By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Because I’m a fan of povidone-iodine as a Covid prophylactic (though disclaiming any ability or desire to give medical advice), I thought I would investigate kelp, since I thought that iodine was derived from kelp. Alas, it once was, but that’s “no longer economically viable.” (A substance derived from kelp, algin, is used as an emulsifying and bonding agent in toothpastes, shampoos, salad dressings, puddings, cakes, dairy products, frozen foods, so if you’re a ranch dressing fan, read on.) So, normally when I wander into the biosphere I get lost and don’t come out where I expect; with kelp, I got lost on my very first steps in!
This startup grows kelp then sinks it to pull carbon from the air
Carbon emissions are a huge contributor to climate change, so companies are getting creative about finding ways to suck the heat-trapping element out of the atmosphere and slow global warming.
One Maine-based startup, Running Tide Technologies, is experimenting with farming kelp, a type of seaweed, in an effort to pull carbon from the air and store it deep beneath the ocean
floor, potentially giving the world another nature-based tool to curb climate change.
Running Tide Founder Marty Odlin, a Dartmouth graduate and engineer whose family includes generations of fishermen, is working with a team of engineers, software developers, oceanographers, maritime professionals, data scientists and hatchery technicians to bury
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WBUR recently reported on a business that’s working to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in another technology that’s aimed to help fight climate change. Running Tide Technologies, out of Portland, Maine, is using kelp to sequester carbon.
The technology grows significant amounts of seaweed and then buries it at the bottom of the ocean, where it sequesters carbon continually. Marty Odlin, the CEO of Running Tide Technologies, explained the company’s mission to WBUR, “Essentially what we have to do is run the oil industry in reverse,” he says, “The kelp will sink to the ocean bottom in the sediment, and become, essentially, part of the ocean floor. That gets you millions of years of sequestration. So that’s when you’re making oil. That’s got to be the ultimate goal.”