GreenSea
Development Agenda

HOME

 

GreenSea's Assets and Business Base

GreenSea owns patents covering both general principles and specific aspects of iron fertilization of selected ocean waters - technology for removing and sequestering atmospheric carbon in the deep ocean. Iron fertilization field tests have been carried out to demonstrate application techniques and the effectiveness of specific fertilizer formulations for growth stimulation of phytoplankton species in the open ocean.

Page Index

Carbon dioxide, released into the atmosphere by anthropogenic activities, is a key greenhouse gas. GreenSea believes that decisions to control the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will create a viable market for carbon removal and sequestration technologies. Through application of management skills and know-how, GreenSea will use its carbon removal and sequestration technology to provide a reliable and predictable carbon control method in this market.

Reduction of Anthropogenic Releases of Carbon Dioxide
Back to Page Index

Anthropogenic carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere from many thousand types of sources. Even though a significant part of this released carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere by natural growth of terrestrial and ocean plants, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues to increase. When mankind determines, through organized government actions, that the rate of increase and/or the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide should be reduced, government bodies must decide how to accomplish and manage this complex activity. The Kyoto Protocol, although currently rejected by the United States, is believed by many governments to be a sound initial approach for establishing international control of greenhouse gas concentrations.

How can atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration be controlled? As a simple example, a country could decide that it is the role of the government to manage the net carbon dioxide released by the countries' composite activities with this government activity funded by general or specific tax levies. In this case, the government could contract for the services of GreenSea to employ its technology to remove a specified quantity of carbon from the atmosphere and sequestered the carbon in the deep ocean. The quantity of carbon removed from the atmosphere under the GreenSea contract would offset the same quantity of carbon released by the composite activities within the purchasing country.

Many other carbon control systems have been conceived with some having become trial processes. For example, experience has shown that "credit trading" as a control technique for the release of sulfur and nitrogen oxides into the atmosphere is an economically efficient control system. Such credits are now routinely transferred in national and regional markets. The credit trading system is in use as a trial method for control of greenhouse gases, both carbon dioxide and methane.

In the "emission reduction credit" market, GreenSea would sell carbon sequestration services to purchasers at market prices to provide an offset to carbon released by the purchasing industrial activity or a market maker who would in turn sell the offset credits.

Carbon Dioxide Credit Trading
Back to Page Index

As indicated, carbon dioxide and methane are important greenhouse gases. Since the early 1990's, credits for these greenhouse gases have been generated by activities as diverse as forest management, landfill and/or coal-bed methane capture, renewable electric power generation technologies, and management of agricultural soils. For more information on credit trading, see: http://www.pewclimate.org/projects/trading.cfm.

Laws and regulations governing greenhouse gas credits including carbon dioxide and/or carbon have not yet been defined. However, experience from the demonstration projects of the 1990's shows that to be accepted as an offset credit, the project must:

  • Demonstrate the sole purpose of reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide or sequestering carbon. Further, the activity must be "additional" to existing legal and/or economic requirements.
  • Demonstrate that the activities are verifiable, ideally by third-party inspectors and auditors.
  • Demonstrate that emission reductions or carbon sequestration are acceptably permanent. In addition, the developer must show that the project does not "leak". An example of "leakage" would be a forest protection project where logging and clearing are transferred to other areas.
  • Demonstrate that any ecosystem side effects are acceptable. For example, a windmill generating electric power sited in a migratory pathway for birds is unlikely to qualify as producing carbon sequestration credits due to the unacceptable side effects.

There are few experimental modes of carbon sequestration that immediately satisfy these exacting criteria. Forest and soil management projects in particular must be designed and managed carefully in order to avoid problems with verification, permanence, leakage, and other issues. Over the last decade, however, forest and soil management project design and management have improved and this approach is gaining in credibility as a means of managing greenhouse gases.

GreenSea is of the view that, when fully developed, its carbon control technology will meet these demonstration requirements.

Iron Fertilization As a Greenhouse Gases Control Method
Back to Page Index

Iron fertilization of marine phytoplankton is not a currently accepted method of sequestering carbon removed from the atmosphere. Furthermore, iron fertilization continues to be controversial. GreenSea believes, however, that global warming concerns and international control of greenhouse gases will shift from prolonged debate to a search for effective greenhouse gases emission reduction and carbon sequestration methods. Consequently, GreenSea believes that great interest in the scientific and practical aspects of GreenSea's iron fertilization technology for carbon sequestration will develop.

Current Developmental Agenda
Back to Page Index

In the last decade, important advances have occurred in ocean science. Specifically;

  • The iron limitation hypothesis has been repeatedly confirmed by field experiments of significant scale. Without doubt, iron fertilization of selected ocean waters enhances phytoplankton growth,
  • Data previously unavailable for large, dynamic ocean areas are becoming available. Satellites, buoy arrays, robotic sampler/analyzers, and other devices can now generate scientifically sound data, and
  • Computer models of the oceans have become far more sophisticated. The results of specific ocean experiments can be predicted in greater detail and large-scale fertilization efforts can be simulated with significantly improved confidence in the validity of the modeling conclusions.

In short, advances in general theory and in oceanographic science now allow iron fertilization to be studied and appraised as an approach for sequestering carbon.

In developing iron fertilization as a control technology, GreenSea will pursue an agenda defined by the leaders of the oceanographic science community. Following the advice of this community, GreenSea has initiated a series of projects and experiments to address the question, "How does the addition of iron to ocean waters change the movement of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep ocean and what happens to the deep water carbon over time?"

GreenSea will only engage in iron-fertilization experiments that the oceanographic community view as likely to yield new and useful information. Currently, it is the view of advising oceanographers that the next step in the scientific study if iron fertilization should be to prepare for a large-scale experiment. In the test, a selected ocean area of about 5,000 square miles would be fertilized with iron and the results, principally the transport of carbon to the deep ocean, studied in detail.

At this time, our high-priority research is:

  1. Developing an analytical modeling system which describes the long term flux of carbon from the atmosphere into and through the marine environment in response to iron fertilization for defined initial conditions over selected time periods;
  2. Based on this analytic tool, determine the modeled consequences of large-scale iron fertilization of a sufficiently large ocean area over a time period sufficiently prolonged to allow measurement of carbon fluxes - the defined large-scale experiment; and
  3. If warranted by the modeled predictions, work with and assist oceanographic research experts in conducting the defined large-scale experiment for the purpose of measurement of actual carbon fluxes and other consequences.

GreenSea is currently working with oceanographic and modeling experts to perform this high-priority research. As indicated, the first two steps above will provide modeled information for iron fertilization of selected ocean areas. The availability of a fully modeled experiment preceding an actual experiment in the ocean will be unique and will allow significant advances in oceanographic science.

GreenSea and the participants in the modeling study also expect the results of the modeling study to provide other important information. The study will describe how carbon sequestered by iron fertilization would flow through the deep oceans and how long carbon sequestered in deep waters will be securely removed from the atmosphere. In addition, the study will examine the likelihood that localized regions would become oxygen-depleted (anoxic) as a result of decomposition of sinking carbon resulting from iron fertilization.

Preliminary results of the project will be available in Fall of Year 2002 with final results reported early in the Year 2003.