Scientists are racing to expand on a technology that could be a big step forward in carbon capture. According to Hakai Magazine, marine carbon dioxide removal could quickly surpass terrestrial facilities working toward the same goal.
Every day, more and more carbon pollution is released into Earth's atmosphere, causing the overheating of the planet, which leads to extreme weather that can threaten lives — not just due to the weather itself but because of the effect it has on global food supply.
A report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration published in April showed the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has steadily risen since the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s and has taken a sharp turn upward beginning in the mid-20th century.
Leading the field in marine carbon removal is Equatic, a carbon removal company that developed a technology that can remove carbon dioxide from the air 99,000 times faster than the ocean's natural process.
The technique Equatic developed involves electrolyzing seawater in a tank, which splits the water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen gases and creates a solution that pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when it reacts with air.
The project, funded by the Department of Energy, began at UCLA in 2021 and has grown into two pilot projects, one in Los Angeles and one in Singapore.
The pilot project in Singapore has 10 electrolyzers capable of processing over 4,400 tons of carbon a year. Equatic is looking to open a facility in Quebec, Canada, that would contain 300 electrolyzers capable of processing over 121,000 tons of carbon a year.
That's a huge step up from the world's largest current carbon removal plant, located in Iceland, which began operation in May 2024 and can remove about 36,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere per year.
Quebec was chosen because of its access to clean energy and the province's plans for decarbonization. Equatic hopes to have the facility operational in 2027.
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But Equatic isn't the only company working toward marine carbon removal. Two other California-based companies, Captura and Ebb Carbon, are doing the same but on a much smaller scale.
Captura is running a pilot program and is planning to test next year in Hawai'i, in which it expects to remove about 1,100 tons of carbon from the atmosphere. The company will look to scale up once the pilot project is complete.
Ebb Carbon is about to begin a pilot program in Port Angeles, Washington, that aims to remove over 550 tons of carbon from the atmosphere for each of the next two years.
"Our technology and business model are all about how we can get to that large scale and low cost and do it as quickly as possible, so we can start to have a bit of an impact on climate change," says Captura's communications director, Tara Bojdak.
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