There is a green pond right in the middle of the Sahara desert, north of Mauritania, almost 500 kilometers from any settlement. It is the test facility built by Brilliant Planet, a startup that aims to reduce the effects of climate change by growing massive amounts of carbon-capturing algae in the desert.
“We can capture even more CO2 than a rainforest depending on location and season,” he says Raffael Jovine, co-founder and chief scientist of Brilliant Planet. “The difference is that when a rainforest tree is cut down, it puts 97% of the carbon back into the atmosphere, whereas we don't.”
The first commercial-scale plant, which will cover 400 hectares (1.000 acres), expects to remove 40.000 tonnes of CO2 per year: virtually equivalent emissions to the use of 92.000 barrels of oil. Scaled up to cover the available desert land on the coasts, the system could hypothetically remove 2.000.000.000 tons (or if you prefer 2 gigatons) of CO2 per year.
How does the “algae factory” work in the desert?
The startup pumps sea water taken from the nearby coasts into the structure: water rich in nutrients for the growth of algae than CO2. Over a period of 18 to 30 days the algae grow and are filtered from the water (which is returned to the ocean less acidified, helping to solve another problem). At this point, the algae are dried and buried under the sand, storing the carbon permanently: the salty, dry environment will not decompose them.
A fantastic solution, which responds to an absolute need: remove CO2 from the atmosphere it is essential to combat global warming.
Brilliant Planet is the only startup to have focused on this type of approach: the others (many have failed) try to grow algae in expensive bioreactors.
Once again Nature teaches
“We basically took the natural processes, the natural algal blooms, that are the basis of the food chain in the ocean, and brought them to land on a large scale.”
Raffael Jovine, co-founder and chief scientist of Brilliant Planet.
Massive algal blooms occur seasonally in the ocean – Brilliant Planet's system brings the process to land with huge benefits. One for all? The price: less than $ 50 per tonne of CO2 captured. It is ONE TENTH of the costs of different plants.
For those who have legitimate doubts: the startup has been running its test site for almost 5 years to prove that the project works. And this algae growth plant is already the third after the first pilot projects in South Africa and Oman. In 2023 the last test facility will begin, and in 2024 finally the first real commercial plant.
There is half a million square kilometers (more than 300.000 square miles) of coastal and flat desert land in the world, from Africa to South America to Australia.
Space to transform desert into rainforest. Come on boys.
