In this week’s policy-focused episode of CRN, Radhika, and Chris are joined by one of the foremost authorities on the laws and policies which govern carbon removal: Wil Burns, Visiting Professor, Environmental Policy & Culture Program, Northwestern University & Emeritus Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University.
Wil joins our hosts to discuss recent developments around ocean based CDR.
In December of 2021, the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released its much-anticipated report, which outlined a research agenda for ocean-based carbon removal. Ocean-based approaches have the theoretical potential to remove significant amounts of co2 from the atmosphere, and thus help fight climate change.
The authors outlined six carbon removal categories they found worthy of further research: Ocean Nutrient Fertilization, Artificial Upwelling, Seaweed Cultivation, Ecosystem Recovery, Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, and Electrochemical Processes. Each was assessed by the researchers on several criteria, such as the existing knowledge base, efficacy, and governance and public acceptance considerations. Overall, NASEM found ocean CDR at the gigatonne scale is possible and recommended a federal research budget of $850 million over the next five years.
Wil also provides a CDR update from the world of international diplomacy. The London Convention is a global treaty governing the disposal of wastes into the ocean. The 87 nations which have signed on to the agreement share a standard set of rules that limit the dumping of pollution into the ocean from seaward vessels (it does not cover pollution originating on land). Recently, the London Convention has convened a new working group to assess ocean-based carbon removal.
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal, from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right, hello, everybody, and welcome to the March, Friday, March 11th edition of Carbon Removal Newsroom. This week, I’m really excited. We have Wil Burns, who is a visiting professor of Environmental Policy and Culture at the Environmental Policy and Culture Program at Northwestern University and Emeritus Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Carbon Removal and Law. And policy at American University. Wow, that’s a mouthful. Well, you do a lot. So good to have you on the show.
Wil Burns: Thanks, Radhika. It’s great to be here.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And then I always have Chris Barnard, Policy Director at the American Conservation Coalition. How are you?
Chris Barnard: I’m great. Good to be back.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yes, always glad to have you. And then finally, this is Radhika Moolgavkar, Head in Supply and Methodology at NORI. Today we’re going to talk about oceans because that’s Will’s specialty. In December of 2021, the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine released a long anticipated report which outlined a general research agenda for ocean-based carbon removal. As many of you know, ocean-based approaches have a theoretical potential to remove significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But they are still very amazing. There’s a lot of research necessary to ensure that the scale up is both safe and effective.
And our former co-host Holly Buck was also among the CDR experts who worked on this report. So thanks, Holly, for all your hard work. So the National Academy, just for those who want a little background, is the Collective National Academy of the United States. It’s a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1863. When Congress charted it during Abraham Lincoln’s administration, which is pretty amazing when you think it was also the middle of the Civil War, but it was tasked with standardizing the proper size of iron holes on ships and ensuring the purity of whiskey.
Fun fact. Now it makes all sorts of recommendations to the federal government on allocating research funding. So essentially, the authors outlined six broad categories of ocean carbon removal that they thought the federal government should do further research on. Ocean nutrient fertilization, artificial upwelling, seaweed cultivation, ecosystem recovery, ocean alkalinity enhancement, and electrochemical processes. Of any of these, I think ecosystem recovery is probably not super controversial. It’s just about making sure the oceans are restored to their former state. But the other ones do raise some interesting trade-offs and checks and balances that probably need to be in place.
And so each was assessed on several criteria. And they found overall that Ocean CDR at the gigatonne scale is possible and recommended a federal research budget of about $850 million over the next five years. Of course, this was all done prior to Ukraine. So I’m not sure what is going on with the federal government at this point. But Will, Let’s get started. In terms of the federal budget, $850 million sounds pretty reasonable. What do you think of that amount and do you think it will lead to a gig a tonne scale of CDR in the ocean?
Wil Burns: Yeah, I think it was probably a pragmatic approach by the Academy, realizing that too big an ask, especially on top of the estimated 12 billion that we have for CCS and CDR in the federal budget already wasn’t realistic. It’s a good news, bad news story. I mean, I think on one hand, the good news is that it’s enough money to allow us And I think it’s a really important role on a lot of these approaches to move beyond what’s largely been either lab-based or modeling-based approaches to start to do some mesocosm studies, to do some in situ research that’s critical to be able to assess the potential benefits and risks and optimal means of deployment of these approaches.
