The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded $951,463 to the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal for the research project “Piloting a model for community-oriented deliberations on marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR).” Sara Nawaz, Director of Research at the Institute, is the principal investigator (PI) for the grant.

The Sloan Foundation grant will expand an existing project between the Institute and [C]Worthy, a nonprofit ‘focused research organization’ working on quantitative assessments of marine carbon dioxide removal, to carry out a series of real-world mCDR engagement activities in two key locations on the West Coast of the US where early field trials in mCDR are planned.

Interest in marine carbon dioxide removal approaches is growing particularly rapidly given the ocean’s potential for CO2 removal, and through the project Nawaz and co-PI Alicia Karspeck ([C]Worthy) aim to build capacity needed for local decision making on mCDR, helping ensure that community perspectives are accounted for and integrated in mCDR research from the outset.

“Most research to date on marine carbon dioxide removal has been on techno-economic and geophysical aspects,” Nawaz said. “This project offers an opportunity to explore what communities think about mCDR—a critical social aspect—while also creating new models for how communities can actively participate in decision making on this issue. For technologies like this, which have the potential to be both highly impactful from a climate perspective but also potentially socially controversial, we believe this kind of community-oriented engagement research is very necessary.”

With this support from the Sloan Foundation, Nawaz and Karspeck will work to test and refine a novel mCDR engagement model that centers communities and produces locally actionable insights on communities’ hopes, concerns, and priorities regarding mCDR and its future uses.

The project’s expected outcomes are to:

1. Create guidance and templates for engagement that supports community-led decision-making in mCDR;
2. Inform more responsible regional and global mCDR policy by deepening understanding of community priorities in important geographies for possible deployment;
3. Build capacity of local communities in two possible deployment areas to better participate in mCDR decision making; and
4. Explore the role of a non-traditional actor (focused research organizations, like [C]Worthy) in supporting engagement efforts that are oriented to building local decision making capacity.