Gigablue: Phytoplankton based carbon sequestration
One of the challenges in fixing the climate is not only making the shift to green technology, but also sequestering all the carbon dioxide that’s already in the atmosphere. Humanmade carbon sequestration poses a number of challenges due to the dispersed nature of CO2 in the atmosphere, the size of the molecule, and also storage of sequestered carbon and simply the feasibility of large scale implementation of the technology. There are a variety of natural carbon sinks, such as forests and oceans, however, considering that we are killing both of these, we need to create technology to sequester carbon to compensate for the loss of natural sinks. There are a variety of carbon sequestration startups across the globe, all creating cutting edge technology for efficiently capturing and storing carbon.
Gigablue is an innovative, carbon-sequestering startup, with promising potential. The basis of its technology is utilizing a process called the biological pump, which stores carbon in the deep ocean. Their technology is centered around phytoplankton and their unique ability of carbon fixation, or the ability to convert inorganic carbon into an organic organism. Phytoplankton, the primary producers of their food chain, are photosynthetic organisms, meaning they need sunlight and CO2 in order to produce energy for themselves and biomass. Trees and other plants do the exact same process - they convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into energy. The problem with phytoplankton is that, since they are the primary producers of their food chains, they get eaten by predators, so only 1% of the captured carbon actually reaches the ocean floor, meaning the biological pump is not working to its fullest. Gigablue has found a way to solve this problem and harness the power of the photosynthetic and carbon sequestration abilities of these phytoplankton.
Gigablue’s product is a specialized, geo-specific nutrient particle that is customized as per the ecosystem it is being deployed in. The nutrient is used to provide a crucial burst of nutrition to the phytoplankton, enhancing their abilities to sequester carbon, and allowing the carbon to go all the way to the ocean floor, completing the biological pump. Furthermore, increasing nutrients for phytoplankton, not only improves their ability to sequester fixed carbon, but also helps with photosynthesis, creating more biomass, replenishing ecosystems degraded by overfishing and benefiting the overall environment.
Furthermore, Gigablue utilizes AI to target sequestration zones and to customize the biogeochemistry of the nutrients as per the specific ecosystem. This optimizes the nutrient to capture the most carbon for the lowest cost, and prevents any additional harm from coming to the ecosystems. The impact and results of each nutrient is recorded and verified, and then the nutrient is adjusted to improve future results. Further, Gigablue also uses proprietary oceanographic data from in-sea sensors, robots, satellite imagery, and published research, to identify and isolate the most optimal zones for their nutrient deployment.
Not only has Gigablue created a carbon sequestration technology and data platform, but Gigablue claims there are minimal environmental harms from this process. They say they use naturally-occurring elements from each target zone, resulting in no impact on marine life, they supervise the process from start to finish, ensuring efficiency, and they support depleted fishing zones boosting local businesses.
While all of this seems brilliant in theory, the question is, how brilliant is it in practice? How much carbon do plankton really sequester, considering global emissions? Even if it’s a lot, will it be useful, considering how far the source of the emissions are from oceans and the ecosystems where these plankton are? And if we think about either moving the plankton or emissions closer, will there be other biological harms since emissions often contain harmful pollutants in addition to just CO2? If the plankton are too far or don’t sequester enough, will this model still be financially beneficial? These are all questions that the startup, Gigablue, the investors, and the customers, us, need to consider. Is there a set plan for how the company plans to make itself valuable in the future and is it feasible? Startups like these are undoubtedly the ones to pave the way to a net-zero future, but before pouring money into them, we need to make sure that their plans are economic, work now, and will work in the future.