![]() The company has leased over 6,000 hectares and plans to expand its operation over the course of the decade. “By pre-purchasing tons from start-ups, first-of-a-kind facilities can be built and the methods tested out.”īrilliant Planet's pilot site in Akhfenir, Morocco. “The primary reason to buy carbon removal today is to further innovate and help the nascent sector to grow to meet its future need, not to maximize the number of tons removed today,” Höglund explained. Of the more than 4 million tons of CO2 purchased by companies listed (including Block), just over 2% have been removed to date – but that’s not necessarily a cause for concern, he said. Höglund co-founded cdr.fyi, a platform that monitors the global market for carbon dioxide removal. ![]() Most carbon credits purchased are in the form of avoidance ( such as avoiding deforestation) rather than carbon removal, said Robert Höglund, an independent climate advisor. “Sustainable land management approaches, efficient water consumption, ecological restoration, regulatory compliance, community participation, and continuing monitoring are required.”Ī ‘privilege to be out there’: South African wildlife photographer Chris Fallows on his storied careerĬarbon offsetting schemes are growing in popularity but the industry has been accused of a lack of transparency and regulation, with dubious effectiveness. “Microalgae production on a large scale might damage local ecosystems, strain water resources, and modify habitats,” she said. Nevertheless, El Fanne expressed caution. “There are enormous desert regions in the country that might be converted for carbon capture and storage projects,” she added. Morocco’s geographical characteristics make it a suitable environment, she said. ![]() In an email, Fatna Ikrame El Fanne, an environmental engineer and co-founder of grassroots movement Youth For Climate Morocco, described the use of algae as “a new and promising strategy” that “exemplifies an innovative use of natural process to address an urgent global issue.” Taylor claims that Brilliant Planet’s solution can permanently remove 30 times more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere per hectare per year than a typical European forest. Using AI to monitor orphaned elephants in Botswana could usher in the return of the woolly mammoth Biotech company Colossal wants to revive the mammoth by creating a hybrid combining its DNA with that of Asian elephants. Yet the technology remains small-scale, while its detractors say it’s expensive, energy-intensive and unproven.Ī rendering of a woolly mammoth. The technology, which has received multi-billion dollar backing by the US Department of Energy, uses machines with filters to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which can then be stored underground or used in materials like concrete. Many carbon capture solutions have been proposed, the most headline-grabbing being direct air capture. The best way to do that is hotly debated. The UN’s climate change panel the IPCC estimates that hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide would need to be removed from the atmosphere by 2100 to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius. ![]() What’s more, “You’re not competing with farms, you’re not competing with forests, you’re out of the way, not bothering people,” he said. “It does not cost a lot of money to rent the desert (and) governments are enthusiastic to have any economic activity,” he continued. “Nature-based solutions are a great way of removing carbon,” Taylor told CNN, arguing that deserts are an under-utilized environment. In the roughly 30 seconds it takes to reach the ground, hot air dries the biomass out, leaving hypersaline algae flakes which can be collected and shallow buried, sequestering their carbon for thousands of years, the company claims. The algae is extracted from the water then pumped up a 10-story tower and sprayed into the desert air. Taylor says the process mimics a natural algae bloom, and a test tube of algae can multiply to fill 16 of these giant pools – the equivalent of 77 Olympic-sized swimming pools – in just 30 days. Brilliant Planet’s CEO Adam Taylor says the company has developed a way to grow algae at exponential rates starting in a beaker in a lab and ending in 12,000-square-meter pools of locally-sourced seawater. And it’s using it to cultivate algae.Īlgae absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide and emits oxygen via photosynthesis, and has been doing so since before the first land plants ever existed. London-based startup Brilliant Planet has leased 6,100 hectares of land outside the remote coastal town of Akhfenir in southern Morocco, wedged between the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Sahara to the south. Out in the Sahara Desert, in one of the most inhospitable environments imaginable, a natural solution to the climate crisis is growing – and at a rapid rate.
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