To combat climate change, companies bury plant waste at sea

Dror Angel, a marine ecologist at the University of Haifa, had for years heard his archaeologist colleagues talk about ancient shipwrecks on the bottom of the Black Sea that were perfectly preserved by the low-oxygen environment. “You can see ropes,” Angel says. “It’s something which is quite spectacular.” Now, Angel wants to combat climate change by purposefully adding to the wreckage, sinking waste wood to the sea floor, where carbon that the trees stored up while living can remain locked away for centuries. Angel is a science lead for an Israeli company called Rewind, one of many companies riding a wave of investment in technologies that could help limit global warming by drawing carbon out of the atmosphere and locking it up. Whereas some carbon capture schemes require expensive machines and complex chemistry, burying terrestrial biomass at sea is exceedingly simple: It requires tugboats, barges, and woody waste from forestry and agriculture. This month, Rewind tested sacks filled with woody residue in the Mediterranean Sea. It plans to sink material in the low-oxygen Black Sea. Rewind’s Team The approach has advantages over another popular ocean-based carbon capture strategy: growing, and sinking, massive amounts of seaweed or phytoplankton. Because the plant material is grown on land rather than in the ocean, it is less likely to rob nutrients from the surrounding water and upset the ecology. Industria...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news