Engineering Our Ocean's Carbon Sinks
Dec 25, 2025
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Oceans sustain our everyday life as well as supporting various marine ecosystems. They also are Earth's largest carbon sinks, acting as a critical buffer against climate change by absorbing a significant amount of produced emissions. Recently, a company called Equatic has developed a way to speed up and measure this removal process in seawater, raising questions on how engineered solutions can work alongside nature to address climate change.
Why is carbon removal so important to our planet?
As best stated by Nasim Pour in his article in the World Economic Forum, "Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) permanently removes emissions that have already been released into the atmosphere."
The process is one of many strategies to de-carbonize our world and even potentially reverse greenhouse gas emissions. As our greenhouse gas emissions are climbing, carbon removal from our coeans can help us keep track of succeeding or failing efforts for a cleaner world.
What role does Equatic play into this process?
Equatic is a carbon removal company that aims to rid of long-standing carbon emissions in our oceans with renewable energy and use the carbon-negative hydrogen produced to help de-carbonize other industries one at a time.
First, seawater is pumped into Equatic's commercial plant, which then separates the liquid into four forms: acid stream, base stream, hydrogen gas, and oxygen gas. The acid stream will be neutralized by crushed rock, which reduce the H+ concentration with its alkaline properties, avoiding any potential acidification from the ocean. The base stream removes carbon dioxide by selectively reacting to atmospheric carbon dioxide, trapping it into a solid carbonate from. Lastly, the seawater loses/gains electrons through electrolysis with both dissolved and solid carbon, replicating the carbon cycle and storing carbon as well as producing "carbon-negative hydrogen" - which can be converted to fuel. By being carbon-negative, this fuel would actually remove more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than it would emit, cleaning our air and contributing to a net-negative carbon footprint.
My Take
As a high-schooler, I believe that the innovation of accelerating carbon removal in one of the most natural ways (utilizing seawater) seems like a win-win for all of us- right? But my most prevalent concern is how using seawater will affect marine ecosystems and overall oxygen concentration in our oceans. As stated before, our oceans are the largest natural sinks, which mean that they currently have added sequestered carbon into their waters at a consistent rate. If we continue to significantly accelerate the carbon removal process, couldn't this also disrupt the very balance that allows our oceans to be carbon sinks in the first place?
Equatic's efforts are admirable, especially how they've been able to use the existing seawater to begin the carbon removal process, instead of adding completely new chemicals. Given their progress, I think we must fully understand the ecological impacts that projects such as these can have. Do we know how the pH of our waters could shift after acid neutralization? Could marine organisms that rely on the existing alkaline and oxygen concentration change be affected significantly with this commercial plant.
I believe that Equatic should continue their efforts, but careful monitoring on not just carbon removal but also marine life should be implemented. Carbon removal should be a solution to a problem, not the cause of a larger issue.
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