This kind of research is really expensive right so it’s not going to get you as far as you might imagine, for example, one of the things that the Academy pointed out in the study at one point was that there was a one month long There was a study to analyze the carbon biological pump and that one study in one area cost $115 million right so you burn through this amount of money very quickly. One thing that I think that’s thoughtful by the academy is they’ve emphasized that this will be an adaptive approach.
It may be that there’s things that make certain approaches what they’ve called showstoppers. And so if they find excessive risks or disappointing results, they may abandon some of these approaches along the way and focus on others. So I think that’s a good idea.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Do you think that when you were just mentioning that research that cost $110 million, that there are opportunities to drive down research costs by scaling them? So other types of upwelling studies that are needed would be less expensive because some of the initial startup problems have been figured out and will help with cost reduction.
Wil Burns: Yeah, I’m sure that’s true. And some of the things that we’re doing, looking at biogeochemical cycling and species interaction, for example, from one approach may have some relevance, you know, to other approaches. Right. So if if it’s well coordinated, there may be opportunities for research cross pollination. And I would assume they’re looking into that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So this is a huge report. I know multiple hundreds of pages long, but Could you, both of you, highlight a couple of your main takeaways from the report? And Will, I’ll start with you.
Wil Burns: Well, I mean, I think a couple of primary takeaways are, first of all, we’re at very early stages with a lot of these, right? As I said, they’re no more than a twinkle in the eye in some cases, with most of it being And largely, lab based or modeling right and so, despite the fact that we need these kinds of approaches yesterday. That’s, that’s just not where we’re at right and I think the study which Which was 300 pages emphasizes how much research needs to be done and characterizing risks and benefits for a lot of these approaches.
Another thing I think that was emphasized. And from the governance perspective, there’s a tremendous amount of ambiguity in terms of how we would govern a lot of these approaches, and who would govern them, and an emphasis on a lot of gaps that need to be filled. And then I think the last thing is that It was probably underestimated, as is often the case with Academy reports, but there’s going to be a need to do a lot of work with potential stakeholders who may both benefit and potentially be adversely impacted by these.
And the Academy really was pretty vague in terms of how that might be structured and what some of the most imposing sort of concerns may be.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Chris, what about you? What were your thoughts?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, Will made a lot of really good points. And just to piggyback off that, I think what stood out to me is the fact that the study said that we’re obviously on a path to try and reduce carbon emissions and to sequester more carbon to tackle climate change. And it said that land-based Carbon dioxide removal is obviously great, but not enough. The technological stuff is great. Also not enough. Moving to clean energy. Great. Still not enough. And that the marine based or blue carbon opportunities to reduce more carbon should be a crucial part of the puzzle that could help kind of round out our portfolio of solutions for this.
And what I find really cool about it is that a lot of it really Pretty awesome in terms of how much carbon can be removed in, for example, just through seagrass and kelp and those kinds of things at a very cost effective rate and sometimes like we’re talking about. Crazy amounts of money that we’re spending on climate change and everything. And similar to planting trees and restoring kind of terrestrial ecosystems, there really is a pretty good opportunity at a relatively low cost basis to do the same with ocean based carbon sequestration.
So I think it’s just a wake up call that this is an opportunity that really exists and that we should seize. And just the final thing that Will said is one of the biggest challenges to it right now is that we simply don’t have The research and knowledge necessary to fully embark on this just simply because it’s such an underdeveloped area in terms of the research, and so really there’s a there should be a catalyst to have that research to identify just exactly how good this opportunity could be for us.
Radhika Moolgavkar: You know, just to piggyback a little bit on that you what you’re saying, Chris, are you right now seeing as you are working within the federal government any sort of tension between the nature based solutions and the more industrial solutions? I mean, as you pointed out, they’re all needed to be successful, but sometimes it does feel like there’s this maybe deliberate Pulling or pushing against one another in a weird way that I don’t really understand but I sense so wondering if you hear anything like that in your.
Chris Barnard: Honestly, when it comes to like the main people that are interested in actual policy rather than just like shouting about this issue they’re pretty. We are engaged on both nature based solutions and on kind of technological carbon capture solutions. Natural solutions are by far the most popular climate solution by the polls, like over 90% of Americans support planning And some of the bills in Congress that have the most bipartisan support on climate change are natural solutions bills. But there’s also pretty significant support in Congress for, for example, 45Q that would directly, that’s a tax credit for technological carbon capture.
