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What is Gigablue?
What is Gigablue, and can you share more about your mission?
Gigablue is a unique marine carbon dioxide removal company that’s unique in its ability to scale affordably. For humanity to reach net zero by 2050, we need an affordable, environmentally safe way to produce high-quality, long-lasting carbon credits. Gigablue does just that by unleashing the vast potential of a natural process that has been around for 3.5 billion years: the biological pump.
So, we're leveraging nature and attaching our solution to the largest carbon cycle on Earth. That is responsible for the fixation of 50 to 60 gigatons of carbon annually. We’re making sure that more of that fixation gets sequestrated, and by doing so, we're moving carbon from the atmosphere into the deep ocean. This is critical for emitters of any kind, but specifically for large emitters responsible for meaningful chunks of the emissions humans release into the atmosphere every year - because for them, it must be a sustainable effort; otherwise, they will not be able to support that.
Regarding affordability, Gigablue’s process was a breakthrough that was achieved naturally. So, from an environmental perspective, we think it’s as “Good As It Gets.”
Company Growth
Can you expand on Gigablue’s CDR process?
Let's ensure we are all aligned on the natural carbon cycle, also known as the Biological Pump. In this cycle, phytoplankton, microalgae that live in the Photic Zone in the ocean, which means the top layer of the ocean that is exposed to light, the first hundred and fifty metres of the ocean, performs photosynthesis. During photosynthesis, the phytoplankton ingests CO2 and releases O2 like any other tree or plant. 1% of those phytoplankton with their fixated carbon sink to the sediment of the ocean and stay there for thousands of years. This is also known as the slow carbon cycle, which means that everything that gets to the sediment of the ocean stays there. In terms of permanency and quality, this may be the carbon credit with the highest possible permanency. The only issue is that in that process, only 1% of what gets fixated on the top part also gets sequestrated to the sediment. The remaining 99% gets decomposed by bacteria, eaten by zooplankton, and eaten by fish that eventually get eaten or die. Within a short period, it will be back in the atmosphere. And so, there is a massive potential that needs to be fulfilled. From a philosophical, ideological approach, instead of engineering massive devices that also emit enormous amounts of carbon as they use energy to suck up air and turn it into a rock - what we would ideally want to do is leverage the biggest carbon cycle that nature already created. So all we need to do is a tiny tweak - we need more of the fixated carbon to get sequestrated. Gigablue has developed an “elevator” that draws down more carbon to the bottom of the ocean. The particle is essentially a tiny farm that serves as an ideal environment for phytoplankton to grow and thrive because we include a unique cocktail of geotargeted micronutrients in the particle. Those were a bunch of long words. Let me break it down. So, it is ‘geotargeted’ because different areas in the ocean lack different types of micronutrients necessary for phytoplankton to develop. Therefore, the formula for every location cannot be the same. We have an AI platform that helps us generate the formula to target a specific geography for every area in the ocean. Micronutrients are pretty cheap; you don't need a lot of micronutrients to make photosynthesis happen, and the nutrients are already there. So, we are finding areas with the limiting factor from an ROI perspective that is pretty easy and affordable to bridge. Then, we bridge that factor by bringing the missing micronutrients and maintaining them inside the particle. We release nothing into the water. We attract the phytoplankton to enter the particle. Once it enters an environment with the micronutrients that it doesn't have outside in the water, it is happy to start multiplying. A colony grows inside the particle. So this is amazing because the environmental impact is theoretically zero. All that intervention happens inside the particle and sinks after 8 to 12 days. So, we leave no trace in the area where we deploy and operate. We leave no impact on the environment.
CDR Inspiration
What was the inspiration that led to your carbon removal business?
Nature inspired us. The co-founding team consists of environmental scientists or environmentally minded people. We do this for our children—to have a liveable future. Therefore, the biological pump in nature is the key to solving climate change. The natural carbon cycle inspired us. So it's not us; we are just tapping into what evolution created over the last 3.5 billion years; much work has already been invested. So why reinvent the wheel?
'aha' breakthroughs
Can you share that 'aha' breakthrough in your journey that excited you about its potential?
When we headed out on this journey, we told everyone: “Yeah, we're gonna get phytoplankton to grow inside particles inside our farm.” Then, we conversed with some of the greatest minds in oceanography, specifically some of the greatest scientists who have explored the natural carbon cycle. They told us that the most challenging thing we will face is to “convince” an organism that has been living in the open for 3.5 billion years to change how it lives and choose to live by multiplying inside our farm. We worked hard to create an environment that phytoplankton would be attracted to. For them to thrive, achieve photosynthesis and grow biomass. We achieved that a year ago; it was a huge breakthrough. We were super excited. Credit goes to our scientific team headed by Sapir Markus-Alford, our CTO, and it wasn't just us excited it was the scientific community that supports and works with us was very excited when we made it happen because it unlocks the potential of the scientific concept behind Gigablue.
Garnering attention
What have you found the best way of garnering investor or buyer attention?
This is my fourth company as a co-founder - and there are about 16 companies in my investment portfolio. I'm a big believer in ‘True Value.’ If you generate real value, you have something people, companies and the world need. And revenue will be the result of that. So, actual value comes first, as well as being honest and appealing to investors as a result of the revenue generated. I think many companies are giving too much weight to innovation, differentiation, and competitiveness, and they might miss out on Delivering real value in solving real problems. Do that first; the rest will come. I think this is what we're trying to do here as well.
Scalability
How are you approaching scalability, and what tools or strategies have proven most effective in levelling up your solution?
Achieving scale in our case isn't that challenging because the solution has been engineered and designed for scale. The ocean is 70% of the Earth’s surface, and we only need 12 by 12 kilometres of ocean (which is nothing) in order to perform a cycle of deployment. And 8 to 12 days after that, everything sinks, and we leave no trace. You can come to the same place and perform another cycle. So the challenge is to make our core technology work, and if that is achieved, then producing more of it and deploying more of it in the ocean will be challenging, just like anything in life, but this is not what keeps me up at night.
CDR Challenges
What's the biggest challenge the industry is facing in 2024, and what do you think is required to solve it?
Two things will propel carbon dioxide removal and the fight for climate change. The buyer side demand is the first important factor - companies like Microsoft, Swiss Re and Frontier are an inspiration. I love how they’ve prioritised climate change over the bureaucracy this market suffered in the past. This is key to achieving net zero by 2050. I would like to see more and more companies putting this as their first priority. Buying meaningful amounts on offsets and retiring them and by doing so, accelerating the emergence of solutions like Gigablue and making this market explode. It is a Tango, and there is a need not only for innovators and scientific startups like us that can unleash the potential of nature to achieve massive CDR, and someone needs to support it; someone needs to buy it, which will cause the market to propel.
The second thing I want to see is the regulators growing out of the question mark era and laying out the foundation, the principles and the Frameworks for CDR to happen. Ultimately, everyone needs confidence - and if the regulators are more definitive and define clear, simple Frameworks, we’ll all be in a better place. A lot of the friction the market suffers from today results from a lack of clarity. What is valid, acceptable, and acceptable in measurement, methodology, and accounting? There are way too many question marks, and if this space worked a bit more similar to the Big Data / AI space I come from, there would have been definitive APIs and precise definitions and documentation of what passes the threshold and what does not. There would have been much less friction, and we would need to do less ‘reinventing the wheel.’ All sides in this market would accelerate because of that - a lot of what we do today is players acting as regulators. We are creating scientific panels and forums to provide transparency into what we do. We get a lot of community involvement in what we do, such as peer-reviewed scientific backup. We are investing a lot of effort due to the lack of regulation and clarity from the regulator.
