How the Next Big Thing in Carbon Removal Sunk Without a Trace

This communicative was supported by the Pulitzer Center.

The municipality hallway successful Akranes, connected the westbound seashore of Iceland, filled rapidly arsenic locals streamed successful to the residents’ meeting. The temper was happy, positive, relaxed. In betwixt speeches, a pistillate sang people songs portion her household played guitar and melodica. Yet erstwhile the impermanent speaker, an American named Marty Odlin, took the stage, helium struck a deadly superior tone.

“We woke up Godzilla,” helium told the assembled residents. “It’s burning down forests and towns and stealing food and doing each sorts of unspeakable things. It’s a horrible monster, but we did that. We woke it up. And truthful we person to hole it.”

Odlin, the laminitis of a US clime startup called Running Tide, had go a well-known fig astir Akranes that summertime of 2022 successful his signature neon beanie and fisherman’s flannels. He was mounting up a basal of operations successful a adjacent harbor, readying to unleash a counteroffensive against the Godzilla of clime change. Odlin had outlined a program to make jobs successful this erstwhile sportfishing hub of 8,000. He’d request radical to assistance descend immense volumes of biomass successful the surrounding ocean. Together, they’d region gigatons of c from Earth’s atmosphere—and marque wealth by selling c credits to Silicon Valley hyperscalers. The exponential maturation successful tech companies’ emissions, driven by an detonation successful request for information centers and AI, had made the carbon-credit marketplace hotter than ever. Lowercarbon Capital, a VC steadfast cofounded by Chris Sacca of Shark Tank, had led a $54 cardinal Series B backing circular for Running Tide earlier that year.

At first, Running Tide painted a imaginativeness of free-floating “micro forests” of seaweed seeded connected biodegradable buoys, which would interval successful the water earlier sinking nether their ain weight, locking that c heavy successful the sea. Within 9 months of his quality successful Akranes, though, that imaginativeness had morphed into thing else: dumping astir 25,000 tons of chemically treated Canadian wood chips disconnected Iceland’s coast. Some ocean-carbon experts picture the enactment arsenic “poor subject fiction” that apt removed nary atmospheric c portion contributing to marine pollution. Ship-tracking information indicates that successful the process, the startup apt violated the maritime rights of aggregate countries.

By the clip WIRED visited Running Tide’s Iceland office successful the autumn of 2024, the enactment was over. An orangish overgarment emblazoned with the Running Tide logo hung connected a overgarment rack. A sensor buoy gathered particulate successful a corner. Gone was the founder, on with his expansive plans and his neon beanie. Gone were the 100 oregon truthful workers erstwhile employed by the company. The startup, astatine 1 clip the adjacent large anticipation for c removal, near successful its aftermath thousands of credits uncertified by immoderate autarkic entity.

WIRED spoke with astir 40 sources from France, Iceland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, arsenic good arsenic with planetary scientists who counsel the United Nations, to hint Running Tide’s meteoric emergence and fall. They see scientists straight progressive with marine geoengineering science, c dioxide removal experts, lawmakers, authorities officials, buyers of the company’s credits, and erstwhile Running Tide staff, astir of whom requested anonymity to picture delicate information. WIRED analyzed firm fiscal filings, emails and different interior documents, patent applications, carbon-accounting records, and shipping information to uncover the communicative of however a small-scale relation with small geoengineering expertise was capable to stitchery millions of dollars from blue-chip investors.

The demise of Running Tide is not the extremity of a communicative but the beginning. Investors person kept close connected pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into experimental and perchance harmful technologies designed to fastener distant much c successful the sea—a informing of what could beryllium adjacent arsenic the request for c removal grows.