So I don’t really think it’s an either or. Obviously you have some people kind of more on the far left who say carbon capture is a fake solution and kind of Greta repeated that talking point in Glasgow and those people aren’t really part of that conversation, but I don’t think they’re all that relevant when it comes to actual policy making.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Cool. All right. Well, Will, so the report obviously covered those multiple, discussed those varying methods. And so maybe you could give us a quick summary of what it found regarding the viability of the different methods and if there was anything that was surprising in what you read.
Wil Burns: Yeah. So with the caveat that I can’t do justice, you know, in a few minutes to the 300 pages, just a summary of some of the different approaches. So the first one they looked at was nutrient fertilization, right? We’re trying to increase phytoplankton production through nutrients, macronutrients or micronutrients, and then have the phytoplankton take up CO2, some of which would ultimately end up in the in the bottom of the ocean. They cited studies that concluded that this could potentially effectuate one to five gigatonnes of CO2, but they cautioned that, you know, with those kind of error bands.
It’s not entirely clear. One of the things they emphasize is despite the fact that this is one of the few ocean based approaches where we’ve actually had field experiments and indeed we had 13 of them in the last decade. Most of the experiments were short. And didn’t really characterize how much of the CO2 that’s taken up when when there’s an increase in phytoplankton production, ultimately ends up in the bottom of the ocean because a lot of that’s going to remineralize end up And so they talked about various things that need to be done to increase the length of the studies and what kind of monitoring could happen.
And so they talked about various things that need to be done. That would help us to determine what would happen. There was some discussion of risks associated with this. They concluded that they didn’t think there’d be serious risks associated with harmful algae blooms, for example. They emphasize that it might help to reduce ocean acidification at surface waters, but could increase it in deeper waters. And they said more research was necessary. In my opinion, they gave short shrift to some of the potential risks they didn’t talk much about potentially robbing downstream ecosystems of nutrients and creating, you know, large assemblages of certain kind of So there are other zooplankton species that zooplankton in the area might not be able to consume right.
But they did call for, for more research. Second approach they’re looking at is artificial upwelling and downwelling. Either using pipes to send CO2 toward the bottom of the ocean or to pump up nutrients to try to increase net primary productivity again. Most of the focus was on ocean upwelling, and they’re pretty skeptical about this one. They said, we don’t have much research to date that indicates that this would work well. They didn’t see many prospects for scaling up substantially and they talked about risks, including altering the biogeochemistry of some of the ocean areas and also disturbing benthic ecosystems.
You mentioned recovery of ecosystems, they talked about things like protecting Mangroves, sea, salt marshes, and seagrasses. They provided a little bit of quantification, talked about protecting macroology, for example, maybe giving us about 173 teragrams of carbon sequestration per year, but not a whole lot of quantification. And they talked about what we would have to do, and that was pretty imposing, right? It was things like more rational fisheries policy, protected areas, reducing deep sea trawling. These are big mega sort of policy changes, right? And it was entirely clear how we would get there.
The fourth one they talked about was ocean alkalinity enhancement. They concluded that it could potentially give us gigatonnes, again, of carbon dioxide, but they also emphasized that there were risks, biotic impacts of increasing alkalinity, potential releases of toxic metals like nickel and chromium. And notably, they weren’t very thorough on looking at certain risks again, such as potentially restructuring ecosystems. They also emphasize there were co-benefits, right, in terms of addressing ocean acidification. I know we’re going to talk more about kelp and seaweed later, so I’ll leave that one out. And the last one was electrogeochemical engineering, exploiting acidic conditions to shift carbonate systems or increasing alkalinity of seawater to increase CO2 uptake.
Not a whole lot of assessment in terms of what you might get for CO2 sequestration, and they emphasize things like high costs and potential energy concerns, but they outlined a pretty clear research agenda for that approach also.
Radhika Moolgavkar: One thing that I’ve been thinking about as I learned more about oceans and it’s the timeline that’s needed for the research, right? And also the different durability factors that are being claimed without obviously 100 plus years, 600 years, whatever. There’s no way we know that for sure because we can’t test it. So Will, what do you think when you read this for the timeline of getting ocean CDR to be meaningful as compared to the timeline of getting to where we need to be from a carbon dioxide removal perspective in the atmosphere to avert other crisis.
