An "antacid" to fight climate change

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Megan McCarty-Corino** (0:31)
What if we could sort of just give the ocean a thumbs to mitigate climate change? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carino.
The ocean is already one of the best climate solutions we've got. It absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere that would otherwise contribute to global warming. But what if it could store even more CO2?
Marketplace's Amy Scott, host of our climate podcast, How We Survive, looked into one strategy to achieve that goal. And she set sail for a demonstration.

**Amy Scott** (1:17)
I'm about to head out into the Atlantic Ocean on a boat unlike any I've ever seen.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:23)
Can you swim?

**Amy Scott** (1:24)
I can swim.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:24)
OK.

**Amy Scott** (1:25)
It's an amphibious vehicle, basically a boat with wheels, that's just open on the sides. Rob Mitchell is the captain.

**SPEAKER_1** (1:33)
You can see we don't have any railing. It's going to be pretty calm out there today, so shouldn't be a big deal.

**Amy Scott** (1:39)
We're here in Duck, North Carolina, on the Outer Banks, to check out an experiment to boost the ocean's potential to store carbon. About two years ago, a company called Vesta dumped more than 8,000 metric tons of a mineral called olivine onto the seafloor.

**Jacqueline Sentiner** (1:58)
It's found all over the world. Just natural silicate mineral similar to quartz on the beach.

**Amy Scott** (2:03)
That's Jacqueline Sentiner. She's a senior scientist with Hourglass Climate, a nonprofit research group that's monitoring the experiment. She says when olivine dissolves in seawater, it converts carbon dioxide into another form of carbon called bicarbonate.

**Jacqueline Sentiner** (2:20)
And bicarbonate is already present in the ocean, everywhere. It's what a lot of critters use to make their shells.
And then that allows the ocean to draw down more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

**Amy Scott** (2:30)
So you're basically making room for more?

**Jacqueline Sentiner** (2:32)
Yeah, making room for more carbon dioxide in the ocean.

**Megan McCarty-Corino** (2:37)
We'll be right back.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:40)
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**SPEAKER_1** (3:13)
Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo, the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, from CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. The best part, Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. This is why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you?
Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's odoo.com.

**Megan McCarty-Corino** (3:44)
You're listening to Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty-Corino. We're back with Amy Scott, host of the How We Survive podcast.

**Amy Scott** (3:56)
Out on the water, Sentinel and the team collect samples to see how the olivine is changing the ocean's chemistry in different spots off the shore.
The ocean has already absorbed about a third of the carbon we've emitted since the start of the industrial age, over time making the water more acidic and harming shellfish, corals, and other marine life. But alkaline materials like olivine neutralize CO2, acting as sort of an antacid.

**SPEAKER_1** (4:26)
Tums for the ocean is the shorthand, yeah.

**Amy Scott** (4:29)
That's Adam Subash, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where he studies ocean alkalinity enhancement. That's the fancy name. Subash says the technology has a lot of potential because it's actually just accelerating a natural geological process. But...

**SPEAKER_5** (4:49)
Can you scale it?

**SPEAKER_1** (4:50)
Can it happen fast enough? What are the trade-offs and consequences?

**Amy Scott** (4:54)
There's still a lot of research that needs to get done. Vesta, the company behind the Duck project, estimates it could remove and store 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere after accounting for emissions associated with the project.