Permanent carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and marine CDR (mCDR) in particular are fast moving fields. These resources are some of the most up to date explorations of the field.

It’s important to note that these reports typically do not map directly to Planetary’s technology and lag the maturity of our approach. In particular, Planetary has managed to deal with many of the challenges explored in these reports including permitting, MRV, precipitation and social engagement. In particular, our process is significantly more developed than the Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) field is assumed to be in the literature. Our TRL level is in the 7-9 range while most of the resources put the TRL of OAE at 2-4.

BeZero is a ratings agency for carbon credits. They’ve published several useful reports around the state of the permanent carbon removals markets:

• Removal Reconsidered: Carbon Dioxide Removal in the Voluntary Carbon Market
• Removals for Growth

BeZero has also published a “Scalability Assessment” for Carbon Removal methods. We don’t link this report here since the conclusions do not align with Planetary’s current progress – indicating that OAE has major barriers in Policy (resolved in the Planetary setting), Land Use (Planetary has negative land use through mine remediation), MRV (Planetary has an approved MRV), Localized Impacts (Planetary’s process is uniquely non-impacting) and Resources (Planetary’s process uses highly abundant waste).

CDR.FYI is a data resource that consolidates the public information about the permanent removals market. Their recent Year in Review does an excellent job of showing where the various technologies stand and indicates the gap between sales and deliveries of removals.

Carbon Plan is an excellent set of research and tools to understand the CDR market and the difference between permanent removals and temporary ones. Their recent CDR Verification Framework brings together an evaluation of the various CDR pathways. Planetary has submitted feedback to help bring the framework in line with our progress to date – an update will be published in early 2023. At that time, Planetary will publish our feedback to the framework.

Research Reports – There are a variety of research reports that have been published on mCDR. The usual caveats apply – these reports are intended to provide a high level view of the entire field and often misrepresent the Planetary process in terms of stage of maturity. None the less, these are helpful reports to understand the state of play in mCDR:

• The National Academies mCDR Research Strategy Report
• Energy Futures Initiative Uncharted Waters

If you are looking to “nerd out” on ocean science and OAE specifically, here are some of our favourite papers on the topic:

• He and Tyka 2023, Limits and CO2 equilibration of near-coast alkalinity enhancement
• Renforth, P., and G. Henderson (2017), Assessing ocean alkalinity for carbon sequestration, Rev. Geophys., 55, 636–674