The growing controversy over a Canadian technology sinking carbon into the oceans

Several, yet unnamed, Canadian regions will be recruited this year to help expand testing of a controversial theory -- adding tons of magnesium hydroxide to waters around ocean-side communities will become an effective new tool in the urgent fight against global warming.

The first test, in Halifax Harbour, NS, poured 278 tons of the mineral into the Atlantic waters between October and December 2023. Based on initial measurements, the trial run suggested the mineral drop via municipal water pipes was safe, says Planetary Technology, the Halifax-based firm behind this technology. 

"All the preliminary results say that there was zero effect on any ecosystem within the harbour. So that I would call it a huge success," said Mike Kelland, a co- founder and CEO Planetary Technologies.

The mineral -- often used as a laxative, in deodorants and as a fire retardant -- was sourced from a mine in China, according to the company. When mixed with water, it dissolves and changes its pH level, boosting the natural absorption of carbon from the air.

While the data from the Halifax trial is still being fully analyzed, Kelland says the company is planning more tests in other Canadian communities in 2024, though he wouldn't specify the locations.

Though the Halifax testing went through without much public discussion or reaction, the same proposal turned the usually quiet community of St. Ives Bay in the southwestern coast of the U.K. into a crescendo of protests.

"The more we learned, the more worried we got," said Sue Sayer, founder and director of the Seal Research Trust in Cornwall, U.K. Its scenery makes the region a tourism magnet. It is also home to over 20 marine conservation groups, which began asking questions.

Sayer and others launched letter-writing campaigns and protests, after learning that the Canadian firm and public was preparing a trial that would send roughly the same amount of magnesium hydroxide used in Halifax -- about 300 tons -- into the bay.

"We were worried about the impacts on the ecosystem," said Sayer." We were worried about the fact that there's no governance, nationally or internationally, really for this."

Kelland said he was surprised by the reaction.

"We came in, I think with a very scientific view of the world," he said, adding that the company listened to the community. The magnesium hydroxide trial has yet to have happened, and the  U.K. government commissioned a report, due to be released in the coming weeks, with independent advice on how to proceed with the company's proposals.

"This was supposed to go through really quickly. When they talked to us in January (2023)," Sayers explained. "They said the release would happen in March 2023… and it still hasn't happened. And I'm really glad because it now means due diligence might be done properly."

Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement

The ocean -- already containing nearly 40 trillion tons of carbon dioxide -- naturally absorbs carbon from the air, which carries roughly 1 trillion tons.

But a growing number of companies want to boost the ocean capacity to store CO2 by mixing in minerals like magnesium. The carbon-capture occurs while the magnesium dissolves, and is lasting, says Kelland.

"It's permanent on the order of 100,000 years in the ocean," he said.

It is also urgent work, according to the company.

"The scale of the climate crisis as we're feeling right now means that we're going to need the solution is to be as cheap, as efficient, as effective, as possible," added Kelland.

As more companies move into the emerging field of carbon capture, however, questions are growing about using waters shared by other countries along with a complex ecosystem beneath the waves.

"You can't shift ocean chemistry without having biological impacts," said David Santillo, a marine biologist and scientist with Greenpeace, based in London, U.K.

"It's basically an open experiment with the environment," he said. "You've got no way of, of controlling things or, switching things back if it doesn't go to plan."

In October 2023, 100 countries, part of a group called the London Convention and Protocol, discussed Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement and other forms of marine geoengineering, and announced their intention to regulate projects that would change ocean alkalinity, due to "the potential for deleterious effects that are widespread, long-lasting or severe."

But Kelland says those regulations wouldn't necessarily apply to Planetary Technology's work because the organization polices the dumping of substances in oceans from ships, and not the release of chemicals via municipal water pipes, which is how the magnesium is flushed into the water.

As for the other concerns, he says the company is moving carefully, and in tandem, with scientists at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, who receive funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. *

"There is no way that we know enough to go and do this at [a] tremendous scale," Kelland said. "But nobody's proposing that we do that. I think right now what we're proposing is that we do it at very small scales, and that we learn, and that we go along, and we move forward."

There is another concern that fired up opposition in the U.K. Environmentalists worry that companies promoting marine geoengineering are driven by commercial interests by selling carbon credits to offset pollution.

"This is actually a company doing what a company wants to do, because it feels it's got a marketable product in the end," said Santillo.

Planetary Technologies has already received a US$1 million award from the Elon Musk-funded XPRISE foundation and has been selling what Kelland calls "pre-credits" to companies like Shopify, which is in turn helping to fund the research. He says his focus is now on transparency with the communities that will help test the approach.

"This is not going to work if it's not something that people can get comfortable with at the end of the day, and if people are going to get comfortable with it, unless we are taking their concerns seriously." he added.