Carbon Gap – CDR Research Gaps Database

Carbon Gap has created a comprehensive, user-friendly database that consolidates existing research on carbon dioxide removal and highlights key research gaps. This resource aims to support policymakers, researchers, funders, and others in the CDR field, enabling more targeted and effective funding decisions. By identifying underexplored areas in CDR, the database helps direct investment to accelerate research, development, and innovation where it’s needed most.

Salmon Restoration: Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together

The largest summer chum salmon run since 1975 shows how Tribes are rebuilding both habitat and fish populations, defying odds and obstacles. This is nobody’s idea of easy work. Tribes’ unflagging commitment is one of the main reasons salmon still return to Puget Sound. For Global Ocean Health, that determination is also one of the main reasons why much of our work centers on partnership with Tribes.

Hood Canal salmon run sees booming recovery as fish face extinction
Oct. 3, 2024 at 6:00 am | The Seattle Times

Getting Started on Methane Cleanup

This report is a welcome entry in an infant field. Here’s hoping methods of methane removal can mature quickly and earn a welcome place among climate solutions—and among people who must live with them. It’s good to see the National Academies chewing into this vital challenge.

Here at Global Ocean Health, we helped Tribes launch the Indigenous Greenhouse Gas Removal Commission because the need for cleanup has become urgent. Tribes have a strong track record in mastering environmental management challenges and helping to make sure these fields “grow up right.”

It’s still true that the best and cheapest way to tackle pollution is to make less of it. Trouble is, modern industrial societies have failed to cut GHG emissions for so long that we now must learn how to clean up our mess in a hurry. And as usual the ocean —which feeds billions and provides half our world’s oxygen—is taking the brunt.

Pulling methane from the air might be one of the quickest ways to start getting a grip. It’s a potent greenhouse gas, and humans produce most of it, so this one is on us. At GOH, we look forward to continuing to support Indigenous leaders in their work to carve out a strong role as co-managers and leaders in this new field.

Tapping the Ocean’s Carbon Superpowers

For decades scientists have been refining methods to capture hydrogen from seawater while capturing carbon dioxide from the air and binding it in marine carbonates in the ocean. Equatic is one of a new cop of startups (Ebb Carbon, CarbonRun, and Planetary Technologies among them) who are beginning to bring this idea from the lab to the waterfront.

The idea has promise. The ocean’s rich soup of carbonates naturally bind enormous amounts of CO2, drawing it from air into seawater and turning it into raw material. A lot of the carbon is incorporated into shell by plankton and shellfish, and eventually transformed into limestone and other geologic deposits.

All told, the ocean’s knack for recycling carbon makes it the largest carbon sink on the surface of the Earth, locking away more than 20 times the carbon stored in soils and plants, and more than 40 times the amount in the atmosphere.

Learning to speed up this stately natural engine of sequestration could be one of the last hopes for modern societies to veer away from climate catastrophe, now that we’ve blown past so many guardrails while barely tapping the brakes on our fast-growing emissions. With this promise come some big questions. Can we learn to manage this massive new use of ocean biogeochemical capacities without disrupting marine ecosystems that feed billions of people and produce half the Earth’s oxygen? Can we grow a new environmental service industry without repeating the grievous errors and injustices of past development cycles? Could variants of this same clever chemistry also help to protect fisheries and ecosystems from harmful CO2-driven ocean acidification? Or safely recycle brines from the world’s proliferating desalination plants? Help offset the cost of supplying freshwater to drought- parched regions? Yield useful hydrogen and oxygen? Stay tuned.

How Equatic solved seawater’s toxic gas problem and delivered a two-for-one solution: removing carbon while producing green hydrogen.

By Emily Pontecorvo | September 19, 2024

Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Research Plan – Notice of request for information

Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Research Plan

A Notice by the National Science Foundation on 02/23/2024

SOURCE: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/02/23/2024-03758/marine-carbon-dioxide-removal-research-plan

AGENCY: National Science Foundation.

ACTION: Notice of request for information.

SUMMARY:
The National Science Foundation (NSF), on behalf of the White House National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Fast-Track Action Committee (MCDR–FTAC), requests input from all interested parties to inform the development of an implementation plan to advance a key recommendation of the Ocean Climate Action Plan (OCAP) regarding marine carbon dioxide removal (CDR) research. Marine CDR refers to efforts to increase the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide taken up by the ocean, adding to the large, natural ocean carbon reservoir. The deployment of safe and effective CDR approaches is increasingly regarded in scientific assessments as necessary in the near future to meet climate goals. The implementation plan, hereafter referred to as the Marine CDR Plan, will advance three actions to enable marine CDR research that are called for in the Ocean Climate Action Plan: establish a comprehensive Federal marine CDR research program; clarify permitting, regulatory, and other standards and policies, and establish guidelines for marine CDR research; and establish a Marine CDR Initiative to enable public-private partnerships and establish mechanisms to strengthen interagency coordination and promote public awareness and engagement. Through this Request for Information (RFI), the MCDR–FTAC seeks input on each element of the Marine CDR Plan.

DATES:
Responses are due by 11:59 p.m. eastern time on April 23, 2024. Submissions received after the deadline may not be taken into consideration.

ADDRESSES:
Interested individuals and organizations should submit comments electronically to Tricia.M.Light@ostp.eop.gov and include “Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal Research Plan” in the subject line of the email. Email submissions should be machine-readable (PDF, Word) and should not be locked or password protected.

Instructions: Response to this RFI is voluntary. Each individual or organization is requested to submit only one response. Commenters can respond to one or many questions. Submissions are suggested to not exceed a total of five (5) pages in 12 point or larger font. Submissions should clearly indicate which questions are being addressed. Responses should include the name of the person(s) or organization(s) filing the response. Responses containing references, studies, research, and other empirical data that are not widely published should include copies of or electronic links to the referenced materials. Responses containing profanity, vulgarity, threats, or other inappropriate language or content will not be considered.

Please note that MCDR–FTAC agencies may post responses to this RFI, without change, on their websites. NSF, therefore, requests that no business proprietary information, copyrighted information, or personally identifiable information be submitted in response to this RFI. Please note that the U.S. Government will not pay for response preparation, or for the use of any information contained in the response.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
For further information, please contact: Tricia Light, Office of Science & Technology Policy. Phone (202) 881–7242; email: Tricia.M.Light@ostp.eop.gov.

Reuters: US finalizes higher fees for oil and gas companies on federal lands

 
President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday finalized a range of reforms designed to boost returns and address environmental harms from drilling on public lands, a move that will increase fees for oil and gas companies that operate there.
 

A general view of oil drilling equipment on federal land near Fellows, California, U.S., April 15, 2023. REUTERS/Nichola Groom/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights

McKinsey Sustainability: Carbon removals: How to scale a new gigaton industry

CO2 removal (CDR) capacity is far from the gigaton scale needed to round out businesses’ net-zero efforts by 2050. We explore a mature CDR market’s potential and possible first-mover advantages.

This report is a collaborative effort by Peter Mannion, Emma Parry, Mark Patel, Erik Ringvold, and Jonathan Scott, representing views from McKinsey Sustainability and McKinsey’s Global Energy and Materials Practices. | December 2023