A New York experiment is part of a commercial race to develop ocean-based technologies to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Bonnie Chang squints at a tube of sediment collected beneath the shallow waters off North Sea Beach — about a two-hour drive from New York City. She’s looking for green mineral crystals that her team added to the sand last year. If all goes as planned, these olivine crystals will cause the ocean to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — a climate solution that could potentially be scaled up around the globe.
This is one of the first field trials of a concept known as ocean alkalinity enhancement — essentially using antacids to help the ocean digest CO2. The two-year experiment is run by Vesta, a start-up climate company based in San Francisco, California, with enthusiastic support from local community leaders. Just metres down the beach, a newly installed welcome plaque proclaims that visitors are about to step onto “the world’s first carbon-removing beach”.
Chang, a chemical oceanographer leading the field work for Vesta, isn’t so sure just yet. Looking at the clear sediment tube, she is disappointed to discover a distinct layer of olivine crystals buried beneath about 10 centimetres of beach sand.
“The olivine is deeper than I was expecting,” she says. “I was hoping it would stay on top and mix in.”
That might signal trouble because it could slow down a series of reactions that could — along with many other factors — determine whether the beach lives up to its promise.