A Novel Theory

The thought of companies “offsetting” their c footprint began successful the 1980s. Back then, you could bargain into, say, a forestry oregon bamboo-growing task that offered up to 80 years of c sequestration. As the popularity of offsetting grew, middlemen emerged to verify credits that had been produced and connection them to imaginable buyers. An offsetter would marque a assertion astir a project, an intermediary similar the nonprofit Verra, which runs the Verified Carbon Standard Program, would footwear the tires and database the credits connected a registry, and emitters would bargain them. By 2022 this had turned into a $1.9 cardinal industry, with Verra overseeing the lion’s stock of sales. Each task listed connected its marketplace is independently verified, and accusation connected each deal—down to the c ton—is publically available.

That year, the marketplace was rocked by controversy: One of the world’s largest carbon-offset projects, a forest-conservation programme tally by the billion-dollar steadfast South Pole, was reported to person knowingly sold much credits than the task was yet worth. Elias Ayrey, an autarkic adept successful wood ecology, had analyzed outer imagery of South Pole’s forests successful Kariba, Zimbabwe, and recovered the company’s calculations were a immense overestimate. South Pole acknowledged the discrepancy but denied overselling the project, and exited the Kariba programme successful October 2023. The company’s past CEO resigned the pursuing period implicit the controversy. Verra yet concluded that conscionable implicit fractional the 26.8 cardinal credits issued should beryllium canceled.

To some, the nonaccomplishment of an enactment similar Verra to drawback the South Pole debacle suggested the full marketplace was bunk. To others, it was an opportunity. Large companies with emissions to offset present had screen to halt relying connected third-party verifiers. They could reason for bypassing this seemingly breached strategy and clasp the alternative: in-house verification of credits bought straight to offset their emissions.

At the aforesaid time, the credits evolved. Alongside accepted nature-based offsets, galore of which focused connected tree-growing and offered up to 200 years of c sequestration, caller companies began selling “carbon-removal” services straight to emitters, offering to fastener distant c for up to 800 years utilizing novel, technology-based solutions specified arsenic injecting dissolved CO₂ into underground rocks, scrubbing c from the aerial with machines, oregon sinking carbon-rich biomass into the heavy sea. In little than 2 years, companies bought astir $2.6 cardinal successful carbon-removal credits, up from conscionable $55 cardinal successful 2022, with galore of these unverified by immoderate 3rd party. Microsoft, to day the biggest purchaser successful the space, reported successful 2023 that it had bought 2.8 cardinal tons of carbon-removal credits designed to fastener c distant for astatine slightest 200 years; of these, lone 42,000 were listed arsenic third-party verified. It was successful this market, offering its seaweed-sinking solution, that Running Tide would operate.

Odlin had founded Running Tide successful 2017, yet mounting up its office successful Portland, Maine, a abbreviated region from wherever his begetter had tally a precise palmy groundfishing fleet for decades. The institution had archetypal experimented with raising oysters to amended water health, but by 2020 had expanded into c removal. “We marque small buoys retired of terrestrial biomass and immoderate minerals,” Odlin erstwhile explained connected signifier astatine South by Southwest, “and spray immoderate kelp spores connected them and dispersed them retired successful the ocean.”

Seaweed would turn connected these buoys, absorbing c from the water to bash so, and drafting c down from the ambiance into the oversea to regenerate it. In time, these free-floating biodegradable buoys would past interruption apart, and the seaweed that had grown connected them would sink. Thanks to the mode c is cycled by the ocean, the c successful that seaweed, if sunk successful the close places, would past beryllium sequestered for implicit 800 years successful the heavy sea. Or truthful the manufacture mentation went.

Theory unsocial had been capable for Running Tide to merchantability tiny bundles of credits to Shopify successful 2020 and Stripe successful 2021. But a bigger food was successful its sights: Microsoft. And to onshore a large declaration with the tech giant, it needed grounds its exertion would work.

During its archetypal signifier of experimentation, the institution dropped 120-pound moorings to the seafloor, each attached to a floating buoy. Running betwixt each mooring and buoy was a fabric line, inoculated with seaweed spores. This experimentation would let the startup to recognize seaweed maturation and cipher carbon-removal imaginable earlier moving connected to creating its free-floating biodegradable buoys. In the wintertime of 2021, the startup released arsenic galore arsenic 1,600 of these anchored lines disconnected of the Maine coast. Problems with the tests soon emerged.

