"The town hall in Akranes, on the west coast of Iceland, filled quickly as locals streamed in to the residents' meeting. The mood was happy, positive, relaxed. In between speeches, a woman sang folk songs while her family played guitar and melodica. Yet when the guest speaker, an American named Marty Odlin, took the stage, he struck a deadly serious tone."
"Odlin, the founder of a US climate startup called Running Tide, had become a well-known figure around Akranes that summer of 2022 in his signature neon beanie and fisherman's flannels. He was setting up a base of operations in a nearby harbor, planning to unleash a counteroffensive against the Godzilla of climate change. Odlin had outlined a plan to create jobs in this former fishing hub of 8,000. He'd need people to help sink huge volumes of biomass in the surrounding ocean."
Running Tide received financial and corporate support from Microsoft, Stripe, Shopify, and venture capital, including a $54 million Series B from Lowercarbon Capital. The company promoted ocean-based carbon removal approaches such as floating micro-forests and sinking biomass to sequester carbon and sell credits to tech firms. Founder Marty Odlin established operations near Akranes, Iceland, promising local jobs and large-scale CO2 removal. The project ultimately resorted to dumping thousands of tons of wood chips into the ocean, prompting scientific, regulatory, and local concerns about environmental harm and the integrity of claimed carbon removals.
Read at WIRED
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]