Last month, YCNCC published a Research Update on the Center’s Blue Carbon OAE initiative, which launched last summer with funding support from Builders Vision, CarbonFix, and the Fund for Science and Technology. YCNCC News recently sat down with project lead Gabby Kitch and principal investigators Yale Professor Earth & Planetary Sciences Noah Planavsky and YCNCC Co-Director Peter Raymond to learn more about the project and its potential impact.
YCNCC: First off, tell us what exactly is Blue Carbon OAE?
GK: Mangroves are well known for locking carbon away in their biomass and soils, but there is a second carbon story happening in the water that current science and carbon markets have not quantified. When organic matter breaks down in mangrove sediments, it triggers chemical reactions that generate alkalinity in surrounding coastal waters. That alkalinity converts carbon dioxide into a stable, dissolved form of inorganic carbon that persists in the ocean for thousands of years. We call this process Blue Carbon OAE.
The YCNCC is building the science and commercial infrastructure to properly quantify this inorganic carbon. In practice, this means field monitoring in active mangrove restoration sites around the world, and parallel work with carbon credit registries to develop rigorous, credible protocols for measuring, verifying, and crediting these alkalinity fluxes.
YCNCC: Why is this important, and what is the project’s impact potential?
NP: Mangroves provide real benefits to communities, including storm protection and promoting healthy fisheries. However, about 75% of mangrove restoration projects fail, largely because there is not a sustained revenue stream to allow for maintenance. Blue Carbon OAE corrects for this by providing a revenue stream projects can claim every year.
Our modeling shows that up to 40-50% of the total carbon benefit from mangrove systems comes from alkalinity fluxes that are not quantified or credited by current protocols. Quantifying this alkalinity production unlocks significant additional revenue for projects already proven to protect coastlines, support fisheries, and sustain local communities.
Blue Carbon OAE can also serve as an entry point into marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) more broadly. Mangroves are ecosystems people understand and value, governments already want to restore, and coastal communities depend on. For investors, regulators, and communities who are skeptical of more novel mCDR interventions, mangroves are a credible and familiar first step, one that you can see, touch, and measure. Demonstrating that we can rigorously quantify and credit the full scope of their carbon benefit creates a template for how the ocean’s natural carbon storage capacity can be financed at scale.