The fabric lines were expected to beryllium bully for seeding kelp, but they weren’t precise resilient successful seawater. Within months, a fewer twelve buoys had been lost. Two moorings from the batch washed up hundreds of miles southbound astatine Cape Cod, resulting successful an enquiry from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries to the Maine Department of Marine Resources astir their origins.

While the bulk of the lines remained intact, determination was different problem: The seaweed “wasn’t truly growing,” says 1 erstwhile staffer who joined the institution successful July 2021. During the hiring process, the root says Odlin had told them that the institution was susceptible of increasing 10,000 tons of kelp a year. When tract information started coming in, the root recovered it alarming. Forget 10,000 tons of kelp. “I was like: OK, this is not adjacent 100 tons. Maybe it’s not adjacent 10 tons.” A fewer months later, alleging an “undercurrent of dishonesty” astatine the company, the root near Running Tide altogether. Odlin says that the institution was susceptible of spawning astir 10,000 tons successful its hatchery astatine the time, not connected the deployed buoys, and denies that helium misrepresented the company’s capacity.

Two ex-staffers said they felt that their information oregon output was manipulated successful bid to garner caller rounds of investment. When Chris Payne, a seasoned marine scientist, joined Running Tide’s kelp squad successful aboriginal 2022, helium recalls, “they had america gluing algae connected the buoys truthful they could instrumentality pictures to amusement people.”

Shortly aft Payne joined Running Tide, helium raised different concern: a deficiency of due diving protocols. Typically, erstwhile divers are doing underwater enactment connected a task similar the 1 successful Maine, their clip some astatine the aboveground and astatine extent is cautiously timed retired and tracked by a supervisor to forestall decompression sickness. Running Tide didn’t bash immoderate tracking, erstwhile staffers allege. And yet, recalls 1 ex-employee who was connected a buoy cleanup team, “they wanted america to bash aggregate ‘bounce’ dives successful a time down to 100 feet.” The root added: “I wasn’t comfy doing that.” Finnian Donovan, Running Tide’s erstwhile manager of operations, confirms that individuals were liable for logging their ain dives, but maintains that the information was looked implicit by a information officer. He besides claims divers weren’t asked to descend to this depth: “Deepest that we had anyone spell was 30 feet,” helium says.

Payne, alarmed by what helium says was the deficiency of a dive information manual, information records, cogwheel protocol, and a dive power board, says helium raised the thought of creating protocols. He says that absorption told him: “If there’s immoderate problems … we tin blasted the dive institution that we rent our cogwheel from.” Donovan says helium was ne'er made alert of this, but that the connection would beryllium astatine likelihood with the company’s information protocols. “We recognized that it was the astir unsafe happening that anyone astatine the institution was doing,” helium said. He besides asserted that Running Tide had a dive information manual.

Six erstwhile employees WIRED spoke with reported akin concerns astir diving information and problems with the company’s product. They raised these concerns successful emails, texts, and documents from that time, which WIRED has reviewed. Internal presentations from precocious 2021 and aboriginal 2022, seen by WIRED, amusement that the institution was alert that it was struggling to standard up its kelp growing.

In interviews with WIRED, the erstwhile leaders of Running Tide framed these issues arsenic increasing pains. “We were trying to some beryllium R&D and a developed manufacture astatine the aforesaid time, which makes it benignant of complicated,” says Kristinn Árni L. Hróbjartsson, the organization’s erstwhile wide manager successful Iceland. This occupation wasn’t unsocial to Running Tide, Hróbjartsson says, but permeates the marine carbon-removal assemblage to this day. “It’s being evaluated arsenic if it were an existent industry. Everybody is conscionable inactive figuring retired what to do.”

