Innovation March-April 2023

I magine an offshore tanker removing carbon dioxide from the air then pumping it to the bottom of the ocean where it hardens into milky white crystals. Now picture many such tankers around the world, collectively scrubbing megatonnes of CO 2 from the atmosphere and permanently storing it in this way. That’s the vision of Solid Carbon, a negative emissions technology, and part of a holistic climate strategy that includes drastically cutting emissions as well as finding numerous ways to capture and sequester carbon. Solid Carbon connects some well-established dots, combining different existing technologies into a larger system with six key components: (1) Direct Air Capture technology is installed on a (2) floating platform and powered by (3) renewable energy to remove CO 2 from the atmosphere. Then using (4) offshore drilling techniques, captured CO 2 is (5) injected into the basalt in the subsea where it (6) mineralizes over time into stable rock. While the ocean is a potentially vast reservoir for CO 2 emissions, there are some locations better suited than others. Off the coast of BC, at the Cascadia Basin—a 1,000-kilometre long fault from Vancouver Island to California—engineers are field testing carbon sequestration in the basalt. Dr. Kate Moran, P. Eng., one of the project leads for Solid Carbon, said solutions that capture and permanently store CO 2 are vital. It’s become clear, she said, that no matter how fast we reduce global emissions, we must also remove massive amounts of CO 2 from the air. Moran said this breakthrough is good news. “It’s a hopeful message. We’ve already developed all these technologies and we just need to put them in place to make it happen,” she said. “It’s really clear that in order to keep the planet habitable for humans and biodiversity we’re going to have to remove CO 2 from the atmosphere. It’s exciting knowing we have a path forward. These are big, big problems for humanity and here we have pieces of the puzzle that we can put together and make it work.”

A promising technology to battle climate change called Solid Carbon can take harmful CO 2 gas and turn it into rock stored beneath the ocean floor. And, one of the best testing sites is off the coast of BC. DAVID WYLIE

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