Out in the Sahara Desert, in one of the most inhospitable environments imaginable, a natural solution to the climate crisis is growing – and at a rapid rate.
London-based startup Brilliant Planet has leased 6,100 hectares of land outside the remote coastal town of Akhfenir in southern Morocco, wedged between the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Sahara to the south. And it’s using it to cultivate algae.
Algae absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide and emits oxygen via photosynthesis, and has been doing so since before the first land plants ever existed. Brilliant Planet’s CEO Adam Taylor says the company has developed a way to grow algae at exponential rates starting in a beaker in a lab and ending in 12,000-square-meter pools of locally-sourced seawater. Taylor says the process mimics a natural algae bloom, and a test tube of algae can multiply to fill 16 of these giant pools – the equivalent of 77 Olympic-sized swimming pools – in just 30 days….
Ocean biomass sequestration — The biological pump is a mechanism through which the ocean naturally sequesters carbon. Carbon dioxide-absorbing phytoplankton are eaten by tiny species, which are eaten by bigger species, and through excretion and death carbon sinks into the deep ocean. Companies like Running Tide are cutting straight to the sinking part by growing carbon dioxide-absorbing seaweed microforests at the surface on buoys, then sinking them to the ocean floor.
After the truth-shower 