Odlin says unit whitethorn person glued seaweed onto buoys, but claims that this was a mode of showing the “project roadworthy map” to investors. “There’s a large quality betwixt falsifying information astir the show of a institution and making a render of thing you’re trying to bash successful the future,” helium says. Still, Odlin admitted that helium thinks Running Tide really grew little than 10 tons of seaweed successful the water during the company’s full operations.

Not Up to Standard

While the Casco Bay experimentation showed that Running Tide was inactive a agelong mode from being capable to turn ample amounts of kelp, publically the institution presented the tests arsenic grounds that its free-floating buoy exertion was progressing. But having already sold credits to investors, it needed a carbon-removal strategy that would scale. Internal institution documents amusement that Running Tide was considering a displacement successful plans successful December 2021 from chiefly gathering algae buoys to sinking wood chips successful the water (Odlin says they started conducting experiments with wood chips successful 2020). The improvement of the algae-sinking buoys would proceed alongside the wood-chip sinking.

The wood-chip task was expected to onslaught astatine Godzilla successful 2 ways. First, the chips would beryllium coated with alkaline particulate from concern lime kilns and dumped successful the water. In theory, they’d interval connected the aboveground for a while, and the alkaline particulate would respond with dissolved CO₂ successful the sea. Carbon successful the ambiance would past dissolve successful the oversea to regenerate the CO₂ consumed successful this reaction. Then, erstwhile the wood chips became waterlogged, they’d descend to the water floor. Since the wood wouldn’t decompose connected onshore oregon beryllium utilized arsenic fuel, its c would beryllium prevented from reentering the ambiance and alternatively beryllium sequestered successful the heavy sea.

Not agelong aft the Casco Bay enactment had finished, the institution moved its operations to Iceland. Former employees and section aquaculture farmers successful Maine felt that this was due to the fact that Running Tide had utilized up its societal superior for seaweed experiments successful the area, and the institution ne'er applied for further experimental permits for increasing seaweed successful Maine. Odlin says the determination was influenced by a multitude of factors, including Iceland’s favorable h2o conditions for kelp: “We felt similar being further successful the northbound and being capable to exploit the longer increasing clip would person been advantageous aboriginal on.” Plus, erstwhile it comes to marine expertise, Iceland is “head and shoulders” supra everybody else, Odlin says. “Iceland’s the Silicon Valley of marine technology.”

When Running Tide formally applied to the Icelandic authorities for probe permits successful March 2022, its enactment raised concerns. “It was truly unclear what benignant of probe they were really doing,” says Hrönn Egilsdóttir, caput of the Environmental Division astatine the Marine and Freshwater Research Institute successful Iceland. The institute assessed Running Tide’s exertion for an archetypal probe permit, and aboriginal provided a further appraisal to the Environment Agency of Iceland.

The startup’s connection and probe was “not up to standard,” Egilsdóttir says, arsenic Running Tide did not sufficiently quantify its c removal oregon imaginable ecosystem interaction connected the heavy sea. The shifting scope of the company’s enactment besides acrophobic Egilsdóttir. Running Tide’s archetypal licence exertion had focused connected algae-sinking buoys, and successful July, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had signed disconnected connected the institution releasing 50,000 tons of these. “Large kelp volition beryllium cultivated successful spheres/floating capsules, which are being designed and are expected to beryllium basketball-sized and made from materials including wood mass, lime, and binders,” the ministry’s sign-off enactment read.

But arsenic Running Tide’s exertion continued done the support process, Egilsdóttir flagged however the enactment seemed to beryllium shifting. “It is wide that sizeable changes person occurred successful some the scope and quality of the cognition since the exertion for the archetypal probe licence was submitted,” Egilsdóttir wrote successful an October 2022 email. “In Phase 1, the superior extremity is not to cultivate kelp and descend it into the heavy oversea but to discharge histrion bark mixed with alkaline substances.” An estimated 10,000 tons of wood chips, betwixt 1 and 3 centimeters successful size and combined with lime and calcium oxide/calcium hydroxide, would beryllium released, institution documents suggested.

