The Climate Restoration Fund is funding and developing two global projects essential for restoring a safe climate and a livable planet for our children:

Atmospheric CO2 removal

Deploying Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) on a significant scale following best-practice protocols to replicate the 1992 net-zero event (20 Gt CO2 removal) following the Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption.

OIF revives ocean productivity - CO2 removal and fisheries - by replenishing minute amounts of the missing micronutrient, iron. The process, which mimics natural ocean fertilization with iron-rich dust, revives the anemic ocean, feeds the fish allowing them to grow in numbers and size, and, most importantly, removes tens of gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere.

When focused on achieving net-zero (stabilizing CO2 levels around 450-500 ppm), OIF is not required. However, when committed to giving historically safe CO2 levels (280 ppm) to our children while we still have time, OIF is the only known viable pathway to achieve it. Other pathways would require many trillions of dollars, decades and breakthroughs to do so (see this analysis). 

Following Mt. Pinatubo volcanic eruption, in 1992 Nature demonstrated the massive removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, stabilizing CO2 levels for a year. We intend to replicate this natural phenomenon with careful engineering. If successful it could produce net zero again in 2-5 years. Then we can double the removal rate and restore safe CO2 levels by 2050.

We plan to leverage OIF research that has already been done (13 small-scale OIF tests, and the 2012 full-scale OIF test in the Gulf of Alaska) and a careful scientific analysis of the 1992 Pinatubo net-zero event.

We plan to develop the OIF protocols, the equipment needed to implement them, and the measuring tools & methodologies to optimize them. 

In addition, we will manage PR and develop the partnerships and  the social license needed for restoring a safe climate.

 

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Atmospheric Methane removal

Nature removes methane—a potent greenhouse gas—from the atmosphere continuously through oxidation. We can now replicate and accelerate the natural process and, at low cost, reduce atmospheric methane to pre-industrial levels. Doubling the current rate of methane removal would: 

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1. Cut atmospheric methane levels in half—and bring them back to pre-industrial levels

2. ​Rewind global warming by roughly eight years; 

3. Protect humanity in case today’s methane burst becomes serious. 

Read our Plan for Full-Scale Methane Oxidation Implementation - To Halve Methane Levels by 2030