1(self.webpackChunk_N_E=self.webpackChunk_N_E||[]).push([[6504],{98855:function(e,n,t){(window.__NEXT_P=window.__NEXT_P||[]).push(["/writing/innovation-grants-2026",function(){return t(63291)}])},63291:function(e,n,t){"use strict";t.r(n),t.d(n,{__N_SSG:function(){return f},default:function(){return g},markdoc:function(){return u}});var a=t(67294),i=t(1272),o=t(4211),r=t(84266),s=t(12591),l=t(3486);let c={tags:(0,r.w)(s),nodes:(0,r.w)(l),functions:(0,r.w)({}),...(0,r.w)({})},d=new o.ZP.Tokenizer({allowComments:!0}).tokenize('---\ntype: announcement\nhref: /writing/innovation-grants-2026\ntitle: Frontier funds four projects to advance safe, scalable ocean alkalinity enhancement\ndescription: \'These projects address key technical hurdles preventing Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) from safely scaling.\'\nsocial:\n image: /images/writing/oae_innovation_grants/social.png\nimage: /images/cambridge/primary.jpg\ndate: 2026-09-03\npathway:\n - marine_carbon_removal\n---\n\n[Frontier](/) has awarded $2.1M in grants to the University of St Andrews, the University of Cambridge, \\[C\\]Worthy, and Submarine Scientific on behalf of Stripe, Google, and Shopify, with funding support from ClimateWorks Foundation. These projects address key technical hurdles preventing Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) from safely scaling.\n\n### OAE is a high-potential solution that has moved from lab to field\n\n[OAE](/assets/ocean-alkalinity-enhancement-primer.pdf) increases the ocean\'s ability to absorb carbon dioxide (COâ) from the atmosphere by adding alkalinity to surface waters. The additional alkalinity allows the ocean to store more carbon as bicarbonate, a stable dissolved form of carbon. OAE â and in particular approaches that add naturally occurring alkaline minerals â has the potential to remove several billion tons of COâ with a credible path to costs of under $100 per ton.\n\nA few years ago, the field was still working to establish whether this process could deliver measurable carbon removal outside the lab. Since then, field trials from Ebb Carbon [in Sequim Bay](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/environmental-engineering/articles/10.3389/fenve.2025.1641277/full) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution [in the Gulf of Maine](https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/oae-prelim/) have demonstrated that the ocean can take up COâ from the atmosphere in response to added alkalinity â and that this process can be controlled and measured.\n\nNow, early deployments have also confirmed that, in well-characterized sites with appropriate safety thresholds and protocols that account for uncertainties, it is possible to confidently measure this carbon removal for commercial buyers. For example, in 2025, Planetary delivered the [world\'s first verified OAE credits](https://www.planetarytech.com/the-worlds-first-verified-oae-credits/) under [Isometric\'s protocol for OAE from coastal outfalls](https://registry.isometric.com/protocol/ocean-alkalinity-enhancement/1.1).\n\nThe question is no longer whether OAE can work, but how to deploy it efficiently and at the scale required for meaningful climate impact.\n\n### Technical bottlenecks remain for scaling OAE\n\nGetting OAE to its next phase of deployment requires solving three technical bottlenecks:\n\n* **Identifying the most scalable, suitable mineral feedstocks.** Scaling OAE requires access to a large volume of low-emission alkaline feedstocks. In addition to ongoing innovation around the production of [zero-carbon lime](/writing/zero-carbon-lime-grants), we are also interested in other, non-calcium-based mineral sources of alkalinity that are available at large volumes, can effectively dissolve, and can be produced with low life-cycle emissions.\n\n* **Adding alkalinity safely and efficiently.** Chemical conditions change most rapidly where alkaline material mixes with seawater. This can lead to ecosystem hazards and the unwanted formation of precipitates, which means that some of the added alkalinity can be lost before it removes COâ. Operators need better ways to predict conditions that lead to precipitation and design discharge strategies that avoid them. This is particularly important for OAE scalability because precipitation risk increases with increased dosing rates.\n\n* **Finding cheaper and more scalable ways to measure and verify carbon removal.** Early OAE deployments have relied on intensive field sampling and computationally expensive models. That level of monitoring is appropriate while the field is building evidence and learning from early projects. But to reach climate-relevant scale, OAE will need to develop robust and scalable Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) tools that quantify carbon removal and uncertainty without making projects prohibitively expensive to operate.\n\nThe four selected projects each tackle one or more of these challenges and will share their research through open-access deliverables that will help ongoing OAE deployments. These projects also represent the first grants from Frontier\'s refreshed [Innovation Program](/apply/innovation), launched earlier this year.\n\n\nThe four selected OAE projects mapped to Frontierâs Innovation Program target areas. {% .caption %}\n\n### Meet the projects\n\n{% prose-inset %}\n\n{% project-blog-description "climsup_st_andrews" pathway="" /%}\n{% project-blog-description "climsup_cambridge" pathway="" /%}\n{% project-blog-description "climsup_cworthy" pathway="" /%}\n{% project-blog-description "climsup_submarine" pathway="" /%}\n\n{% /prose-inset %}\n'),h=o.ZP.parse(d,{slots:!0}),p=h.attributes.frontmatter?i.ZP.load(h.attributes.frontmatter):{},{components:m}=(0,r.J)(c);var f=!0;let u={frontmatter:p};function g(e){let n=e.markdoc;return o.RZ.react(n.content,a,{components:{...m,...e.components}})}}},function(e){e.O(0,[6130,2649,8391,4321,2222,3061,608,4908,3303,8036,951,3211,2645,2591,2888,9774,179],function(){return e(e.s=98855)}),_N_E=e.O()}]);
Line numbers count LF bytes from the start of the resource, as the search results do. Vendor segments are library code the classifier recognised; they are stored but not indexed. Bytes are shown as Latin1 characters, one per byte.