Egilsdóttir truthful recommended that for the seaweed sinking, a “third enactment beryllium engaged to behaviour probe and measure the results,” and pointed retired that crossed marine subject determination was “a important deficiency of indispensable cognition and technological probe to warrant large-scale implementations specified arsenic those that Running Tide is aiming for.” Regarding the wood chips, Egilsdóttir advised that Running Tide “conduct a small-scale experimentation arsenic the archetypal step” and to operation operations successful specified a mode that the c sequestration of the method could beryllium assessed. The email closed by recommending that “extensive probe connected the effectiveness and biology impacts” of Running Tide’s projected operations beryllium conducted.

That prompted the country’s Environment Agency to counsel that a 3rd enactment verify the experiments’ effects, that the experiments themselves beryllium smaller, and that Running Tide taxable a much elaborate probe connection to get the permits. Running Tide offered nary grounds that immoderate of these steps were taken.

While the licence exertion was nether review, Running Tide acceptable up its basal of operations successful Akranes. In June, Odlin attended the residents’ gathering to contiguous the startup’s enactment to the section community. Sinkable seaweed-growing buoys would beryllium their strategy for sequestering carbon, Odlin told the attendees, stating that the institution would beryllium gathering “buoys retired of biomass” that would besides beryllium coated with limestone to boost their c removal and past seeded with kelp.

The exertion dragged connected into the autumn, with a 2024 probe by the Icelandic mag Heimildin lifting the lid connected the government’s decisionmaking process. In December 2022, the Environment Agency came to the decision that Running Tide’s activities would, nether the law, magnitude to dumping materials successful the sea, and necessitate a abstracted permit. But then, successful May 2023, the Ministry of Environment, Energy, and Climate reached its ain conclusion, deciding that Running Tide’s enactment constituted research, not dumping, and signed disconnected connected the company’s plans. The Environment Agency, successful response, declared that it past had nary jurisdiction implicit however Running Tide carried retired its activities. The curate of environment, energy, and clime astatine the clip described the task publically arsenic “the largest imperishable carbon-capture task successful the world.” Both helium and the past curate for overseas affairs declined to talk with WIRED.

While Running Tide’s probe licence was the archetypal of its benignant ever granted successful Iceland, it was not published connected authorities websites. When Heimildin published its investigation, determination was an outcry crossed Icelandic societal media implicit the information that the task had been allowed to spell ahead.

Egilsdóttir, who initially evaluated the proposal, says the determination by the ministers was “weird,” adding determination was nary justification for issuing Running Tide a permit, and that the exertion “should person failed.” She says that successful the aftermath of Running Tide’s experiments, determination was nary “scientific output” that she has seen that validates the company’s c sequestration claims.

Trouble successful the Land of Ice and Fire

Running Tide had initially thought its licence to run successful Iceland would get quickly. But arsenic securing its licence and indispensable permissions stretched passim 2022, the startup’s Icelandic deployment docket kept bumping: from summertime 2022, to autumn 2022, and past to outpouring 2023. All the time, Running Tide was spending money—including, according to a erstwhile employee, $18,000 a time connected renting a barge that was needed to transport materials retired into the ocean. The institution did, however, person a boost successful the spring—finally landing a long-sought declaration with Microsoft. In March 2023, the tech elephantine purchased 12,000 tons of Running Tide carbon-removal credits. The contention was present connected to get them fulfilled.

Over the people of summertime 2023, Running Tide sent astatine slightest 11 deployments of treated wood chips retired to oversea from Grundartangi Harbor, an concern larboard adjacent Akranes wherever the carbon-removal company’s neighbors included an aluminum smelter and a ferrosilicon plant. The squad was successful a changeless conflict against the unpredictable Icelandic conditions. “Our upwind model up present successful the North, it’s ace small,” says 1 erstwhile employee.

Across 30 hours, they would load barges with thousands of tons of wood chips mixed with alkaline material. Equipment troubles plagued the team, erstwhile staffers say. Most issues stemmed from the wood chips being highly light; the instrumentality the institution had purchased for handling the chips was for dense materials, similar concrete. Out connected the water determination were different issues.

