Re-balancing the Earth’s Natural Carbon Cycle; Greening the Deserts of the Oceans through Tele-illumination

ECOPIA^TM (Earth Climate Optimisation Productivity Island Array) is a global solution to the anthropogenic climate change problem, without the risks of engineering the environment itself. Led by Ecopia Marine Ltd, and MyOcean Resources Ltd., ECOPIA^TM empowers the natural primary production capacity of the oceans solely through the provision of light. The programme provides a global Nature Based Carbon Management Solution (NBCMS) removing the excess atmospheric CO₂, de-acidifying the ocean’s waters, creating new sustainable fisheries, and importantly allowing the economies of the world to continue to grow and prosper, https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=O7hbQVbpojI.

ECOPIA^TM’s global Nature Based Carbon Management Solution (NBCMS) effects the natural capture and storage of carbon, enabling the control and regulation of CO₂ levels in the atmosphere via natural mechanisms. Many nature based solutions have significant uncertainties that largely come about from the practise of engineering the composition of the environment. ECOPIA^TM takes a different approach, that of channelling light down to the depths where there are plenty of naturally determined nutrients and seed population. Through simply providing light and nothing more, ECOPIA^TM provides no mechanism for a preferential pressure on the naturally determined biodiversity of the light cultured ecosystem.

The ECOPINs (Earth Climate Optimisation Productivity Island Nodes) that make up ECOPIA^TM will be located in the great oligotrophic gyres of the world’s oceans. These otherwise minimally productive gyres are growing at a rate of 80 million hectares (800,000 km²) per year, at the cost of productive ocean areas. Taking the, perhaps pessimistic, view that the world as a whole can only achieve a static anthropogenic fossil fuels usage by the year 2030, then around 100 ECOPINs will be required; this is derived from the approximately 100 Megatonnes uptake of carbon as atmospheric CO₂ to be achieved per ECOPIN per year, or 10 Gigatonnes per year by ECOPIA^TM in total.

As a modular, scalable solution made up of ECOPINs, which themselves are modular, scalable, floating structures, each ECOPIN will take up approximately 2,000 km² of ocean surface, just 0.25% of the otherwise annual rate of decrease of productive ocean area. Of course as a scalable system, if greater reductions in fossil fuels usage can be achieved then the size of ECOPIA^TM reduces approximately linearly.

Having worked out how to supercharge the combustion side of the Earth’s carbon cycle through the incredible ingenuity of the industrial revolution it is not surprising to find that there are NBCMSs for supercharging the photosynthetic side of this natural cycle and rebalancing the system. Ecopia Marine and MyOcean Resources have a solution to the global problem of excess anthropogenic carbon; the Earth’s oceans are indeed the true lungs of our world and we are committed to engaging this ocean-based solution to let the oceans save our planet.