Climate Action
Announcing the Launch of the Carbon to Sea Initiative
June 7, 2023
Today we’re announcing that Additional Ventures has created and spun out the Carbon to Sea Initiative, a $50M+ multi-funder, non-profit scientific research program to advance one of the most promising ocean-carbon dioxide removal pathways: ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE).
Carbon to Sea has already committed $23 million in grant funding to a network of dozens of researchers focused on OAE. Details about the grant-funded research and engineering projects are available on the Carbon to Sea website.
This new initiative builds on a growing global consensus that averting climate catastrophe requires reducing emissions and removing atmospheric CO2. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says we need to remove hundreds of billions of tons of atmospheric CO2 this century, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine highlighted OAE as one of the highest potential ocean CDR pathways in a major research roadmap they published in 2021.
Scientists agree that OAE has enormous potential to permanently remove and store carbon and more funding for research is needed. The ocean already contains 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and permanently locks away over a gigaton of atmospheric CO2 every year via a natural process called “weathering.” As alkaline rock washes into the sea it neutralizes harmful acid and enables the ocean to pull more CO2 from the air and safely store it. OAE could dramatically accelerate this natural process while counteracting ocean acidification.
Carbon to Sea has raised more than $50 million from an experienced group of philanthropic funders, including funders with deep experience in ocean conservation, climate and R&D: Additional Ventures; Astera; Builders Initiative; Catalyst for Impact; Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; Grantham Foundation; Kissick Family Foundation; OceanKind; and Thistledown Foundation.
We created the Carbon to Sea Initiative to determine if and how OAE can become a gigaton-scale carbon removal solution. The initiative will evaluate a dozen potential OAE pathways, answer outstanding science and engineering questions, catalyze locally-owned and operated field research sites, help develop responsible regulatory frameworks, and bring more scientists and funding into the field.
Thank you to all the funders, researchers, partners, and the amazing team at Carbon to Sea for their bold commitment to this work.