If there’s a potential drawback to these kinds of algae operations, it’s finding the hectares of seafront property needed to construct massive algae farming plants. In contrast, Climeworks CEO Cristoph Gebald told Fortune in March that its DAC plant in Iceland, the world’s first in operation, is pulling CO2 out of the sky at between “$200 to $300 per ton.” Brilliant Planet calculates that algae farms like the ones it is building can remove carbon from the atmosphere at a total cost of $100 per tonne. Still, he feels large-scale algae farming will ultimately prove to be the cheapest and greenest-pun intended-of all carbon-capture options. “We need every solution,” Jovine acknowledges. That would indeed be a huge milestone: The IPCC calculates we’ll have to remove five to 10 gigatons of CO2 from the air each year by 2050 “ to prevent the world from overheating.” Rystad calculates that the full suite of carbon-removal technologies-not just algae-based, but direct-air-capture technologies such as those developed by Climeworks-have the capacity to remove 3.6 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2040. In a research note last week, Rystad Energy, an Oslo-based independent energy research firm, backed up that bullish timeline. Jovine says the budding algae carbon sequestration sector can achieve gigaton-scale-or billions of tons of CO2 removal annually-within two decades. “I had the slightly insane ambition of wanting to remove a billion tons of CO2,” Jovine recalls. patent filed a decade ago, Jovine spelled out his first vision for how a commercial-scale marine-algae processing facility could function. For each metric ton (MT) of algae produced, 1.6 MT of carbon is absorbed.” It also calculates the algae can do the carbon-sequestering job more efficiently and cheaply-using less energy and virtually no fresh water. According to Brilliant Planet scientists, algae “can absorb and store carbon more efficiently than all terrestrial plants and trees combined. In large containment ponds, it grows algae, an aquatic plant that may be Mother Nature’s most effective air purifier. Algae: Cheap and greenīrilliant Planet has a different approach to solving the same problem. Likewise, several major energy companies, including Occidental Petroleum, are working with DAC startups to develop similar plants that suck up CO2. In March, Breakthrough featured the story of one such company, the Swiss-based Climeworks, which engineers giant fans that draw thousands of tons of CO2 out of the sky, and then stores it underground in a layer of rock. Billions in venture-capital investment, government funding, and research grants backed by the likes of Bill Gates and Elon Musk, have flowed into so-called direct-air-capture (DAC) startups over the past few years. They singled out a possible game-changing technology that could become a promising tool to help decarbonize the planet: direct-air capture and storage.Įven before the IPCC report, investors were hot on carbon-capture-a catchword for an explosion of technologies and engineering innovations designed to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and lock it away securely, essentially removing the damaging planet-warming gas. In that same report, however, climate scientists struck a hopeful, if measured, tone. In April, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change delivered yet another warning that we’re falling behind in our efforts to keep the planet from warming to dangerous levels. For a solution to be a true breakthrough, he says, “it’s got to be scalable and big.” Algae, a mass-replicating CO2-removal machine, fits that description. The London-based Brilliant Planet is among a small cadre of green-tech startups beginning to unlock the natural powers of marine algae to absorb massive quantities of airborne CO2.Īs Jovine tells Fortune, climate change is a massive challenge that can only be addressed with massively big ideas. One such scientist at the forefront of this area of marine biology is Raffael Jovine, a molecular biochemist who in 2013 cofounded Brilliant Planet and serves as its chief scientist.
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