In this episode, hosts Anna Madlener and Wil Burns are joined by Dr. Grace Andrews and Kristi Weighman of Hourglass Climate — a leading nonprofit researching ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (oCDR, also known as mCDR ) methods like ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) — to discuss the launch of the Framework for Ecotoxicological Modeling of mCDR (FEMM). This project explores how ecotoxicological modeling and existing statistical approaches can be applied to OAE and oCDR projects, improving the field’s understanding of these potential climate solutions’ environmental risks. Dr. Andrews and Weighman offer insight into their process building and receiving feedback on FEMM, the framework’s regulatory potential, and how FEMM can be applied across oCDR research. 

Dr. Grace Andrews, Founder and Executive Director of Hourglass Climate, now in her tenth year of working in the CDR field, last appeared on Plan Sea in 2024 to discuss Hourglass’ role in advancing monitoring, verification, and reporting (MRV) for OAE. In this episode, she’s joined by Kristi Weighman, an Hourglass scientist with expertise in ecotoxicology. Together, Grace and Kristi discuss how they recognized a critical gap in oCDR research — the lack of tools to monitor and model environmental risk — and developed a first-of-its-kind framework to fill that gap. 

Grace explains how our understanding of oCDR’s environmental safety has lagged behind scientific developments in the field. In order to advance these projects in a responsible way, Grace believes that the field needs more rigorous, standardized approaches for modeling and measuring environmental risks. 

FEMM aims to address this gap through combining established statistical approaches with emerging modeling techniques, borrowing existing protocols from the ecotoxicology space and applying them to the nuances of oCDR. The framework begins with a screening-level assessment that uses highly conservative assumptions to determine whether a project’s risks can be ruled out. Projects with identified risk may need to redesign aspects of their approach before moving on to more realistic assessment tools. The modeling relies on species sensitivity distributions (SSD) and calculations based on predicted environmental concentration (PEC) and predicted no effect concentration (PNEC). While this SSD approach has been applied to other environmental stressors, this is the first time it’s been applied to oCDR. Grace and Kristi also highlight examples of specific mCDR stressors and conditions where data may be too sparse to fully apply this approach today, and outline research priorities that will enable a standardized approach for these over time.   

Looking ahead, Grace and Kristi share their optimism about FEMM’s utility for researchers and broader oCDR stakeholders. They hope the tool will enable users to identify potential risk in their proposed projects, integrate cross-disciplinary data, and foster greater regulatory dialogue. 

To learn more about the FEMM framework and how it aims to support environmental risk assessment and monitoring for oCDR projects, listen to the episode above, subscribe with your favorite podcast service, or find the entire series here. 

Plan Sea is a semi-weekly podcast exploring ocean-based climate solutions, brought to you by the Carbon to Sea Initiative and the American University Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal.

To listen to Dr. Grace Andrew’s first Plan Sea podcast appearance, click here.