Following Iceland’s “cod wars” with the United Kingdom, which ended successful the 1970s, the United Nations formally established alleged exclusive economical zones, oregon EEZs, that widen a country’s sovereignty into the ocean, ranging anyplace from 3 to 200 nautical miles offshore. Running Tide’s licence granted it support to run lone wrong Iceland’s EEZ. But aft analyzing the movements of the company’s carbon-removal projects utilizing MarineTraffic, a vessel tracking and maritime analytics provider, arsenic good arsenic GPS coordinates successful emails betwixt Running Tide and the Icelandic Coast Guard, WIRED recovered grounds that Running Tide whitethorn person violated the Faroe Islands’ EEZ successful January 2023 and Canada’s EEZ successful 2024. According to documents uploaded connected Running Tide’s website, the institution besides violated Denmark’s EEZ successful 2023. Running Tide did not question support from immoderate of these countries to run successful their waters.

By aboriginal 2024, Jón Ólafsson, prof emeritus astatine the University of Iceland and an adept successful c fluxes astir the Arctic Sea, had grown alarmed by statements that Running Tide, and successful peculiar Odlin, were making to the press, speaking arsenic if they had unlimited entree to Icelandic waters. The company’s activities seemed particularly preposterous because, according to Ólafsson, their wood-chip dumping could not person sequestered immoderate c from the atmosphere. “Throwing wood chips into the water does thing for the atmosphere,” Ólafsson told Heimildin, the Icelandic magazine.

The determination wherever Running Tide dumped the Nova Scotian wood people “releases astir arsenic overmuch [carbon] backmost to the ambiance successful wintertime arsenic it fixes successful the summer,” says Ólafsson, who published a peer-reviewed nonfiction connected this precise topic—carbon fluxes successful the North Atlantic—in 2021. According to Ólafsson’s decades of research, it was physically intolerable for the water to sorb c for much than six months successful those locations. When told this accusation by WIRED, Odlin said helium was not acquainted with the scientists oregon the 2021 paper. “This is what academics do. This is what happens erstwhile radical are stuck successful institutions and don’t person to unrecorded successful the existent world,” Odlin said. “I could attraction little what that feline thinks.”

Outside of Iceland, scientists besides began raising questions astir Running Tide’s chip-sinking techniques, based connected documents the institution published connected its website. Coating wood chips with lime kiln particulate and sinking them are “essentially 2 mutually exclusive processes to my mind, successful presumption of c sequestration,” says James Kerry, an adjunct elder probe chap astatine James Cook University, Australia, and a elder marine and clime idiosyncratic astatine the conservation enactment OceanCare.

It is intolerable for some methods to work, Kerry contends. If the wood chips sank, the alkaline enhancement—a chemic absorption that tin lone hap astatine the surface—wouldn’t person happened. And if the wood chips stayed astatine the aboveground agelong capable for alkaline enhancement, the chips would apt “have ended up arsenic marine pollution” on the coasts of Iceland and Northern Europe.

In the last carbon-accounting study for its wood-chip-sinking work, primitively published connected Running Tide’s website and since taken down, the institution mentions some forms of sequestration, but does not assertion c credits for its water alkalinity enhancement. Pointing retired that the tiny monitoring devices and fewer cameras they had were insufficient to bash immoderate biology interaction appraisal of the existent experiments, Kerry believes that the task appeared to beryllium “about making wealth earlier immoderate benignant of due subject had been conducted.” In his view, “there is nary technological justification based connected what they were trying to survey to dump 19,000 tons of thing successful the ocean.”

Odlin confirms that for each of the Icelandic wood-chip water deposits, it was intolerable for Running Tide to show the wood chips for much than 3 hours aft their release, saying, “We couldn’t measurement awesome from sound successful the water connected the alkalinity.”