Is it just going to be happening? Can it happen fast enough, I guess?
Wil Burns: Yeah, I think it’s going to be extremely challenging, you know, beyond characterizing risks and benefits of these approaches, which, as I said, are in early days for many of these. Probably one of the most imposing things that we have is In terms of monitoring, reporting, and verification for a lot of these approaches. And that was emphasized in this study and it’s been emphasized in others. There’s a huge signal and noise ratio, We were talking about taking up minimal amounts of carbon dioxide in certain areas and proving that changes in co2 fluxes in an area are attributable to what you’re doing right and that’s it.
That’s a big problem. There’s lots of questions associated with permanence of these approaches. For example, with kelp, right? A lot of studies indicating that There’s massive amounts of respiration of CO2 that occur well before it could potentially get into sediments. And then lots of questions even of how much of it is ultimately stored in sediments for, you know, pertinent periods of time. If people are going to try to monetize these things, companies, it’s questionable whether we’re going to be able to, first of all, accurately do that. And that’s one of the things that the academy emphasized.
And when you’re looking at smaller amounts, even large amounts, even a gigatonne, it’s going to be hard given that signal to noise ratio to be able to separate that out, much less for individual projects. And it’s going to be expensive. And so the question becomes, do we not try to have companies monetize it, but we accept the fact that we think it has a role. And that means that ultimately the government is paying for that benefit without Totally being able to assess how much sequestration is happening.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so Chris, I’m curious what your thinking is. Do you think policymakers are interested in funding this type of research when it’s very unclear both the fiscal impacts of it and the CO2 impacts of it?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I think I think they are. And kind of my my little bit of evidence for that is last year, Senator Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska introduced a bill called the Blue Carbon for our Planet Act with a Democrat from Rhode Island, Sheldon White House. And it’s a very bipartisan bill. And the goal of that is actually At some level to do what this study is recommending in terms of creating what they call a blue carbon registry kind of taking stock of the blue carbon potential in the US and kind of putting that into a central database and then performing some analysis and research on the best ways to.
Leverage those opportunities. Now, their budget is significantly smaller than what the report suggests. It’s $15 million a year through 2026. So it’s something, it’s not quite at the level that the report is calling for, but I do think that it shows that there is interest in this and that it’s bipartisan.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I think the constituency that is going to drive this in the public is going to be. I think in soil ag, it’s It’s pretty easy to point to a farmer and the beautiful soil and the big ad companies are getting more and more interested. I don’t see that same constituency within the US to push in. I don’t see a government agency to kind of harness it. So what do you think this looks like, Chris, from like five, 10 years down the road and who’s making sure it keeps going?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, that’s that’s a great question, and I think you’re right that it’s not as intuitive as kind of land based carbon sequestration and kind of ecosystem restoration. Now, I will say that in coastal areas, I think there was a significant opportunity to make these arguments and I wouldn’t at all be surprised to see, for example, insurance companies getting interested in how mangrove forests in Florida, for example, reduce flooding and tidal issues or oysters in the bays of New York or whatever it might be. And obviously there’s some other kind of further out maritime sequestration opportunities.
And there’s actually the Virginia Nature Conservancy has started doing those kinds of projects. Um, in the state where I live, um, And selling them as carbon credits, blue carbon credits, and Apple and other companies have actually been quite proud in their purchase of those and being quite public about it. And so I think those could actually just compete in a carbon marketplace simply because the companies that buy carbon credits, what they care about is their carbon credits being affordable and reducing carbon emissions. And whether it’s in the ocean or on land, I don’t think they have a particularly strong Reason to lean one way or the other.
So I do think that nonprofits could actually play a really interesting role in this, like the Nature Conservancy and other groups like that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, one thing that I often think about from an oceans perspective, and I was speaking to a panel of Will students, and I was saying that the ocean creates such a strong emotional reaction that it seemed to me like it would be a winning solution. Though somebody else disagreed with me and said actually makes it harder because people are so protective. But I do feel like there’s a whole contingent of people who love the ocean who use it for multiple different purposes and will want blue carbon to succeed because it impacts their daily lives.
The use of the shoreline, the destruction of the shoreline, all of that is important to them to prevent it and make it better. That’s where I see the constituency being like something we don’t really quite know yet, but will be developing. And so actually, last question, because I want to pivot back to kelp because you did mention it, Will, and it is kind of one of the darlings right now of deep ocean. Everybody’s talking about it. But after the report was released, a climate scientist named David Ho tweeted one of the findings that to grow enough kelp to remove 0.
