool to explore detailed layers of CDR approaches.

In this episode, we discuss Freya's perspective on barriers to scaling, market responsibilities and market-shaping opportunities. We also discuss uncertainty and opportunities in Monitoring, Reporting and Verification. 

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative & the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.