Unlocking The Ocean's Carbon Removal Potential with Planetary
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Mike Kelland is the co-founder and CEO of Planetary, a carbon removal startup that’s aiming to draw down gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere by accelerating the ocean’s natural, carbon absorbing abilities.
While the world urgently needs to reduce the amount of carbon pollution going into the atmosphere, it’s also becoming clear that we need to remove our historic emissions if we want to limit the worst effects of climate change.
Planetary is working to draw down some of the 8 gigatonnes of CO2 we need to remove every year by 2025 to hit our climate goals. Ocean-based carbon removal is relatively new with lots of technical and measurement problems to be solved, but it’s one of the highest potential pathways for gigatonne-scale removal.
I sat down with Mike in person in Ottawa to talk about Planetary’s approach to carbon removal, the challenges of measuring carbon removal in the open ocean, and how they plan to scale physical plants on coastlines around the world.
TALKING POINTS
How Planetary uses alkalinity to turn the ocean into a carbon sink
Creating an "antacid for the ocean" to reverse acidification
Achieving 1,000 tons of carbon removal as an XPRIZE finalist
Measuring carbon impact in open ocean systems
Scaling to billions of tons with minimal infrastructure
Creating co-benefits for marine ecosystems like oyster reefs
Building strategic partnerships to accelerate deployment
The benefits of hands-on project experience
Building the capital stack for technology innovation and project development