The biggest single threat to the long-term health of the ocean and the stability of our climate comes from the buildup of greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere, which in turn drives enormous quantities of excess heat and acidity into the ocean.
The only way to permanently address this massive disruption is by reducing overall concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which requires both dramatically cutting emissions and also cleaning up the very large excess quantities of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. The largest of those greenhouse gases by volume and duration is carbon dioxide.
Learn about climate impacts on the ocean
Marine Carbon Dioxide Removal (mCDR)
Cleaning up carbon dioxide, referred to as CDR, or carbon dioxide removal, is now squarely on the international community’s climate action agenda. The world will need massive quantities of CDR to achieve the climate agreed in the Paris Agreement, and much more to return the planet to safe levels.
The good news is that there are many potentially viable CDR techniques, and some of these are in the ocean, a subset which is referred to as marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR). mCDR encompasses all CDR approaches that harness the natural power of the ocean to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the deep ocean.
While mCDR approaches show promise in becoming meaningful climate solutions, significant knowledge gaps still exist around impacts, cost, durability and scalability of different approaches.
Since early 2020, Ocean Visions has played a leading role in advancing our collective understanding of mCDR and mobilizing effort and resources to the most immediate needs to build this new field. As the field has grown and developed, we are focusing our efforts now on getting mCDR to policy readiness: producing the needed evidence for society to decide whether (and if so, which) mCDR technologies can contribute to the overall CDR needed for climate stabilization and ultimately restoration.
Our work is focused on creating enabling policy environments, novel partnerships for science and research, optimization of mCDR technology and engineering, and continuing to be an advocate for mCDR research and development in international climate and ocean arenas.
We do this by:
- Accelerating and scaling research, development, and demonstration to address remaining uncertainties.
- Developing and maintaining knowledge products and decision support tools
- Accelerating innovation and optimization of existing technologies
- Building global capacity and political momentum
- Advancing supportive policies and regulatory environments
Through our work on mCDR, Ocean Visions is helping society answer a critical question: Can mCDR become a viable ocean-climate solution?