The Dead Zone

Despite having sold credits to Stripe, Shopify, Microsoft, and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, fiscal pressures connected Running Tide continued to equine arsenic the travel of funds from Silicon Valley dried up. According to 1 erstwhile employee, Odlin would commencement meetings successful outpouring 2024 by announcing that the institution had lone a fewer much weeks of funds earlier it would person to close. That June, Odlin admitted defeat.

In a LinkedIn station connected June 14, 2024, Odlin wrote that “there simply isn’t the request needed to enactment large-scale c removal.” The institution ceased planetary operations that month. Nearly each employees successful Iceland and the US were abruptly fto go. One worker was presenting astir Running Tide astatine an algae league erstwhile helium was told the news.

“People were blessed with our credits. We were filling our contracts. We were selling further contracts. It conscionable wasn’t enough,” Odlin says. Running Tide had sold $30 cardinal of credits and said it had commitments for tens of millions more, but by Odlin’s estimate, the institution needed determination betwixt $100 cardinal and $150 cardinal of sales. “That was, like, the rent we were designed for.”

The bequest the institution leaves down aft its wood-chip dumping is unclear. It’s simply not known what effect the sinking of biomass volition person connected the ocean, and the scientists and deep-sea experts WIRED spoke to stay hesitant astir pursuing specified marine geoengineering until much is understood astir the heavy sea.

Dumping biomass successful the water could make “dead zones,” areas wherever aquatic beingness is starved of oxygen, says Samantha Joye, a Regents’ Professor successful the Department of Marine Sciences astatine the University of Georgia, who has worked connected dormant zones successful the Mississippi Delta arsenic good arsenic connected the cleanup of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon lipid spill.

Deep oversea environments—some of which supply life-saving drugs oregon insights into however aboriginal Earth formed—could besides beryllium everlastingly damaged, Joye adds. A caller c flux study by Convex Seascape Survey, an planetary probe collaboration, recovered that erstwhile the seabed is disrupted, this could really halt the quality for sediments to sorb carbon. Joye besides points retired that without due research, water alkalinity enhancement could besides origin spikes successful water acidity if it draws tons of c into the oversea that isn’t past distributed into its heavy waters—the precise other of what the treated wood chips were trying to achieve.

“The heavy oversea and the aboveground water are intimately connected,” says Joye. “We truly can’t spend to screw this up.”

Odlin, though, dismisses the thought that Running Tide did harm to the ocean. “We had aggregate studies astir the interaction of biomass sinking connected the benthic habitat. We had a clump of experts astir us.” Everything that the institution did, Odlin says, was successful consultation with its subject advisory board, which included individuals from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology, and American University. “I deliberation the probability of adverse harm to the water is astir zero for what we did. Zero.”

For him, the request to property up with c removal trumped the request for a cleanable reply connected however to manipulate the ocean’s c cycle. “You can’t needfully hold for the cleanable model, due to the fact that there’s ever going to beryllium a amended exemplary coming,” helium says.

Ultimately, Odlin says, they had the authorization they needed from the Icelandic authorities for the enactment they were doing. “All I cognize is we applied, and we got the approval.”

Onward and Upward

For Microsoft, Running Tide’s enactment was initially deemed a success: contempt nary autarkic verification that the enactment sequestered immoderate carbon, the tech elephantine inactive listed the Running Tide credits it bought successful its Carbon Removal Portfolio for Fiscal Year 2023. This was successful spite of Microsoft having purchased seaweed-sinking credits, says Brian Marrs, the company’s elder manager of vigor and c removal, and not those created done wood-sinking. “We person not signed contracts for that product,” Marrs says. “Our purchases were for, I conjecture what I see the archetypal product, which was the kelp algae product.”

When asked astir this discrepancy betwixt what Microsoft ordered and received, Odlin refused to spell into details. “I’m not gonna remark connected what Microsoft said. We had a declaration with them that we filled.”

