Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) is a marine CDR approach actively studied by publicly and philanthropically funded research projects and start-ups. This has created an urgent need to learn if, how and when OAE can work at scale, to identify potential impacts, and to ensure that OAE research is responsible, transparent, and inclusive. The “Guide to Best Practices in OAE Research” aims to advance knowledge on scientific, legal and social aspects, and on Monitoring, Reporting and Verification.
HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco (TBC); Jean-Pierre Gattuso, CNRS Research Director, Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche (Sorbonne University), and IDDRI; Andreas Oschlies, Head of Research Unit Biogeochemical Modelling, GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel; Adam Subhas, Associate Scientist, Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Rob Steenkamp, Research Associate, University of Hamburg; Oliver Geden, Head of Research Cluster Climate Policy and Politics, Senior Fellow EU/Europe, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP); Lydia Kapsenberg, Senior Associate, CEA Consulting; Lina Hansson, Coordinator of Initiatives, Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation
Ah here we go you’re looking great good morning everyone I think we will need to start if you can take your take a seat please good morning and welcome everyone to to this very early morning session thank you for everyone who made it here uh on
Time and for being here so early I admire you and thank you for that H my name is Lena Hansen I am a coordinator of initiatives with the Prince Albert II of Monaco foundation and it is my great pleasure to moderate this session this morning so this is an event co-organized
By the prince of the second Monaco Foundation together with gomar helal Center for ocean research ke the French national scientific research center cnrs the Woods Hole oceanographic institution and climate Works foundation so on behalf of all uh the organizers what is this okay this is interesting alarm um
I I continue I guess yeah Jesus interesting okay um so we’re here today to talk ocean alkalinity enhancement which is a marine carbon dioxide removal approach starting to get quite a bit of attention uh from Academia philanthropy the private sector and the public sector and so there is an urgent need to learn if how and when OE
Can work at scale to identify potential impacts um and to ensure that OE research is responsible transparent and inclusive so that’s what we want to do with a uh new publication brand new um hot of the press called the guide to best practices in ocean acidification enhancement research uh that we are
Officially launching today and uh with um with many co-authors uh on board here on the on the stage so the guide aims to advance scientific knowledge of oae but it’s also addressing legal and ethical aspects uh social aspects sorry ethic ethical considerations data sharing and monitoring reporting and
Verification so we will have uh just to inform you we will have the honor to be joined a little later today today this morning by His serine Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco who will join us for um to listen to to our concluding session when his sinus enters the room I
Will kindly ask you to stand just a heads up Um so yeah without further Ado I’m delighted to um to present to you our distinguished panelists and um I think I will take take the seat here so we had um planed to have Oliver gon he could not make it this morning he’s sick unfortunately but we have uh
Another five panelists who will make up this great panel today um so um we have Andreas osis from Jomar helz Center for ocean research K Jean gatuso from cnrs soone University uh and we have Adam saas uh from the Woodle oceanographic Institute Institution online uh and we thought it
Was early here but it’s super early for who is joining us uh it’s about 5: in the morning or something um from University of Hamburg Hamburg Roberts robt Sten camp and we have Lydia with um uh Lydia kenberg with CA Consulting and representing here climate Works Foundation today on the
Panel so we will start with a round of short introductory introductory remarks and then we will try to have a more conversational panel let’s say for the second part so um let’s see if I can work this out I’ll start with Andreas because yeah of course I’m so sorry we
Will no no no I’m sorry I didn’t realize so we will have a few introductory remarks from uh the president of cnrs the French national uh Research Center Antoine P sorry hello to all of you be very brief I don’t want to be Outsider but really I think that this this
Session illustrates the importance of of Science and of knowledge uh oan ality enhancement is clearly promising but it’s clearly also has to be studied and we need to share the good practices we sh we need to share knowledge we need to open all the data that we have around this these
Techniques and precisely this this guide that I had a quick look on it this morning is is really fascinating and it’s so important to share and so thank you to all of you to to of course have have built this this guide but also who
Show us the path that we have to to follow in order once again to share the good practices and to to to use these techniques in all what she will have of positive but also to prevent a misuse of it and clearly uh science takes time and
And we we still have to learn and it’s important to not go too fast we all know that the the planet needs to go fast but nevertheless we have to to to pay attention to that and that’s why science is so important and why you have a lot
Of to to to learn to us but also we have to learn together by share knowledge so thank you very much for this session and for all what you you you did and mainly all what you do and what all what we do together thank you very
