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I.J.P.R. van Gestel
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Sinking Seaweed, Rising Questions
An LCA of Macroalgae Cultivation and Sinking for Carbon Dioxide Removal
Among the portfolio of emerging carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches to mitigate global warming, macroalgae cultivation and sinking (MCS) has recently attracted increasing scientific, commercial, and policy interest, due to its theorised potential to enhance oceanic carbon uptake. Yet, much remains unknown about the environmental implications of adopting this technology. To address calls for more holistic assessments of the effectiveness and environmental implications of MCS, this exploratory research developed the first comprehensive cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of the “grow nearshore, sink offshore” MCS strategy in Northern Europe using Saccharina latissima. In addition to evaluating climate change impacts, the assessment quantified impacts on ecosystem quality, human health, and natural resource scarcity, while sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the influence of seven key parameters, i.e., transportation distance, biomass yield, carbon/nutrient leakage, future background conditions, seeding technique, cultivation line material, and characterisation method. Our findings suggest that MCS could, under the modelled conditions, potentially function as negative emissions technology (NET), yielding a climate mitigation potential of 227 kg CO2-eq per tonne of CO2 durably sequestered. At the same time, the climate change and eutrophication benefits related to this technology come paired with estimated net environmental burdens to ecosystem quality (2.03 x 10-6 species.yr), human health (1.40 x 10-3 DALYs), and natural resource scarcity (83.9 USD 2013) for every tonne of CO2 durably sequestered. Furthermore, offshore transportation, carbon/nutrient leakage, cultivation infrastructure, and electricity usage during hatchery operations were found to be the dominant environmental hotspots, while sequestration durability as well as biomass yields present the largest uncertainties regarding MSC’s environmental performance. Given the extent of these uncertainties, as well as critical shortcomings in current LCIA methods and the limited estimated sequestration efficiency, large-scale MCS deployment remains difficult to justify.
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Among the portfolio of emerging carbon dioxide removal (CDR) approaches to mitigate global warming, macroalgae cultivation and sinking (MCS) has recently attracted increasing scientific, commercial, and policy interest, due to its theorised potential to enhance oceanic carbon uptake. Yet, much remains unknown about the environmental implications of adopting this technology. To address calls for more holistic assessments of the effectiveness and environmental implications of MCS, this exploratory research developed the first comprehensive cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of the “grow nearshore, sink offshore” MCS strategy in Northern Europe using Saccharina latissima. In addition to evaluating climate change impacts, the assessment quantified impacts on ecosystem quality, human health, and natural resource scarcity, while sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the influence of seven key parameters, i.e., transportation distance, biomass yield, carbon/nutrient leakage, future background conditions, seeding technique, cultivation line material, and characterisation method. Our findings suggest that MCS could, under the modelled conditions, potentially function as negative emissions technology (NET), yielding a climate mitigation potential of 227 kg CO2-eq per tonne of CO2 durably sequestered. At the same time, the climate change and eutrophication benefits related to this technology come paired with estimated net environmental burdens to ecosystem quality (2.03 x 10-6 species.yr), human health (1.40 x 10-3 DALYs), and natural resource scarcity (83.9 USD 2013) for every tonne of CO2 durably sequestered. Furthermore, offshore transportation, carbon/nutrient leakage, cultivation infrastructure, and electricity usage during hatchery operations were found to be the dominant environmental hotspots, while sequestration durability as well as biomass yields present the largest uncertainties regarding MSC’s environmental performance. Given the extent of these uncertainties, as well as critical shortcomings in current LCIA methods and the limited estimated sequestration efficiency, large-scale MCS deployment remains difficult to justify.