WIRED archetypal asked Microsoft astir the veracity of Running Tide’s credits successful the autumn of 2024. In response, the tech institution cited its NDA with Running Tide and refused to comment. However, it aboriginal acknowledged that it had removed immoderate of Running Tide’s credits from its carbon-removal portfolio. “We aviator innovative pathways—including ocean-based methods—while holding each task to the highest standards of third-party verification and measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV),” Microsoft spokesperson Ben Wilsker says. “When credits don’t conscionable those standards, arsenic was the lawsuit with immoderate deliveries from Running Tide, we don’t number them toward our c accounting.”

Any problems it mightiness person had with Running Tide’s credits didn’t dampen the tech giant’s appetite for marine c removal. In October 2024, Microsoft signed the world’s largest acquisition statement to day for marine c dioxide removal, with Ebb Carbon. Microsoft secured astatine archetypal 1,333 tons of c removal, with options to acquisition an further 350,000 tons. Having garnered $24.75 cardinal successful Series A funding, Ebb Carbon uses greenish energy to divided seawater into acidic and alkaline solutions, and past releases the second backmost into the water to summation alkalinity truthful that the oversea tin sorb much c from the atmosphere.

This headline-inducing woody is portion of Microsoft’s bullish strategy connected pursuing c removal, and runs antagonistic to Odlin’s assertion that request for large-scale marine c removal isn’t there. In 2024, the institution purchased 5 cardinal tons of credits, from terrestrial and ocean-based carbon-removal projects, accounting for 63 percent of the measurement of the full carbon-removal marketplace that year. Microsoft’s purchases successful the carbon-removal abstraction are “building the markets we bargain from,” says Marrs. When asked astir issues similar nary third-party verification, Marrs says that Microsoft “welcomes that ecosystem catching up, but astatine the aforesaid time, we don’t ever request to hold for those verification bodies.”

The ecosystem is busily developing. Gigablue, which grows and sinks plankton successful the ocean, sold 200,000 marine carbon-removal credits successful January 2025. Planetary Technologies, a institution specializing successful water alkalinity enhancement, raised implicit $11 cardinal successful Series A backing successful October 2024. And Equatic has begun gathering what it claims to beryllium the largest marine carbon-removal facilities successful Asia and North America, which volition seizure c connected onshore and past mineralize it and store it successful the ocean.

Investments and income crossed the assemblage implicit the past 2 years full arsenic overmuch arsenic a 4th cardinal dollars. But due to the fact that c removal remains unregulated, and nonstop numbers connected the terms per ton of c are not publically available, it is hard to spot however these industries are progressing. “The voluntary c marketplace has nary rules,” says Stacy Kauk, main subject serviceman astatine Isometric, a carbon-removal registry. Formerly the caput of sustainability astatine Shopify, Kauk organized 1 of the archetypal investments into Running Tide successful her erstwhile role. “On the corp side, you’re incentivized to bargain credits truthful that you tin past marque a greenish claim,” she says.

Hróbjartsson, Running Tide’s erstwhile wide manager, is skeptical astir however overmuch affirmative interaction the marine carbon-removal manufacture tin have. “We’re conscionable making a prettier carbon-offset market,” helium says of the industry. “It’s lipstick connected a pig.”

“Any marine c removal, if it’s going to enactment connected a planetary scale, we’re going to person to marque a determination to wholly change immoderate ecosystems,” says Egilsdóttir. Pointing retired that deep-sea sediments tin instrumentality up to 1,000 years to turn 1 millimeter, she believes that “we should never, ever bash that unless we cognize precisely what we’re doing, and we are rather acold from reaching that point.”

Running Tide contends it had nary adverse interaction connected the water astir Iceland—but it has near its mark. In January 2025, a formation cleanup squad recovered 1 of the company’s 3-foot-tall buoys washed up connected the enactment successful Caithness, a tiny coastal municipality successful bluish Scotland. Seeing that the debris was from an American company, the volunteers conducting the cleanup contacted the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to spot if they knew of the buoys; the enactment was unaware.

“We person messed up the ambiance arsenic mankind,” says Ólafsson. “Is it OK that we conscionable spell to the adjacent spot and messiness up the oceans?”