Much thank you so muchto P for those opening words so Andreas um you are Earth system modeler uh you co-lead the German cier M uh research mission on Marine CDR and you also co-chair the UN ocean decade program good the global ocean uh oxygen decade uh and you are the scientific
Coordinator of this guide uh and was leading this effort together with jeanpierre so I’d like to start uh with you can you help us set the scene and tell us about what is carbon dioxide remov and um what does yeah what does the last ipcc report tell us do we need CDR yes
Thank you very much so I will start with two figures from the most recent ipcc assessment report and this is one a generic scenario ambitious climate scenario that uh has no vertical scale but it applies to all industrialized countries it applies globally um and it is the emission for the century the
Horizontal axis has a scale of this Century so we see drastic emission reductions is needed that’s that’s unavoidable if you want to reach climate goals so then about 90% has to be done by emissions reductions that’s the blue bars they go down by midcentury in a
Steep slope they have to go down in these ambitious scenarios but we see they don’t go down to zero we have residual emissions that depends on well societal decisions in the end nothing is unavoidable but it depends on Lifestyle on uh nutrition lifestyle mostly so there’s some chemical industry salmon production and
The dark blue one is non CO2 greenhouse gases mostly from Agriculture and so we don’t think we don’t know how to avoid these if we want to live well Life as we think we will want to live it mid-century and to do to compensate these and Net Zero to stop warming we
Need Net Zero CO2 emissions that’s physics and uh on this planet at least so there we have to reach Net Zero and we can’t can do that only by en counting for the yellow stuff that’s the negative emissions and you see we do some negative emissions today already that’s
Mostly aforestation or Forest management uh but we have to do much more by mid century and by the end of the century that’s the light yellow part and this is called carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere CDR that basically compensates for the residual emissions
That we cannot or do not or do not want to avoid that we will have but it it can compensate only for about 10% of current emissions so we will have to cut emissions reduce emissions as fast and as steep as we can uh next
Slide please do I have yes thank you and so also in the IPC report a very busy plot here that that’s the some some um logos on the bottom that indicates what we think science thinks right now what could be done to remove CO2 from the atmosphere these Co carbon dioxide
Removal like it’s it starts with trees on the left and buildings using CO2 and long lived matter like like wood buildings uh agriculture different farming soil carbon it’s all on land so far that’s where you can make a profit or can have a company that where you
Have ownership of land and that’s all relatively straightforward and we have done most of these things for many decades and if not centuries so basically it’s known it’s no rocket science but there are problems there’s land requirement often nutrient or water requirements in these methods and we
Have uh competition with other users but mostly food production and so that’s why the ocean part even an ipcc comes into play that’s the small blue part on the right here of course the ocean is much larer than the small part at 70% of our globe and that’s where we now develop
Ideas to to move away from this very well mostly used land that we have for many different purposes to try to understand can we scale up things better since we have to compensate about these 10% of our residual emissions from today’s emissions uh that’s several gigatons per
Year can we do that better in the ocean and that’s where the ocean now comes into play could the ocean play a big role and eventually could ocean enhancement play a big role I think there I give our hand over to jeanpierre yes perfect transition to to jeanpier so
Jeanpier you are a cnrs research professor at the laborat theography v franch in France with sbor University and also an associate scientist with idri in Paris you contributed to several ipcc reports including the ar5 and AR6 and you also as I said co-led the production of this guide to best
Practices in oae together with Andreas so can you tell us more about now so we heard about um CDR in general can you tell us more about um Marine CDR and ocean alkalinity enhancement so um yes on the left plot here you have this figure is from Ocean Vision it
Summarizes the various approaches that can be used for CDR Marine CDR um what we are talking about today uh so there is ocean fertilization mostly by Iron increasing you know primary production by phytoplank on and Export to the to the deep ocean um there is a potential technique that I think now is
Not very well considered in the community artificial ailing because it brings nutrients to the surface together with a lot of carbon um on the left hand side you have blue carbon ecosystems uh like restoration of mangroves salt marches and um and cigas beds and uh on the on
The top on the two extremes left and right this is ocean alkalin alkalinity enhancements which can take place uh either uh in the open ocean as as is seen in the middle I think uh and uh it can be also performed on land and we see
Better on the right hand side plot uh figure which is extracted from from the guide to best practices uh so um the principle of ocean alkalinization is to increase it’s like an anti acid that we add that is added to the seawater enabling sea water to store to mop up
More CO2 from the atmosphere or from the surface ocean um so the goal being of course to reduce carbon dioxide in in the atmosphere Um this can be done by adding alkaline rocks uh that you see the boat here delivering alkaline material um in the ocean one of the drawbacks is that is
