📖Catalog of Environmental Exposures
This catalog consists of two primary documents. The first, our Catalog of Potential Environmental Exposures, is a comprehensive list and categorization of the exposures or impacts to marine ecosystems — separated by the pelagic region (the upper open ocean) and to the benthic region (the bottom of the ocean) — that could potentially arise from the deployment of Running Tide’s carbon removal system, as it was designed. We intended for this to be a living document that evolves as our carbon removal technologies and mitigation strategies developed, and as the best available science evolves.
Our approach involved an exposure classification system to assess potential environmental impacts or harms. This system categorizes exposures into six sections:
Pelagic Ecology
Pelagic Economic Activity
Benthic Ecology
Benthic Economic Activity
Earth System Impacts
We classified exposures as speculative, substantiated, or consensus based on the level of supporting evidence and agreement within the scientific community. This rigorous assessment allowed us to create a detailed and dynamic environmental exposure document that was instrumental in our project-specific environmental impact assessments.
The second primary document is a review of the aforementioned Catalog of Environmental Exposures, completed by Deloitte in early summer 2023. This summary review was conducted to ensure our consideration of potential exposures was comprehensive, and to provide an independent review of Running Tide’s categorization of these potential impacts (speculative, substantiated, and consensus exposures). This catalog was further reviewed by a number of additional expert groups, including our independent Scientific Advisory Board (convened by Ocean Visions), and benefitted from comments provided by several members of the Deep Ocean Stewardship Initiative (DOSI) Climate Change working group.
In Icealand, Running Tide recognized and demonstrated the importance of working with local scientists and research institutions, experts in regional ecology, to identify risks. In preparation for expanding in Norway, NIVA (Norway’s Research institute for water and the environment) wrote a report to assess the environmental impact of woodchip and calcium carbonate deployments in the Norwegian Sea as a marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) approach.
We also hired Akvaplan Niva, a subsidiary of NIVA in Norway, to evaluate the potential pelagic impact of our interventions and provide mitigation recommendations.
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