Planetary Technologies, a company using Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement to remove carbon while creating renewable fuel and restoring ocean damage from climate change, is awarded $100,000 as the winners of the 2021 OceanShot competition.
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…”
— President John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962.
Inspired by President Kennedy’s Moonshot, which established the goal to put a man on the moon and initiated one of the greatest mobilizations of scientists and innovators in US history, The Ocean Startup Project launched their OceanShot competition.
The OceanShot competition, hosted in collaboration with the Canadian government, is designed for applicants tackling uncharted problems that will have a huge impact on ocean sustainability and create a massive market opportunity.
Planetary’s solution is capable of meeting this opportunity because it utilizes our greatest ally in carbon capture: the ocean. As is, the ocean absorbs a quarter of global CO2 emissions annually, in turn, acidifying the oceans and trapping more heat. The earth has natural mechanisms to neutralize this acidity, but it can’t keep up with the rate of emissions. The Accelerated Carbon Transition (ACT) Platform, effectively speeds up these natural mechanisms to remove carbon, enhancing the ocean’s capacity to hold CO2 while locally counteracting acidification.
Just how massive is the market opportunity? In 2021, “Customer demand was over 15 million tonnes [of CO2 removed] but the total available supply was only around 800 thousand, and major bodies like the Task Force for Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets are predicting the demand will grow to $50Bn annually by 2030. By 2050, when models suggest that we need to be removing 10 billion tonnes per year, the market could be worth over $1Tn per year.” Omar Sadoon, Planetary’s Business Development Lead, reports.
The Ocean Startup Project provided more than $1.4-million in funding to entrepreneurs developing solutions to ocean industry challenges in Canada
At Planetary, the awarded funds will be used to hire a key product leader with oceans chemistry experience who will lead and accelerate verification work and will engage with Canadian sensor companies to develop the real-world capabilities that are needed.
