Plan Sea: Ocean Interventions to Address Climate Change · Wil Burns and Anna Madlener

Isometric’s Dr.'s Sophie Gill, Jing He, and Jennifer Yin on Marine Carbon Removal Certification

·1 hr 15 min·5 clips

Sophie Jill describes 50-plus workshop participants and more than 1,000 comments shaping Isometric’s OAE protocol.

1. Plan Sea: Ocean Interventions to Address Climate Change examines Isometric’s certification of marine carbon removal, especially ocean alkalinity enhancement.\n2. Anna Madliener, Carbon to Sea’s MRV manager, and Will Burns, co-executive director of the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal, host Sophie Jill, Jing He, and Jennifer Yin from Isometric.\n3. The episode asks how carbon-removal certification can rebuild trust while measuring real atmospheric CO2 removal in an under-regulated voluntary market.\n4. Sophie Jill says Isometric was founded in 2022 as a registry issuing credits representing at least one ton of atmospheric CO2 removal.\n5. Jing He identifies financial incentive alignment, scientific rigor, and transparency as Isometric’s main differences from legacy registries.\n6. Isometric’s buyer-paid model uses a fixed verification fee rather than paying the registry per credit issued.\n7. Sophie Jill distinguishes a high-level standard from project-level protocols that prescribe monitoring, reporting, and verification steps.\n8. Jing He describes protocols as documents covering project operations, durable storage, data collection, reporting, and net CO2 removal calculations.\n9. The ocean alkalinity enhancement protocol covers coastal outfalls using mineral, planetary, or electrochemical approaches.\n10. The electrolytic seawater mineralization protocol covers electrolysis that separates acidic and alkaline streams while co-producing hydrogen.\n11. Isometric’s dissolved inorganic carbon storage module appears in both ocean alkalinity enhancement and electrolytic seawater mineralization protocols.\n12. Isometric’s marine protocols also address emissions accounting, feedstock characterization, air-sea gas exchange, and environmental and social safeguards.\n13. Sophie Jill says the ocean alkalinity enhancement protocol began with internal discussions in September of the previous year.\n14. Seven academics reviewed an early draft, and more than 50 people from academia, industry, NGOs, government, and carbon buyers joined a New Orleans workshop.\n15. The development process generated over 1,000 comments and forced the team to justify each required measurement amid conflicting feedback.\n16. Jennifer Yin describes the protocol as a market signal for a pathway with theoretical and experimental support but unresolved deployment uncertainties.\n17. The interview is a technical conversation with explanatory analogies, including the description of a protocol as a recipe.\n18. The hosts and guests use an interview format that moves from registry incentives to protocol design, stakeholder consultation, and marine risk.\n19. Marine carbon-removal researchers seeking detailed MRV frameworks.\n20. Listeners uninterested in carbon markets or ocean science.

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