1 gigatonnes of CO2 per year would require 730,000 kilometers of coastline, which is about 60% of the global coastline. And that’s also assuming if it was planted in a 10 meter belt, and that’s also assuming right that it could be planted in all these along this whole coastline. So what do you think that says about this very much vaunted climate solution of kelp planting that Microsoft stripe all of them are into? And do you think it does have a long term Potential to be a large part of the carbon removal strategy.
Wil Burns: Yeah, I think it’s extremely limited, and I think you’re right about it being a darling. I think the parallel was a lot of the initial enthusiasm for afforestation and reforestation as a carbon removal approach, because to Somewhat analogously, it feels like a nature-based solution, right? And so in many people’s minds, I think, is psychologically privileged over things that require more hard infrastructure, like electrogeochemical approach. Or ocean upwelling and downwelling, for example. But similar to afforestation and reforestation, it has some limits and it also has some risks that aren’t discussed enough.
Now, in terms of limits, the study also cited a lot of those sort of constraints, right? And talked about the fact that You’re talking about massive amounts of potential areas and with huge amounts of stakeholders that likely would never accept 60% of the coast to have a belt of seaweed of that sort, right? So I think that in itself limits it. But beyond that, as the study emphasized, it’s far from clear That you’re going to get the kind of sequestration you’re talking about in the deep parts of the ocean, again, because the studies emphasizes that a lot of that CO2 would be released well before it got to deeper parts of the ocean, unless you were going to How do you really commit yourself to instead of just sinking it as companies like running tide are are contemplating massive interventions where you’re you’re taking it with with vehicles and bringing it down.
You know, 2000 meters or more to try to sequester it or store it, and that massively increased your costs. The other thing is that there’s some very large potential risks The study talks about the fact that if you put this biomass in deep parts of the ocean, it could result in deoxygenation of those areas. It could interfere with the interaction of deep sea species with each other. And as the Academy said, this is the largest area of the oceans in terms of volume and the least well understood in terms of the Species exist in that area.
And so those are some very substantial risks to get 0. 1 gigs of CO2. The other thing is, is that the MERV problems, monitoring and reporting and verification. And I think the question is true in spades with this. It’s very difficult to be able to prove, especially with smaller scale projects, that you’re actually effectuating net reductions in CO2 because you’re changing the equilibration, right? And you’re measuring how much CO2 is being taken up, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into how much is being removed from the atmosphere ultimately. That makes me extremely skeptical about people already seeking to sell carbon credits, some of these companies that are involved and companies buying those credits, because I don’t think that you’re at this point able to establish long term permanence and that it’s a safe approach.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so pivoting a little bit from that, we’re going to talk about the London Convention, because I mean, unlike soil or land based solutions, right, there aren’t natural boundaries of the ocean. And so that means that all nations kind of have to work together, at least those with coastlines to monitor, regulate and prevent the destruction of the ocean, if you will. So the London Convention is a global treaty governing the disposal of wastes into the ocean. 87 nations signed on to the agreement to share a standard of rules that limit the dumping of pollution into ocean from seaward vessels.
It does not cover pollution originating on land, and obviously it doesn’t cover pollution quote unquote originating from the atmosphere. So several ocean CDR methods covered in this recent report would entail adding large quantities of material into the ocean to remove carbon dioxide. Beyond the carbon dioxide itself, it’s also mineralization, other types of things to help facilitate drawing down carbon dioxide. So recently the London Convention has convened a new working group to kind of assess this and see what that means. So Will, maybe you can just give us a 30 second overview of the purpose of the London Convention and how influential is it currently over human activities on the ocean?
Wil Burns: Yeah, so London was created, as you indicated, to try to reduce the harms of dumping of materials in the oceans. In the context of CDR approaches, It passed a series of resolutions in the last decade to try to regulate ocean fertilization activities and it essentially said that they could only be conducted for on a small scale. So, for scientific research purposes, meaning that you couldn’t be seeking to monetize this, and that it was subject to a risk assessment framework that they established. And the London Protocol, which is a treaty that’s supposed to supplant The convention ultimately actually was amended to regulate marine geoengineering so that’s, that’s a broader concept which defines essentially any intervention that could take up carbon or solar radiation management approaches.