That it requires mining Transportation grinding of the stuff delivering it in the in the ocean um and the other approaches are based on land basically uh waste water or um sea water are pumped on land in a chemical reactor where alkalinity is added and there is a preequilibration of CO2 so
CO2 is really removed can be removed mostly on land and then uh the the seawat goes back uh to the um to the ocean with an increased concentration of um carbon bicarbonate and carbonate which do not uh exchange with the atmosphere so the goal here is to transfer CO2 that is contributing to
The greenhouse effect into material carbonate and bicarbonate that are neutral to the atmosphere and and can remain in the ocean for extended period of time the next slide if you like yes I’m I wanted to to ask you about the the process of the of the guide
Because it was quite an intense process it was published in Monday in state of the planet can you tell us a bit more about how it yes it it was a a fantastic experience to lead this activity with Andreas we had um uh the funding from uh
From climate works and the support from The Prince Albert the second of Monaco Foundation came in September last year we had the first meeting of the lead authors in January this year and in six months later we have this guide published um in a peer review journal
That is the journal is new it’s a Copernicus Journal called the state of the planet so it has uh we cover seven topics there are 13 papers in in the guide each paper I on dii um and those papers also are chapters of the guide it is quite well done you will
See that 53 author in the guide and it went through the traditional review process in Copernicus journals a two-step process open to the community and uh we are very delighted to do that it has been a very intense period for many of us but we are very
Pleased with the results so the goal is really to speed up knowledge on um on Ocean ALC enhancement and sharing this knowledge um we did a similar exercise in 2010 uh with the guide to best practices for ocean acidification research and uh authors are also here in
The room um and it has helped a lot ocean nitification research to uh pickup speed um so the goal is that resources available to research are used most effectively that uh the research is conducted responsibly and transparently we have a strong message in this in the
Guide about that um we want to ensure that the results obtained by Within several projects can be compared uh including for modeling approaches uh facilitate synthesis uh on the different research efforts the public debate it’s a very important aspect uh we really want to to make sure that this approach
Is if it is developed at a large scale is acceptable by the public that’s public acceptance is absolutely crucial um and also responsible governance we have a a section Robert will tell us about it on on low governance there is a section on monitoring reporting and verification
Too so it’s quite complete and I hope it will help the community thank you Shier so Andreas can I give the mic back to you for a second just to elaborate so we heard uh from Shia what the guide is hoping to achieve can you elaborate a bit on why it’s so
Important to have or for oee research to be transparent inclusive um and responsible yes so well from from the geological path of the planet we know that alkaline enan does work on long time scales hundreds of thousands of years it has always helped the the planet to stay within the habitable zone
And to remove CO2 after some major Continental breakups uh back into the ocean dissolve it as salts of the carbonic acid and basically neutralize it by by dissolving carbonate sediments or today Corals in some extent parts so question is could we speed it up and the potential is is large so it
Could chemically can can absorb all our antropogenic emissions but could be speeded up fast enough uh to to in some acceptable way benign way to help us uh compens ating part of a substantial part of our residual emissions and so we don’t know this we have an insufficient
Knowledge base we don’t have much time so mid-century gigaton scale removal has to happen in order to meet the Net Zero targets that many uh governments have have issued and are enshrined in law in many countries so this potential has to be studied and we need the scientific understanding we also need the
Transparency to to do that in public and there’s number of efforts philanthropy is moving into this so money is going into this to help scientists have help startups go ahead try things out in the ocean um but this is a well risky Endeavor if we don’t share information
And if we don’t talk about it and we don’t learn from so-called failed experiments and that’s our main reason in science usually most of the experiments fail but that’s what how we learn and uh experiments that do run well as expect are pretty boring and you
Don’t learn since you knew it before so you learn from the fail experiments and we have to to to transport this and that doesn’t fit well with many startups of course with the philosophy of making as much money as we can and uh convincing your funders to give more money to your
Company and so we think we need this guide to put it up on the table we can’t enforce it we but we can ask everybody to take position do you follow the guide why not if not and uh this is the chance we have and you have and the societ has
Funders have philanthropy has to to confront everyone experiencing and trying to help us understanding oan Al enhancement better to take a position with respect to the guide and information exchange is the most important thing transparency probably also a registry of planned field experiments that we can use this asset
Of field experiments it’s very expensive and a best way to allow others to to observe it as well to to well just share ideas information yeah and that’s what we think and hope will speed up knowledge generation so that maybe ocean C enhancement can help us uh to a tiny
