By Carbon to Sea Initiative
Last month, Carbon to Sea held its third Annual Convening to gather multidisciplinary leaders from academia, private sector, government, and civil society to discuss the latest science and best practices for ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (oCDR) research.
Over four days, attendees gathered in Washington, D.C. for in-depth conversations, presentations and focused workshops on the current science and vision for the future of ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE). Discussion topics ranged from community engagement approaches, latest science emerging on environmental safety, the key guardrails and enablers for a responsible sector, to getting into the details of creating standards for monitoring, reporting, and verification across OAE research projects. The full convening agenda can be viewed HERE.
The first day of the convening opened with a workshop led by John Godec, an expert in public participation, high-stakes conflict resolution, and technical facilitation. During the session, participants learned best practices for fostering open communication and constructive community engagement for researchers, technical startup staff, and other OAE leaders. In the evening, the convening was off to full-swing with a rooftop happy hour where attendees mingled with colleagues old and new.
Carbon to Sea’s Executive Director, Dr. Antonius Gagern, opened the convening’s main day to set the stage for the conversations and ground it in the need for outcome agnostic research and scientific evidence amid increasing global momentum. He set an optimistic tone for the event as he outlined three goals for the convening: gaining a clearer understanding of the current state of evaluation of OAE as a climate solution, forging new connections across sectors, and improving confidence in the direction of current OAE research efforts.
Dr. David Keller, Carbon to Sea’s Director of Research & Technology, gave an update on the state of the science, outlining how the number of new authors and papers published on OAE has increased rapidly – by over 400% – over the last five years. Keller argued that increased funding and support for OAE field trials is a critical next step for the field as we build on research in the lab and mesocosm trials.
Several other scientists also gave presentations based on their ongoing OAE research, including: Dr. Lennart Bach from the University of Tasmania, Dr. Dariia Atamanchuk from Dalhousie University, Dr. Adam Subhas from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), and Dr. Mijndert van der Speek from Heriot-Watt University.
Carbon to Sea’s Director of Global Policy, Diane Hoskins, led a panel on “Exploring Diverse Stakeholder Perspectives.” From researchers, to partner organizations, to regulators, to community members, everyone comes to the oCDR conversation with a diverse range of considerations and priorities. This conversation explored a number of case studies from related fields, such as direct air capture and offshore wind, to highlight insights on successfully engaging community members and leaders in oCDR research and development.
Over lunch, attendees had the opportunity to engage with posters sharing a broad range of early findings and research designs of OAE-related projects. Attendees voted for their favorite presentation to receive funding to submit research for publication and chose Jennie Rheuban of WHOI as the winner.
The afternoon featured a keynote address from Kim Stanley Robinson, climate-related science fiction writer best known for his Mars Trilogy and The Ministry for the Future. He offered encouragement, noting that the work of rigorously evaluating a high-potential climate solution like OAE is critical work. He emphasized the importance of talking about ocean climate solutions in a way that resonates with people outside the scientific community.
The rest of the day’s sessions focused on outlining an “Actionable Vision for the Next 24 Months,” including brief presentations from a range of scientists and other key partners.
Attendees were prompted to think about what a bold, responsible vision for advancing OAE looks like over the next two years. Who is working on what, and what goals are we setting for ourselves to encourage a race to the top? A broad range of visions of where the field will develop was followed by a series of new announcements of upcoming initiatives.
The second day of the convening was all about rolling up sleeves to get into the nitty gritty behind the high-level questions and considerations posed the day before. Attendees divided into focused workshops to hear and collaborate with issue-area experts on tricky questions like uncertainty quantification, standardizing environmental impact monitoring, building guidelines for community engagement, and setting a global strategy for field research.
Carbon to Sea’s Anna Madlener, Manager of Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV), facilitated a workshop on applying what has been learned from research and development into MRV best practices and strategies. Breakout groups during the sessions debated whether the field needs a standardized MRV concept or alternative MRV strategies to enable cross-comparison of data and generate a rigorous base of evidence that will be needed for future procurement and carbon credit systems.
The other morning workshop was facilitated by Tracey Brown from Sense about Science. Tracey challenged some of the most common misconceptions scientists have about engaging communities on their research. Members of the public are actually able to absorb a high-degree of nuance when presented with information about how research or results relate to their lives or communities. Plus, early engagement (even at the research proposal or design phase) leads directly to increased community support for research efforts.
Dr. Antonius Gagern and Nick Kleinert, Carbon to Sea’s Senior Manager of Strategic Initiatives, hosted a workshop in which participants broke into small groups to dive deep into considerations around feedstocks, ecological monitoring, MRV, community engagement, and economics of developing a first-in-kind global field research agenda. In thinking about building out a global field research network, there was general agreement among the group that co-development of metrics, data sharing agreements, meta-analysis of results, and a shared research calendar would be important features.
Another workshop was facilitated by Dr. David Keller, Samuel Fawcett from PML Applications, and Dr. Nina Bednarsek from Oregon State University, which previewed a new, draft framework for environmental impact monitoring in OAE projects. Participants were able to discuss key points of disagreement or ambiguity highlighted by the recent public review of the framework, and brainstorm possible solutions. The group debated how to define an “unacceptable” environmental impact and how best to standardize mitigation strategies if any unacceptable impacts were discovered during ongoing field research.
The convening officially concluded on Wednesday evening, but a key cohort of participants stayed an extra day in D.C. to participate in Carbon to Sea’s first ever Hill Day. Our group of grantees and partners met with several members of Congress and over 60 Republican and Democratic staffers to share the latest research and highlight policy opportunities for ocean-based carbon removal. You can read more about Hill Day in our blog post HERE.
Thank you to all of our grantees, partners, funders, and allies who took the time to travel to D.C. to join us for these productive few days. It was encouraging to see so many new connections being forged and ideas being hashed out in small groups, and our team already has several exciting action items as a result of these discussions. Over the next few weeks, we’ll share the official proceedings document from the convening — which will include a more comprehensive set of notes and recordings from the sessions.
