How making the oceans less acidic helps to fight climate change

By using a simple method, this Halifax company is able to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the ocean.

Like many innovators, Mike Kelland is drawn to straightforward concepts that promise to make a big impact. He’d been a nature lover since childhood, but after the software company he co-founded was acquired in 2016, mounting worries about the state of the planet spurred him to search for solutions to combat climate change. As Kelland learned more about ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), a process that aims to capture carbon by reducing acid levels in our water systems, he became energized by the potential of this approach. He teamed up with marine scientist Greg Rau and Brock Battochio, a fellow Carleton grad with a background in sustainable energy engineering, to co-found Planetary Technologies.

“If I want to get engaged here and do something about it, then I need to start a business around it,” Kelland says. “That’s all I know how to do.”

Because carbon dioxide dissolves in water, oceans act as a giant buffer, absorbing about a quarter of the carbon we emit — a blessing for humans, but a curse for aquatic life, as those bodies of water turn acidic in the process. Removing carbon dioxide is not only key to biodiversity, it’s also a necessary step, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said, in reaching net zero.

Planetary Technologies uses basic chemistry (reducing the pH level of a solution by boosting the concentration of certain molecules) as a pathway to suck up more carbon from the atmosphere. The company sets up geoengineering projects at carefully selected sites, where alkaline materials are added to the ocean. As these minerals dissolve, they convert carbon dioxide in the water into bicarbonate, which effectively “fixes” the element and makes space to absorb more molecules. Planetary has already launched pilot projects in England, the U.S., Halifax and Vancouver; by scaling its technology, the company aims to sell more carbon-removal credits (and remove more carbon dioxide) to businesses that are looking to reduce their own footprints.

To get these projects up and running, organizations like Planetary need to ensure the communities hosting them are on their side. These partnerships come from building trust on the ground, collaborating with groups like Ulnooweg, an Indigenous organization based in Atlantic Canada, as well as environmental actors and other stakeholders, and also ensuring information about this technology is accessible and digestible to the general public. During community workshops and Q&A sessions, Planetary strives to simplify the science behind its tech, essentially describing the process as adding an antacid to the ocean, as if it were a gigantic stomach upset by acid reflux.

So, how exactly do you give a dose of antacid to the ocean?

Our OAE system consists of two main parts that work in concert with one another: A dosing system to add alkalinity to the water, and a monitoring and measurement system to ensure we continue to operate safely and efficiently, and can quantify the carbon we’ve removed. On the surface, it appears remarkably simple: Mixers, hoses, pumps and electrical components. We create an alkaline mineral, and dose it into a torrent of water flowing out of permitted outfalls, like the power plant we work with in Halifax. When you scratch the surface a bit, though, you see there are extremely elegant sensors and software involved.

Why is Halifax such a good spot for your project?

It’s an incredibly well-researched part of the ocean — so many PhDs at Dalhousie have done their thesis on that region. They sample the water for its plankton community population, and they’ve been doing that once a week since 1994, so you can say with a relatively high degree of confidence whether or not something you’re doing is changing things.

Also, oceans are like giant conveyor belts. There are zones called upwelling areas where CO2 comes up from the deep sea and gets released back into the atmosphere. There are other areas where CO2 is drawn down by the ocean and then into the deep sea. Halifax is one of those upwelling areas. And the Halifax Harbour and Bedford Basin have really nice oceanography for this work. The Bedford Basin is very deep — it’s one of the few places where you can do deep water ocean research and still be home in time for dinner.

Where do you source your materials? You can’t just grab a box of Alka-Seltzer for oceans at the drugstore, presumably, and it would be counterproductive to use anything that requires a lot of energy to process.

Our technology is able to purify a stream of antacid out of a dirty industrial byproduct with very little energy and processing required. We use kiln dust that gets collected in the production of magnesium oxide and is essentially thrown away. Then, we process it so that we can take the alkalinity out without any of the toxic substances, like heavy metals. We work with the lime, magnesia and steel industries, as well as ash products. It has a lot of value in terms of waste management for industrial companies, and that helps drive the circularity within the economy, since we’re using industrial byproducts. If we really want to make a dent on the climate side, we need to use as much of what already exists as we can — that’s how we’re going to bring down costs and scale up climate solutions.

How easy is it to scale your approach?

This technology has applications for just about any form of industrial byproduct that has antacid properties, at pretty much any site that drops water back into the ocean. OAE is widely recognized by organizations and researchers around the world as the carbon removal approach with the highest scalability, with estimates of carbon dioxide removal ranging between 20 and 100 gigatons a year.

A question you must get a lot: is this process safe for the ocean?

The other day, our biologist made the comment that he doesn’t want to study this anymore because nobody ever won a Nobel Prize by reporting zero results. It’s like, “OK, look, this stuff’s safe. It doesn’t do anything, it does not change anything. Why am I still studying it?” The ocean is pretty good at diluting stuff out. Magnesium is the third most common ion in seawater. There’s so much of it already that you’re not seeing a massive difference.

Some nature-based processes always have the potential for runaway effects — you don’t quite know what’s going to happen. But with this process, because it’s purely chemical, what they were able to show was that, when you turn the system off, the effect disappears…. The effect is that we’ve taken a little bit of carbon out of the air.

What changes have you observed in the half-decade since you founded the company?

At humanity’s current level of emissions, we’re effectively dumping about 27 million tons of CO2 into the ocean every day. About 25 to 30 percent of our emissions dissolve in the ocean. As of now, Planetary has removed over 1,000 net tonnes of carbon, which is a tiny amount at the end of the day, but it was the first time that had ever been done.

Obviously, the aim of OAE is to shrink our carbon footprint, but does this approach have any additional benefits?

Alkalinization also has health benefits for ecosystems. Acidification has a real impact on the base of the food web, and sea water restoration processes can increase the biomass of key fishery species. In the great barrier reef, there have been increases in coral growth rates by about 7 per cent as a result of this addition.

 
Planetary Technology is one of six companies in Mission from MaRS: Carbon Management, a special initiative that aims to help Canada achieve its net-zero goals by accelerating the adoption of carbon removal solutions.

 
Illustration by Stephen Gregory, Images: Unsplash; Photo courtesy of Planetary Technologies