Bit at least to help the climate problem thank you did you want to also say a word about Je already mentioned um ocean alkalinity enhancement but in types ofine yeah it’s okay we that’s good all right then we’ll move to to Adam your biod chemist with woodo oceanographic Institute and co-author of
The guide um so there are different sites in the world where uh there are natural gradients right of alkalinity that can be used as analoges for ocean alkalinity enhancement can you tell us more yes thank you um yeah so I am a carbon biogeochemist a chemical oceanographer and I study the natural
Alkalinity cycle on the planet you know this approach of ocean alkalinity enhancement it’s not coming out of nowhere there’s a really vigorous and active alkalinity cycle that already occurs every day on the planet um and they’re unknowns in how this natural alkalinity Cycle Works and how um our knowledge building that knowledge of
This natural alkalinity cycle can hopefully give us another window into how ocean alkalinity enhancement as a carbon dioxide removal technique might scale in the future so for instance you know most of the alkalinity enters the ocean actually from Rivers you can see a picture of the Mississippi River and its
Plume in the Gulf of Mexico up here um studying these river systems how this alkalinity enters the ocean what happens to it what are the feedbacks what are the sort of environmental impacts of this um huge source of water right that might Mississippi entering the ocean um
Is is very interesting and important um you have more enclosed basins with really enhanced alkalinity so think of places like the Black Sea or maybe some fjords like this Fjord in Alaska all that all that milky uh material that’s all glacial rock that is very finely uh powdered and it is
Dissolving it’s producing alkalinity in these systems and we can learn a lot from uh from these systems and how it applies to uh monitoring and and uh deploying ocean alinity enhancement you know the major sync of alkalinity today is the formation of calcium carbonate minerals so things like coral reefs
Carbonate sediments um one of the classic places to study this is the Bahamas um and so there’s a lot we don’t know about the formation of calcium carbonate how that relates to Ocean chemistry and so there’s a lot we can learn from the natural system and of course you know we’ve been studying
These things for decades and we’ve developed a lot of really great tools to study these things and as a community you know we’re starting to shift our our focus into applying some of these tools to actually studying ocean alkalinity enhancement field experiments so for example you know we’re really excited
We’re we’re um in the process of gearing up to do a field experiment of ocean alinity enhancement is a kind of schematic of what um what that experiment might look like um we’re throwing basically every tool oceanographic tool that we have at this problem um and um what we hope to come
Out of this right is is as Andreas and and jeanpierre said is a really kind of transparent um open experiment where we can share all of the data make sure we have redundancy and um develop this technique um together with this whole Community thank you thank you Adam so
I’ll move on quickly now to to Robert who is still with us online you’re a South African trained jurist and a senior um researcher at the University of Hamburg so you’re researching the legal and governance aspects of ocean alcalin enhancement and you also are a co-author of the guide can you uh talk
About some of the the key messages coming out of your chapter of the guide please yeah sure thanks Lina um so I think as you’ve uh maybe hasn’t really been highlighted just yet is that what you’ll see on my side over there of course as the lawyer in the
Room it’s my job now to make things a little bit more boring by by not showing you any pictures um but one of the key things that that those things that you see on the slide were used to to come up with the key recommendations um is that
There’s this inherent tension between on the one hand the want or the need to use oae and and similar Marine CDR Technologies and on the other hand they need to protect um the environment and Society at large so I think in in the interest of time I won’t go to too many
Details but perhaps I could highlight four of the the few recommendations that came out of the chapter um and uh the first one is that many of these projects um when they do get to the stage of of wanting to start research in the in the
Field in the open ocean in in Ocean ecosystems is that National authorities are going to have to issue permits for for these sorts of things so on that basis I think it’s going to be essential that um that governments are encouraged to fulfill their their obligations that
They have at the international level um when they adopt certain National legislation so they need to make sure that they bu incorporating um agreed International rules and standards um and then to to move to a second recommendation that came from from from work is that I think researchers um are
Going to have to really part of what was already said at the start of today is they’re going to have to really keep in mind um some of the ongoing regulatory initiatives and developments that are happening so that their research is at least familiar with what’s going on and
I think here specifically of the the London dumping protocol we have a 2013 Amendment there that’s not in force um but there’s a lot of ongoing work there that may have some help or at least some guidance to provide for for OE research um third uh quite related to this is
That the the London protocol has this assessment framework to to actually give us an idea of how we should go about designing um experiments and it might be that we can transpose many of those things that already exist within in the London protocol for instance to um to oae or planned OE
