The Grantham Environmental Trust and Ocean Visions Announce New Partnership to Develop Ocean-climate Solutions

This story was written and released by Ocean Visions on October 21, 2020. Ocean Visions is chaired by Emanuele Di Lorenzo, a professor of ocean and climate dynamics and Director of Ocean Science & Engineering at Georgia Tech. Learn more.

The Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust (GET) and Ocean Visions Inc. (OVI) are pleased to announce a partnership to identify and test technology-based ocean-climate solutions.

This new partnership is founded on shared missions to work to slow, and ultimately reverse, the climate crisis our planet is confronting. Both organizations understand that while reducing current and future emissions of CO₂ is urgent and necessary, it is no longer sufficient. Even with dramatic reductions in global emissions, hundreds of gigatons of carbon dioxide will still need to be safely removed from the atmosphere and ocean. Large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is essential to arresting climate disruption and achieving climate restoration.

The GET/OVI partnership is focused on the identification, development, testing and, ultimately, potential deployment of ocean-based technologies that can draw down CO₂ from both the atmosphere and the ocean. The partners agree on the tremendous potential role the ocean can play in CO₂ removal and permanent, safe storage.

Ocean-based CDR technologies are much less developed than land-based alternatives, but there are a number of promising ocean-based approaches including large-scale macroalgae (seaweed) cultivation, microalgae cultivation, ocean alkalinity enhancement, artificial upwelling and downwelling, and others.  More pathways will be developed over the coming decades, and each will require careful assessment. 

This GET/OVI partnership is not prejudging approaches or outcomes but is based on the principle that evaluation and understanding of ocean/climate solutions needs to be accelerated.  Each potential solution needs input and energy from different scientific and engineering disciplines to move this important field forward.

This partnership brings together the intellectual and institutional capacity of universities and research institutions with the skills of inventors, entrepreneurs, investors, and civil society.  The partners will:

1. Review and validate the science and engineering of particular opportunities.

2. Provide guidance on risks, risk avoidance, validation frameworks, upstream and downstream impacts, and lifecycle analysis.

3. Advise on the design of monitoring and evaluation frameworks.

4. Collaborate on trials and experiments needed to evaluate technologies and their impacts. 

An important element of this OV/GET partnership is the broad spectrum of GET’s potential funding. Depending on stage, GET is able to fund applied research, sponsored research and make early, patient investments. Any investments will be made as part of GET’s Neglected Climate Opportunities program and any proceeds from such investments will, in turn, all be used to fund climate-related grantmaking.

OVI and GET are together committed to objective and rigorous scientific analysis, collaboration, and openness as we move this partnership forward.  If you would like to be involved, or just to be kept informed, join the Ocean Visions mailing list or email any request to communications@oceanvisions.org

About Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust:

The Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Environmental Trust is a 501(c)(3) public charity established in 2005 to combat environmental degradation. It was established by Jeremy Grantham, the co-founder and Chief Investment Strategist of Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo, a Boston-based asset management firm. The Trust is a supporting organization established to make grants to leading environmental nonprofit organizations.

About Ocean Visions:

Ocean Visions is a community of leading ocean-focused academic and research institutions who combined with investors, entrepreneurs and conservationists have joined forces to identify, test, evaluate and develop science-based and technological innovations that can solve pressing ocean challenges. Ocean Visions promotes cooperation and the exchange of information, science, and research to create ocean solutions, and to promote and support the development and application of these ocean solutions in the external world.