According to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, removing carbon from the atmosphere is now essential to achieving net zero carbon emissions and limiting warming. globally at 1.5°C.

For that reason, Brilliant Planet – a start-up that harnesses the potential of algae in London, UK – announced a $12 million investment in an algae-based carbon capture and storage system.

Since 2013, Brilliant Planet has harnessed the power of algae as an affordable way to lock carbon at the gigaton scale. Its innovative process allows it to grow large amounts of algae in an outdoor pond-based system in the desert. According to Raffael Jovine, co-founder of this startup, “Per unit area, we can capture as much carbon or even more, maybe like a rainforest. The difference is that when a tree falls, it returns 97% of the CO2 to the air, while we could sequester it all.”

When they build their first commercial-scale plant, which will cover 1,000 acres, they are expected to remove 40,000 tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of emissions using 92,000 barrels of oil. Scaled to cover the available desert land on the coast, the system could hypothetically remove 2 billion tons of CO2 per year.

In this test run, following the first 3-square-meter test on the coast of St Helena in South Africa, the company has expanded its efforts to a 30,000-square-foot production facility with the world's largest algae pond in the desert of the coast of Morocco.

Raffael Jovine adds: “By using empty desert and seawater that would not otherwise have come to the surface, our solution creates a 'New Net Primary Productivity'. In other words, we use underutilized natural resources to grow new biomass and reduce excess carbon dioxide. Per unit area, this approach absorbs up to 30 times more carbon per year than rainforests, while also de-acidifying local coastal seawater back to pre-industrial levels.

Here are the main processes of this project:

1. Pumping seawater from the coast to an algae pond in the desert. This water contains the nutrients needed for algae to grow, plus CO2 from the ocean.
2. Nourish the algae to grow and absorb carbon.
3. After 18 to 30 days when the algae are mature, they can be harvested.
4. Part of the company will filter the water in the algae pond and return it to the ocean.
5. Finally, dry the algae and bury them in the desert sand where the resulting CO2 is stored.

The cost to operate this coastal desert algal carbon capture system is much lower than current direct carbon capture (DAC) methods. Specifically, about less than 50 USD/ton of CO2 was obtained. For comparison, DAC costs a lot more than that and 10 times more.

Measuring the amount of CO2 stored in a large rainforest or kelp growing in the ocean is difficult. But this is not the case with the Brilliant Planet system. Using land-grown algae for carbon capture and storage is easy to measure and verify. The startup will bury the harvested algae near the surface of the sand, about 1 or 3 meters below. The salty and dry environment of the desert prevents the algae from decomposing.

The company also believes that its system is highly scalable. This is because there are more than 300,000 square miles of flat, desert coastal land around the world for corporate use. From Africa to South America to Australia, there is a vast expanse of desert land that is unused and has no other use. Growing algae on them to capture and store carbon would be very useful.

The company is currently developing a scalable production platform so that algae ponds can be deployed globally.