Experiments um and then lastly maybe something that is very obvious but I think it’s it’s important to state is that OE projects really need to they really need to be designed to maximize benefits and and mitigate the negative consequences and this is a very obvious statement but is certainly the
Cornerstone of most environmental regulation that’s that’s in existence today and uh as Andreas has already alluded to this is going to this is going to require a high level of transparency when we when we design both the projects and the scientific side of things but as well as when you’re
Interpreting and and designing any governance framework so that scientists have certainty as to what it is that they have to do so they’re legally complying um yeah thank you so much uh Rob for that we will move forward quickly you’re a bit limited uh on time here so I move to to
Lyia and Lydia you have a mic hopefully PhD in Marine Biology you’re a consultant as I said with CA Consulting um working among others with um climate Works Foundation who were very grateful to for support Financial financial support for this guide so you have um
You saw the need let’s say for for this guide uh quite early on you were involved also in the you’ve seen um re researching also ocean acidification and you saw the impact of that guide that Jia was alluding to before um what are your um can you um how can you talk
About why this guide was something that climate Works Foundation was inclined to to support and what are your expectations for for this guide yeah thank you well first of all thank you to the authors for producing such an impressive document on a very short timeline um I’m representing climate
Works Foundation I’ve been working as a consultant for them for the past four years um the for the full duration of their ocean CDR program so um climate works is kind of the first pooled philanthropic funding initiative dedicated to exploring CDR approaches and um rain CDR is one of them so their
Goal is really to provide the resources because there’s not much Public Funding going into this yet to understand what can be possible what can be safe Is it feasible and generate help generate the data that will be needed for decision makers get people at the table get
People educated about um uh Marine CDR so some of their early efforts was um the nasam report on Marine CDR which I’m sure many people here are familiar with um some of the the road mapping efforts by ocean Visions development of the Aspen Institute um code of conduct and
So as uh they were also beginning to fund research so like Adam shas’s um project in the Mississippi River for example um we saw just a growing interest in Ocean o enhancement and Marine CDR at large and so with my previous research experience in Ocean um ocean acetification um I think Jumer’s
Statement of that guide you know helping build the field is a bit of an understatement it like really blew open the fields and it allowed Labs who previously were not working on carbonate chemistry to fully pivot into it so I came from a lab that did Marine eoh
Physiology work and then became very much um a contributor in ocean acidification research thanks to these guides and the the um workshopping and education they did around that so we we thought there’s um an import you know an important aspect of helping people pivot into this space but also to
Channel research and not have the fields balloon in a way that’s going to make it really hard to synthesize for that process so um I reached out to jeanpierre and Andre asres and first thought maybe we can have a guide on Marine CDR that was way too big so um it
Turned into the guide on Ocean alkalin enhancement and my hope is that this guide will set a precedent for um broad CDR research Marine CDR research there’s a lot of lessons and recommendations in this guy that will apply to more than just ocean Outland enhancement um and um
I also hope to see a lot more um labs and experts who can really contribute to this project now being able to Pivot into this um area of research it’s it’s can be kind of daunting to get up to speed on Marine CDR it’s very fast
Moving and so I think this guide will be really instrumental in growing the field and growing it in a direction that really lends itself to synthesis and helping people who are making the decisions um have the right information in hand thank you so much I think uh we
Don’t have a lot of uh time for uh follow-up questions the the prince will join us soon I think but I would like to uh maybe skip a few questions that we have thought of and go to you jeanpier just to say quickly something about the biological impacts we haven’t talked too
Much about that of potential impacts of OE yes um and of course that is a worry for a lot of us that uh startups are starting to work on this and do pilot studies and uh they go in my opinion they go too fast uh they go ahead of
Science and uh I think it’s it can lead to a problem and one of the risks of course is that this addition of alkaline material could lead to negative biological impacts um so we don’t want to this to happen so research is starting I think this year three papers
Were published very very limited knowledge but three papers were published on the impacts biological impacts of increased alkalinity in principle um increasing alkalinity shouldn’t be a problem it it is a technique that has been used for since the 60s in rivers and lakes uh to compensate you know acid rain uh so
Lming of rivers and lakes have been done without any major issue it’s also alkalinity is added um in the north east coast of the US to help shellfish in on the seashore to increase their growth and their calcification and uh I mean shell fish Farmers seem to be very happy with it
The point is that some of the material that that could be added in the future um will be mined uh some of the um the Rocks contain metals that can be detrimental to biology and like nickel manganese um so there could be some kind of pollution and going associated with
