Halifax Researchers Want to Alter the Ocean to Slow Climate Change
HALIFAX–With humanity struggling to get climate change under control, academics and researchers are looking for ways to remove more carbon from our atmosphere.
The task is daunting. It is estimated that, in order to prevent the global temperature from rising more than 1.5 degrees, we will have to remove hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere this century.
Much focus over the years has been placed on the importance of trees and their ability to remove carbon. Preserving and planting more forests will help in our fight, but what about the ocean?
Many people don’t know that, for eons, the Earth’s largest body of water has been an important carbon sponge for the planet. According to the Carbon to Sea Initiative, 38 trillion tonnes of carbon is stored in the ocean. Now, academic researchers at Dalhousie University are partnering with Halifax’s booming ocean tech sector to allow the ocean to suck up even more carbon from the atmosphere.
“I would say the ocean is doing way more than the Amazon rainforest,” says Dalhousie oceanographer Dr. Katja Fennel. “The ocean is holding much more carbon dioxide than the Amazon rainforest. It has taken up a lot since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.”
The ocean is able to store carbon thanks to natural processes like erosion. Over time, minerals have been deposited into the bodies of water, making it more alkaline. So, Dr. Fennel and her team are in the early stages of researching how to add alkalinity to the ocean, safely, so more carbon can be stored.
Dr. Fennel compares this alkalinity-adding concept to someone taking an antacid when they have heartburn.
The team recently got a big push toward its goal; the Carbon to Sea Initiative just gave Fennel’s team a $15 million grant to go towards their studies.
“It’s going to be spent on personnel and equipment, and experiments,” said Fennel. “We’re conducting experiments in the lab and out in the field.”
But the Dalhousie team isn’t doing this alone. They have partnered with Planetary Technologies, a Halifax company that is focused on enhancing the alkalinity of the ocean for carbon removal. Planetary Technologies has a lofty goal of removing one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2045.
According to Fennel, Planetary Technologies has convinced Nova Scotia Power to allow the team to experiment with the outfall produced by the Tuft’s Cove generating station. The Dalhousie researchers and Planetary technologies will be out in the Bedford Basin in the coming months.
“(We’re testing) that alkalinity can be added through the cooling outfall,” explains Fennel. “So the power plant sucks in the water from Bedford Basin and uses it for cooling and then the water goes out again. And in that outfall, they have permission to add alkalinity in modest doses. So, we’re starting small, stepwise.”
“We will be measuring from a boat with autonomous platforms and sensors. We will have a model set up that simulates exactly what’s happening. We will be trying to measure the signal, in terms of alkalinity, in terms of co2, and we’ll also be looking at the ecosystem. We want to be sure there is nothing of concern that we didn’t anticipate. And if there is then we will stop immediately and reconsider.”
Since the world-wide research into this idea is new, there are still many questions to be answered, including environmental impacts. But, Fennel notes that alkalinity gets added to the ocean naturally. This initiative is just speeding it up. Also, the ocean’s ability to store carbon has been reduced over the years, thanks to human activity, including burning fossil fuels.
“It’s just the saturation effect that will, at some point, really reduce the ocean’s ability to take up more,” states Fennel. “Unless we do something about it.”
“Right now, the ocean is moving towards more acidic conditions, because of all the fossil fuel that we’re adding to the atmosphere…we’re pushing it toward these conditions with all kinds of potentially bad consequences. So now we’re talking about reversing that and pushing it more toward the alkaline.”
If the experiments prove that adding alkalinity to the ocean is safe, and fruitful, it will still be a massive undertaking to add the alkaline substances to the ocean. But researchers have still thought of how it can be done.
“There are all kinds of different approaches being discussed and considered,” said Fennel. “One is putting some finely ground rock powder into the ocean that dissolves relatively quickly.”
There is a sense of urgency going into the research. It has become clear to experts, like Dr. Fennel, that reducing our carbon emissions, while still important, won’t be enough to prevent climate disaster. New carbon capture methods and technologies will be needed.
“This is not a technology that would allow us to continue emitting co2 into the atmosphere,” cautioned Fennel. First and foremost, we have to reduce co2 emissions. And it’s critical that this happens as soon as possible. But we also know that we won’t be fast enough in terms of reducing emissions to stay below the critical thresholds that experts agree upon.”
Derek Montague is a Huddle reporter in Halifax. Send him your feedback and story ideas: [email protected].