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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.