Atlanta, Georgia, May 24, 2022: Additional Ventures is partnering with Ocean Visions and a consortium of philanthropic funders to announce the Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) Engineering Award. We invite concise pre-proposals to develop prototypes of new tools, technologies, and processes that could enable safe, cost-efficient, and scalable OAE. This may include, but is not limited to:
- Mechanisms to efficiently prepare and/or disperse alkaline substances into seawater (e.g., mechanical hardware, chemical processes, etc.).
- Designs, technologies, and supporting software to integrate OAE into existing marine and coastal industries, such as transoceanic shipping, desalination, offshore wind, and commercial fishing.
- Sensors and platforms to support monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) of OAE.
The OAE Engineering Award is part of the Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement R&D Program—an ambitious effort to accelerate the understanding of OAE as a potential method for large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The OAE Engineering Award complements the recently announced OAE Research Award, which assesses whether OAE can safely and permanently sequester atmospheric CO2 at scale.
Ocean Visions is partnering with Additional Ventures to manage the RFP process and facilitate expert technical evaluation of submitted proposals, drawing on the broad and diverse expertise amongst its Network members. This R&D program aligns fully with core principles guiding Ocean Visions’ ocean-based CDR work, and the priorities outlined in Ocean Visions’ ocean-based CDR road maps, which were established in 2021 with engagement from a global team of experts and that outline key research, testing, and evaluation needs.
To learn more about the RFP and apply, visit the OAE Engineering Award page.
The RFP in a nutshell
We seek concise pre-proposals describing a plan to develop a proof-of-concept prototype of a tool, technology, or process that can assist in monitoring, verification, or deployment of OAE. Pre-proposals should describe how the prototype will be developed and tested in ≤18 months for ≤$1.5M, and how the technology could subsequently be further developed and scaled to global impact in a timely manner. This RFP is open both to small-scale prototypes that are tested in a laboratory environment and to larger prototypes that can be tested in the intended environment.
Pre-proposals will be reviewed by a committee of qualified experts convened by Ocean Visions. A subset of applicants will be invited to submit a full proposal following that review. A full proposal framework process will be provided at that time.
Deadline for pre-proposals: 11:59pm PT on August 5, 2022.
All potential applicants are invited to join an informational webinar on June 9, 2022 at 8am-9am PDT / 11am-12pm EDT to hear more about the OAE Engineering Award and to ask questions about the RFP process.
Context
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests that even aggressive measures to reduce CO2 emissions will have to be complemented with carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the order of 100–1000 billion tons of CO2 before the end of the 21st century to avert the worst consequences of climate change.
There are many potential ways to clean up atmospheric and oceanic CO2, and among the most promising are those that build on natural processes occurring in the ocean. The ocean already safely stores more carbon than any other part of the biosphere and through biological and geological processes has the potential to contribute even more to removing and safely storing carbon.
Given the accelerating pace and scale of climate disruptions, and the danger of surpassing critical ecological tipping points, it is imperative to scale up the research and testing of various ocean-based CDR approaches—including ocean alkalinity enhancement.
Additional Ventures’ R&D program aims to accelerate knowledge and understanding on whether there are environmentally responsible ways to deploy ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) at scale.
Philanthropic Partners
