Ocean-based carbon dioxide removal (CDR) company Ebb Carbon announced today that it has raised $20 million, with proceeds aimed at developing and deploying its technology to enhance the ability of oceans to capture and permanently store CO2 from the atmosphere.

According to Ebb Carbon, the financing marks the largest investment to date in ocean-based carbon removal technology.

Carbon removal is emerging as a key tool in the fight to address climate change, although most technologies and solutions to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere remain at fairly early stages. According to the landmark IPCC climate change mitigation study released last year, scenarios that limit warming to 1.5°C include carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods scaling to billions of tons of removal annually over the coming decades. Using oceans, which naturally absorb and store CO2, for carbon capture and storage potentially presents one of the lowest-cost pathways to carbon removal.

Founded in 2021 by former Tesla, SolarCity, and Google X executives, Ebb Carbon is commercializing an electrochemical approach to ocean-based carbon removal that accelerates the natural ocean alkalinization process, restoring ocean chemistry by reducing higher acidity levels caused by higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere, while drawing down CO2 and converting it to bicarbonate for safe and stable storage, capable of sequestering CO2 for at least 10,000 years.

Ben Tarbell, CEO and Co-Founder of Ebb Carbon, said:

“If we want to avoid the most drastic impacts of climate change, the science is very clear that we will need to remove billions of tons of already-emitted CO2 from the atmosphere. The ocean is a natural and vastly underutilized ally in this fight. Our approach combines capture and storage into one step, by accelerating naturally occurring processes that benefit from the immensity of the ocean’s surface area. This enables one of the lowest cost solutions for atmospheric CO2 removal at scale.”

The Series A financing was led by climate solutions and cleantech-focused venture investors Prelude Ventures and Evok Innovations.

Gabriel Kra, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Prelude Ventures, said:

“We are excited by the potential for Ebb to remove gigatonnes of CO2 annually. The team has previously demonstrated their abilities to build and scale industrial machinery, and has invented a technology that is a least-cost solution for ocean carbon dioxide removal.”

Mike Biddle, Partner at Evok, added:

“What makes Ebb so impactful is its potential to address the many impacts of climate change, not just on land, but in our oceans as well. The company has a clear line of sight to removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere in the coming years, which will be an integral part of slowing global warming trends.”

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