Working on marine carbon dioxide removal

Back in 2018, I discovered that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) was a 'current theme in climate change', as I was reading through the dense IPCC report as part of the namesake course of the Climate Physics master's program. The listed CDR approaches were still mostly conceptual – I found things like ocean-based increased weathering hard to imagine. Still, the low emission scenario RCP2.6 was already heavily leaning on future CDR technologies. Later, as I studied the ocean carbon cycle and carbon sequestration during my PhD, I became increasingly exposed to the development of marine CDR approaches, especially during the marine CDR sessions at the Ocean Sciences Meeting, where the rooms were overflowing. This was a field where I wanted to contribute! Make no mistake: reducing emissions remains by miles the biggest lever we have against climate change, but hard-to-abate and legacy emissions still need to be addressed.

The perfect opportunity came along just as I was wrapping up my PhD, so I jumped at it. I now work for SeaO2, a Dutch startup developing technology for direct ocean carbon capture, a marine CDR approach. As Head of Oceanography and MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification), my role at SeaO2 is to ensure we properly and conservatively quantify net removals through measurement and modeling. I also lead monitoring and research efforts to assess the environmental impact of SeaO2’s technology, which is a crucial step before the technology may scale up.

The pace at a startup has been a real shift, but I enjoy the dynamic and sometimes challenging nature of it. Marine CDR is also deeply multidisciplinary: understanding how the technology could develop means drawing on oceanography, biogeochemistry, engineering, techno-economics, and even policy. I've been learning constantly in an environment of diverse backgrounds, both inside and outside the company. That said, I do sometimes miss the deep, distraction-free focus on a single research question that academic work allows. Fortunately, I stay closely involved with scientific research through academic collaborations, student projects, and initiatives like the Sustainable Ocean Community mCDR project, because marine CDR can only develop meaningfully if it's grounded in science.

If CDR is to make a real dent in climate change, it would need to operate at a daunting scale. What drives me despite that is that we owe it to ourselves to find out in time which approaches could sustainably and responsibly work at scale, so we can put that knowledge to use. Hopefully, the worst emission scenarios that I was once studying will then someday become obscure and ‘bygone themes in climate change’. 

Daan Reijnders