And it would establish essentially the same regulatory framework, but this time it would be legally binding, unlike the convention, which just passed a resolution that is not.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Chris, you are obviously the person closest to working with diplomats and also working with different political entities. And so you were at COP26 in Glasgow, kind of saw the current state of climate diplomacy. What do you think of adding this whole nother level of international diplomacy to the climate, you know, climate debate and What are some issues you foresee in having 87 nations work together to develop a framework around this?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, it’s always very challenging when it comes to those global frameworks, and I think it’s very easy for them to come together and Have the diplomats in a room and kind of agree on something and say we’re going to do this and then the actual enforcement of what they’ve just talked about is really the tricky part. And I feel like we kind of saw that with Paris. These different diplomats from across the country across the world came together, created this very nice sounding agreement and then. Really kind of years later, you have countries failing to hit the targets, countries really failing to even produce their nationally determined contribution targets in terms of how much CO2 they’re going to reduce.
And so you really kind of had, it’s just very difficult to enforce that on a national level, on a global level, especially when there’s so many other things happening in the world, obviously, with Russia and with energy prices and inflation and still kind of places recovering from the pandemic. I tend to be a little bit skeptical of how successful these kinds of agreements can be. And I think, honestly, there’s very few agreements in the past that we can point to that have been kind of an overwhelming success. I would probably say the Montreal Protocol is a standout one in terms of a success, but I’m not sure if there’s many others, and maybe Will can correct me here, but many others that have at the global level been able to really make much of an impact.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Will, anything you would add? Any other protocols you can think of?
Wil Burns: I’d say the only other one that was a clear slam dunk is probably the Basel Waste Convention. It did substantially reduce the amount of hazardous waste being shipped from developed countries to developing countries. And the only shout out And one of the things that I’d give the climate agreements is that, you know, back when I started on all of this and I had hair, our projections of where temperatures would be at the end of the century was more like four to five degrees Celsius. The climate agreements have helped bend the curve, right?
Not enough, obviously, we’re still looking maybe at three or above, but that’s a lot different than four or five. And some of the best case scenarios are 1. 8, right? So I think there’s merit in this framework, but I agree with Chris. There’s a lot of fronting in terms of people’s pledges and what has actually happened on the ground.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Oh, the devil’s always in the details, isn’t it? So what is the status of the working group, Will? And, you know, what are they currently working on? And what do you think of their chances of succeeding in a meaningful timeframe?
Wil Burns: Yeah, so I think the working group is helpful. One of the things that the London Convention has done, to its credit, is it’s stayed focused on this issue, despite the fact that we really haven’t had any, you know, field experiments for CDR and like It’s been like a decade right London’s continue to publish reports, and now it’s established this working group that wants to essentially establish some rules of the road for things beyond ocean iron fertilization. Which is their original focus, right? It’s unclear at this point ultimately what it will do, but my guess is it’ll probably establish rules that look a lot like that resolution.
It’ll call for research, but it’ll probably Not at this point, call for countries to be engaged in trying to commercialize these prospects, and it will call for, you know, a risk assessment framework that may be specific to each one of these approaches, and it’ll probably I think provide some guidance for other regimes that might have to look at this in the future, like the Law of the Sea Convention, or the Convention on Biological Diversity, or maybe Paris if, if countries start deciding that under Article For example, they’re going to try to obtain credits for carbon removal, or they try to incorporate carbon removal into their NDCs.
This kind of approach may may provide some some guidance. They’re doing it, but it’s hard to know ultimately what impact it will have, because again, the resolutions that London passes will always be voluntary. And in terms of the London Protocol, which has always established more kind of stringent requirements, at least when it comes to the United States, we’re not a party. So whatever they do won’t ultimately be pertinent to us, but we are a party to the convention.
Radhika Moolgavkar: This regulatory work is so interesting. It almost makes me want to go back to being a lawyer, but not quite. Almost. So Chris and Will, I’m going to leave you both. This is my last question for you on this topic is, what do you hope from diplomats when they are writing these rules of ocean carbon removal? I’ll start with you, Chris, and then I’ll end it with Will.
