Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement

By funding this project you are contributing to their work. You will receive impact reports and measurements but you won't receive a carbon credit.

According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, negative emissions technologies will likely need to remove ten gigatonnes of C02 per year globally by mid-century to achieve climate and economic growth goals. Hourglass exists to evaluate the potential of a class of marine carbon removal solutions known as mineral-based Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) strategies and the extent to which these technologies can help scale the capture of additional atmospheric C02, considered to be a mandatory part of limiting climate warming to 2°C.

Though there are many promising marine climate solutions, Hourglass’s research is centered on a class of technologies that use alkaline rocks and minerals to convert CO2 into a form of dissolved carbon called “alkalinity” in seawater. Hourglass focuses on mineral-based OAE because of it's outsized potential for impact: * Possibility of reaching gigatonne scale. * Permanence (>10,000 years) of carbon removal. * Limited use of energy, freshwater, or land use change to implement. * Alkalinity benefits the ocean as an antidote to acidification.

Hourglass’s research strategy is focused on two main pillars of development, (1) open-source tool building for responsible carbon removal project planning and Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) and (2) proof-of-concept field trials through both novel project development as well as independent monitoring and/or data analysis of third-party projects. Together, these research streams de-risk the key uncertainties on how to safely and effectively scale mineral-based OAE techniques.

USA