Ocean alkalinity enhancement so it’s very critical to estimate those risks before full scale deployment of course and that’s where the guide comes in right Adam I think we have a few more minutes if you would like to talk to us about mrv that would be great yeah so um
So mrv stands for monitoring reporting and verification and this is the framework that um you know governments company uh stakeholders might use to assess how how much carbon is removed and how durable that that carbon removal is and so you know in the early days of sort of developing ocean alkalinity enhancement
As a carbon dioxide removal approach we need to be thinking about how the research we do can be aligned with sort of generating these mrv methodologies um uh you know transparency is a big part of that making sure that um this data is open and available for anyone to kind of
Check our results and make sure that um you know they come out with the same number as we do um and uh you know it it it may also require um ocean modeling right so we may not be able to do this with measurements Alone um and developing
Those Ocean Models in tandem with field experiments and with observations in the ocean is really really critical um because obviously it it’s a huge expense to go out and actually do oceanographic research it’s it’s really expensive to get a ship out in the middle of the Pacific right and and and make those
Observations and so models are going to play a really critical role both in terms of um broadening the scope of those observations um but also driving the cost down of um the cost ultimately of CO2 um and what Society is willing to pay for um for this for this approach so
I think both of those things are really critical and again there’s a whole chapter in this guide about um key recommendations for mrv in Ocean alkalinity enhancement and and how we see this um this field growing in that regard thank you Adam anyone wants to S yeah mrv monitoring reporting and
Verification is absolutely essential the reason is that we have seen umot lots of scandals on land with forestry where carbon credits were given and those credits were worth zero nothing um you can be sure that when there is money to be gained uh there will be Crooks around uh to try to get
The money without a lot of efforts um so it’s very critical that you know companies doing CDR report in a transparent Manner and in a manner that is very verifiable by everybody it should be fully transparent it will be a disaster if carbon credits start to be
Located for projects which have have not proven that they have stored CO2 that is very critical in my view very good point um I think we have a couple of minutes so maybe L can ask you to say something quickly about acceptability because it’s OE could be could be potentially quite difficult to
To accept culturally and and socially what are your thoughts around these um acceptability and ethical considerations around OE yeah it’s uh hugely important and when we talk about scalability we’re often still talking about the theoretical potential of different Marine CDR approaches um but the realistic scalability will be really
Heavily influenced by policy and whether Society is going to accept this um and for how long if there are some side effect effects that can be observed but they’re not maybe huge relative to climate change um it’s acceptable we still need continued trust from communities to be implementing those
Kind of projects um and I think um a really there’s a lot of work happening on how to build that trust so the climate Works funded that creation of a marine research code of conduct um with the Aspen Institute that was just published I think this represents kind
Of a first step um to help people get familiar with how to approach research how to go into communities how to also broaden research to the countries that aren’t currently working on Marine CDR um it’s really important that everybody have a seat at the table so um governments NOS startups local
Communities indigenous communities ocean users um we all have to have a chance to participate and so early stakeholder engagement with research design especially as this research moves into the field is going to be really important to build trust transparency that’s been mentioned and emphasized a lot here um is really critical that we
Yeah develop trust have an ethical approach and a just approach to investigating whether or not this is going to be Sol a kind of solution that we should be implemented and how and um yeah there’s um I think the field is doing a pretty good job so far but
There’s of course a lot at stake and there’s risk that you know one misstep in a field intentional or not probably unintentional um can really set the field back and so hopefully with these kind of guides um new regulations um you know participation of Public Funding bodies uh code of conduct
The agu is developing a similar code of conduct that will integrate I believe the Marine CDR code of conduct developed by Aspen um it’s all very important for inclus approach to this andas do you like to add to that yes particular challenge is that we have non-biotic processes here so chemistry that often
Sounds dangerous and we don’t like it from school and our experience and memories and biology sounds much more green and what we do every day but uh in the end I think for public acceptance that right now that’s that’s critical to to tell what is going on here but oce
Enhancement can really triy to not mess with Biology not change ecosystems the biotic methods are they intentionally change ecosystems so and and that’s a manipulation it’s an intended large scale and that could have uh well it will have eological side effects of course these are intended and here we
Have the maybe a benefit of being able to avoid a large part of this ecological perturbation but we have to well anti-acid that’s a good might be term that is more useful than chemistry um we will have to find out but we have to be transparent and that’s our challenge
