'Big sponge': New CO2 tech taps oceans to tackle global warming

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00:00 The oceans are the world's biggest carbon sink, absorbing 25% of our emissions.

00:06 But we've asked too much of them and our seas are close to saturation.

00:10 Scientists in California want to walk this back.

00:14 Their weapon of choice, a carbon capture barge.

00:18 So this type of process has the ability to achieve the million tonnes per year scale

00:25 that would be necessary for global CO2 reduction, which is at the order of 10 gigatons per year.

00:32 Each of these barrels is an electrolytic cell.

00:37 The way that the process works is that we take seawater, we run an electrical current

00:41 through it, we use the electricity to initiate a series of chemical reactions to produce

00:47 acid and base.

00:48 And what that allows you to do is you essentially squeeze the sponge, which has removed the

00:52 CO2, and then allows the sponge to take up more CO2.

00:56 And a useful by-product, hydrogen, now in high demand for storing renewably produced

01:01 energy.

01:02 Purely experimental for now, scientists hope to see their carbon removal technique developed

01:07 on an industrial scale.

01:09 According to January's State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report, depending on emissions reduction,

01:15 we would need to remove between 450 billion and 1.1 trillion tonnes of carbon from the

01:20 atmosphere by the year 2100 if we are to slow global warming in line with the Paris agreements.

01:27 But there will be no substitute for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

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