Ocean-based carbon dioxide removal makes a lot of sense. The oceans are already carbon sinks that absorb about 30% of global carbon emissions. And the concentration of CO2 is higher in water than in air. Caitlin McDermott-Murphy at NREL looks at a new study of the technologies under development, and the opportunities for offshore wind and wave energy to power it. There are nature-based solutions like vast seaweed or algae farms. There are also … [Read more...]
Farming Algae for Carbon Capture: new research cuts “fouling.” Scale-up in 3 years?
Natural marine algae already account for 50% of global CO2 removal. Farming it at scale in artificial tanks or tubes would take up a fraction of the land footprint of terrestrial plants. And algae can grow up to 50 times more quickly than land-based plants. It could be a game-changer that brings carbon capture costs down and make it a commercial reality. Here, David Chandler at MIT explains how new research there can make farming algae much more … [Read more...]
How to protect marine mammals from the coming roll-out of Offshore Wind
The EU’s target for offshore wind is an installed capacity of at least 60 GW by 2030, and 300 GW by 2050. It will use the vast potential of the five EU sea basins, in particular the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. But growing awareness and concern over their impact on the marine ecosystem will require new methods of protecting sea life from the consequences. Isla Graham at the University of Aberdeen describes the work of her team on measuring … [Read more...]
Wave Energy Converter performance tool, publicly available online
Advancements in wave energy technology (WEC) have been slow, mainly because of the harsh marine environments WECs must operate in, as well as the complex regulatory requirements. Tiffany Plate at NREL explains it’s why the U.S. Department of Energy and NREL have collaborated on the Small WEC Analysis tool, publicly available online. Its purpose is to provide baseline information about the performance of different types of WECs in various ocean … [Read more...]
An open-source standardised toolkit for modelling Marine Energy
New innovations need a lot of high quality modelling. That means collecting real world data, then coding the programs that run the models. This is labour intensive and takes time to do properly. The modelling needs to be standardised too, otherwise direct comparisons between competing ideas are virtually impossible. Caitlin McDermott-Murphy at NREL describes the latest version of their Marine and Hydrokinetic Toolkit (MHKiT)Â for modelling a wide … [Read more...]
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