Here but I think we are well it’s interesting times and we need your ideas all ideas all hands on deck uh to really explore what is uh the best or the least harmful solution here and we think ocean enhancement is certainly in the portfolio great maybe we have actually
Some time for a quick question from the audience yeah you have okay uh my name is from tyam I would like to uh okay okay thank you very much for you guys experts sharing your your points and your comments from different angle which is very important and very
Useful I have a couple of questions but giving the limited time maybe one or two uh can any of you compare the artificial uh manipulation like a OE and the the natural process like the faton or curas photosynthesis both can enhance pH abruptly yeah but the little
One is natural and it can cause uh classification naturally I mean the Caron is precipitation can take uring naturally without much CO2 release because the pH is is over 10 remember that and the second question is about the learning protocol uh have do you know U it’s U uh already allowed or not
It’s on the process I mean for the oae to the the name on the screen Robert yeah yes okay thank you thank you for your question Rob do you want to yeah so as far as the the London protocol goes there the very quick answer is that the London protocol
Itself is in force that prevents dumping so in the context of oae that may constitute dumping which there is a definition of then the London protocol would um would definitely apply but what is important is that there in in 2013 there was an amendment to the protocol
That is directly for the first time in in international law um trying to regulate oae or trying to regulate what they term Marine geoengineering um and it’s not really directly regulated yet because these these amendments aren’t yet in force um but I think as countries become more and
More aware and if you’re following the discussions that are going on there it’s very very likely that oae will potentially be listed um quite soon as an activity that may want to be considered within the amendment so the the short answer is no not yet but I wouldn’t rule it
Out thank you anyone else want to comment on that yes thank you on the spontaneous precipitation of calcium carbonate that’s what we do see in many experiments particularly if you add particles like just a dust of rocks so there there’s particle reactions large gradients large Omega oversaturation and precipitation of calcium carbonate many
Experiments so that might be one of the largest concerns that we find so far from experiments larger than the ecological impacts that we wanted to study and there we need uh well best practices to make sure this is monitored so maybe all the silic rock that you put
Into the ocean it disappears it dissolves but you end up with lots of calcium carbonate precipitated and you have no gain for the CO2 uptake but you just change one mineral into another uh which a lot of cost a lot of money but doesn’t help the climate at all so
That’s what we need and that was a big surprise that we found it in so many experiments this spontaneous precipitation and I think that’s uh what we will well it is addressed in the guide and we would need guidelines guard rails how to avoid it whether we need microbiology or dissolution in reactors
Or well we we don’t know but that’s a research area if I can do that artificially to enhance the amount of pration of Caron a without M2 release is into atmosphere that would be the best you know when you do o AE you have to do in the surface do
You have any way to drag down this surface of water into the deep because only in the surface they can upake the CO2 from atmosphere directly otherwise you know it’s with the tip it doesn’t work right yeah y agree thank you um we had one more Jana did you have a question
Thank you for this uh very interesting uh table discussion this morning my name is Yan fried I’m from the Marine environmental laboratory of the international atomic energy agency based in Monaco and two of my colleagues had been co-authors of the guide Mark meang and Sam Deon on the constraints and
Recommendations for experimental setups but that’s not my question so my remark is about the scalability of Ocean City enhancement and the time scales uh I agree it took place on geological time scales but the solution of calcium carbonate doesn’t easily occur in the in the surface ocean and just as
A as as an image if you would counter balance the annual CO2 uptake in the ocean if you know Monaco it’s surrounded by limestone rocks B carbonate rocks if you imagine a 6 km long coastline 1,000 m High 1 kilometer into the land that would have to be grinded and thrown into
The sea every year so is this really feasible and then you quickly addressed already the biological counter uh impacts of the heavy metals that could be that will inevitably dissolve from uh olive V or other minerals to into the ocean and go ahead and so scalability well
There it’s it’s about if we have 10% of the current emissions as residual emissions and if we want to compensate them by oae then we need mining operations of the amount of current coal mining and and so that’s not nothing we cannot do of course there’s huge uh harm
On on land and ecological damages and all things but it’s it’s not nothing completely new that the planet hasn’t seen it that humans haven’t done so far so we think we could do that it’s not rocket science but it’s of course it needs best practices as well uh but
Scaling up in in time that’s the critical thing since we don’t do any maybe a few kilograms to a few tons per year so far in in all of these experiments together and scaling this up to to Millions hundreds of millions to gigatons within a few decades that’s