Chris Barnard: That’s an A difficult question and I’m not sure I’m entirely qualified to answer it. Obviously, like my my typical answer would kind of probably include general ideas around kind of market based solutions that would align the incentives right to do some of this stuff. And so I think an example of lawmakers understanding that came out of COP26 in Glasgow recently was the kind of establishing principles for a global carbon marketplace for general carbon credits and removal. So it’s say something along those lines in similar we’re asking specifically for the ocean waste or broadly speaking for.
Radhika Moolgavkar: You can take it whichever way you want to go. There’s no right or wrong answer or it’s just, you know, what do we envision? What do we hope for?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, so specifically around like maritime, like blue carbon, I think having that as part of a global carbon marketplace like that would be good in terms of the waste and kind of conversations around that. I think obviously one of the issues like Will mentioned is like building pipelines. Potentially to transport large amounts of CO2 if we’re sequestering kind of CO2 using technological means and embedding that in the sea in particular areas for geological storage. I think you’d have to include some of the economic aspects of that and how that would work and gauging private sector interests and kind of including them in the conversation of the best way to go about this so that you’re not creating a regulation on you can’t do this or that and then Say that you can’t actually build those pipelines if that’s what we deem necessary to sequester the carbon.
And so just including them in that conversation.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And Will?
Wil Burns: Well, I think one of the things we need is coordination between the regimes that might be pertinent for this. As I said, London’s done a lot of good work in terms of providing some good science about carbon removal approaches and a basic framework for looking at these issues. But at the end of the day, What we would be using this for is to address climate change right so I think it’s important that London and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which is also weighed in this coordinate its research and potential And that’s a, that’s a difficult thing to do, but it’s, helpful.
There’s also more. Expertise probably on on carbon issues within those regimes that would help it within the climate regimes that would help these other regimes in terms of decision making. I think we also need to develop sound We have accounting practices right the Paris Agreement, the rule book has accounting practices for reductions of emissions for example they’re going to need a parallel process for how we account for carbon removal. Right, especially if it’s going to be incorporated into the into the ndc’s or even into the article 6 voluntary agreements right and looking at that sooner rather than later would be helpful.
And then I think the last thing circling back. And then back to this issue of public acceptance and stakeholder engagement is developing an effective process to start to help stakeholders to look at both the potential benefits that these and then the last thing I’d say is if when we’re doing risk assessment. We’re at a point, given the fact that unchecked climate change poses huge risks, that we’re going to have to have a risk assessment that’s also comparative in nature, right, which looks at not only the risks of deploying these approaches, but what What the risks are of not looking at these approaches and then weighing those two.
We just have to be mature at this point and acknowledge that there’s no free lunch. We obviously want to try to minimize any of the potential adverse impacts of these approaches, but we may have to acknowledge that some of these approaches have risks, but they may be massively outweighed by the benefits of addressing climate change in an effective manner.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, well, I mean, we can have a whole show on that whole that topic alone because, you know, obviously that’s quite can be a little controversial, but I think you’re right. We have where this isn’t just a straight yes or no answer. This is a risk assessment balance, which I think the last two years have shown that humans may not be the best at doing risk assessment. That’s one of our limitations. So it’s going to be a long, drawn out process, I would imagine. With that, though, I am going to wrap up this part and have Chris give us some good news because, gosh darn it, I know I could use some.
It’s been a rough few weeks in the world, and so maybe there’s something good going on that I would love to hear about. So Chris.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, for sure. Well, I thought I’d keep it broadly within the theme of oceans and seas. And there’s a recent study out of the University of Miami talking about corals and coral reefs. And kind of one of the things that we’re trying to do to make sure that the coral reefs don’t all get bleached and that they die out completely is to strategically replant some of them. On degraded reefs already degraded by by the ocean and by climate change. And so the at the University of Miami, the researchers found ways to train corals to tolerate Higher levels of heat so that once they’re planted and the oceans will get warmer because of climate change, perhaps inevitably, that they won’t be bleached as well and that they’ll actually survive.
So it’s cool that they’re kind of finding a way to literally train them like athletes to withstand heat because of stress studies and all that kind of stuff. So that’s a cool little bit of good news.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, that is really cool. It’s sort of like risk mitigation or mitigation of, I guess, impact, but Keeping the species alive, that’s one of the reasons we’re doing all this. So anyway, Will, Chris, thank you so much as always for joining me. And I look forward to our next conversation. Until then, both of you have a wonderful rest of the week and weekend.
Wil Burns: Thank you. You also.
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