Extremely challenges and uh I I don’t think we can I I don’t see a good path but but well we we can’t stop we can’t do nothing so we have to try and the dissolution itself it’s I think it’s not not a not an issue in the end it’s can
Dissolve Limestone can dissolve an oxic anoxic Waters acidic Waters like in the Baltic Sea within uh a year or so so that’s what that’s what we see from crossly erosion of the lime Stone there once it hits anoxic Waters just a few well 10 20 Metter below sea surface it
Dissolves in annual time scales and silicat rock Olivine it depends on the grain size it depends maybe you can do it on chemical reactors on land on a ship but but it it’s not impossible or electrochemically uh so this dissolution time I think is not not really uh limit
Stopping the method from having the potential at least it’s mostly the um issues on land so far that we see uh the contaminations uh with Trace Metals heavy metals so far and in the these lab experiments haven’t shown major shifts so the dominant effects were fertilization effects due to silicate
And iron but we couldn’t or those three papers that came out this year last one only last week uh is uh found mostly an enhancement of productivity of of different algae species in a in a lab in a container in an aquarium so it’s not not the real world we need these field
Experiments to see longer term effects longer than a few weeks and to see possible impacts on the ecosystems that’s what we don’t know but so far we don’t have strong indications that uh there are such strong effects Adam would you like to add to that uh yeah if I may you
Know I think it’s it’s easy to to throw out a this is the number of square kilometers of limestone that we need to dissolve to do this I think that is just a restatement of the CO2 problem that this is a massive problem we’re talking about billions you have 40 billion tons
Of CO2 every year that we’re pumping into the atmosphere and we need to do something about that right um we need to reduce our emissions globally like that is just a that is the number one thing that we need to do um and we need to do
It soon right and then what do we do about the rest and I think the the where the science is leading us right is is that there’s a lot of uses of land it’s going to be very difficult to get the land to meet this this requirement of
Carbon dioxide removal and that has pushed us into the ocean and um from our perspective you know the scientific perspective is that ocean alkalinity enhancement is a really promising approach to do this carbon dioxide removal at scale um in terms of getting it to that scale you know we need
Responsible research we need to be doing this in conversation with the global Community with Regulators with policy makers with stakeholders and we need to be making sure that um our experiments are are are appropriate for the scale right and right now we we’ve seen a lot of lab
Experiments the next step of course is to be doing controlled field experiments doing things in the ocean that is directly relevant for how we might regulate and control this um to make sure that we’re placing appr limits on where this happens when it happens how
It happens uh to do that in the most responsible way possible um so I think that’s that’s sort of where our position on this um and it’s something that um I we’re hoping to to push forward with this guide thank you I think that we will
Have to to wrap up the session so unfortunately the princip the princip um the second of Monaco were not able to to make it here to the Pavilion this morning really sorry about that um but yeah thank you everyone for a great conversation do you want to do H take
Away me messages I think we have two minutes for do some takeaway messages and then we had prepared the slide uh concluding slide for um for The Prince and maybe you can show it now uh so the it was a recap uh that uh uh of this session you know none of the
Scenarios looked by the ipcc none of those scenarios compatible with the Paris agreement uh can do can be performed without CDR every scenario compliant with the Paris agreement have some level of carbon dioxide removal um the scale is very big as Yana said it’s um is anticipated the carbon
Dioxide removal would be between 100 and 1,000 Gaton CO2 over the century which is quite a large number um many governments and startups forget that CDR is not a replacement for mitigation um that there are multiple approaches that can be used in the ocean and the ocean has become very attractive
Because of as you said constraints on land with um competition with agriculture the the issue of water is uh the Water availability is an issue on land um the ocean is large it has a very large surface area which is good for CO2 airc CO2 exchange it has chemical
Characteristics that are very much amenable for storing a large amount of carbon 50 times more than in the atmosphere here so this method appears promising but we are advocating that more research needs to be done before large scale deployment carbon crediting as you mentioned that needs to be kept
Honest and transparent uh the experiments we Advocate need to be fully published uh we are aware of um startups companies not releasing their their data and I I believe it’s a problem uh that uh that is not done and we also Advocate the use of a public registry of oae
Field experiments because if uh this approach and other approaches of CDR Tech I mean increase in number it will become very difficult to understand what is happening and what the attribution will become extremely difficult um um you know this project has moed up so many tons and this one you know 200
Kilom away how much as it removed so that the public registry I think it’s very critical I don’t know a path for that today but um hopefully it will happen thank you so much shanier for those closing remarks thank you to any everyone H for making it here to this
Session at this early hour on behalf of all the organizers we would like to thank you all and uh a round of applauds maybe to our great panelists thank you