The U.N. says the Great Barrier Reef is in danger of disappearing. Coral everywhere is under threat—and this startup is trying to save it

“The resilience of the [Great Barrier Reef’s] ability to recover from climate change impacts is substantially compromised,” the report said and noted that without “ambitious, rapid and sustained” intervention the world’s largest coral reef, which has experienced six mass bleaching events due to rising ocean temperatures, is in mortal danger.

The report recommended the Great Barrier Reef be added to the UN’s list of endangered world heritage sites, but Canberra has hit back at the report arguing that Australia’s current government, which took office in May, has already implemented changes the UN report recommends, such as increasing the country’s ambition to curb greenhouse gasses.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek also said Tuesday that it was unfair for the UN to single out the Great Barrier Reef, noting that “if the Great Barrier Reef is in danger, then every coral reef in the world is in danger.”

Well, indeed.

In 2020, scientists at the University of Hawaii reported that warming waters caused by climate change, coupled with acidification and pollution, could kill 70% to 90% of the world’s reefs by 2040. The kill-off would be devastating.

“The death of reefs is as much an ecological tragedy as it is a socio-economic catastrophe,” says Sam Teicher, co-founder and Chief Reef Officer of the Bahamas-based reef restoration startup, Coral Vita.

“A quarter of all marine life depends on the reef ecosystem, while coral reefs generate $2.7 trillion annually in goods and services, through protecting coastlines from storms, sustaining fisheries and powering tourism industries,” he says.

The world has lost roughly 50% of its reef coverage since 2050, due to climate change and over fishing, and efforts to restore coral reefs have struggle to achieve the scale necessary to replenish reefs at the rate they’re declining.

Restoration efforts are falling behind for two key reasons: first, because new coral can take years to grow in the sea nurseries traditionally used for restoration efforts, and second, because many reef restoration teams struggle to secure long-term financing.

Coral Vita looks to solve the financing issue by selling reef restoration as a service to stakeholders—like seafront hotels, governments, insurers, and port authorities—who benefit economically from reefs. The company hopes its Restoration as a Service model will provide more sustainable financing than one-off grant awards, which most reef restoration projects rely on.

Coral Vita also grows its replacement reefs inside climate controlled tanks, rather than wild sea nurseries, which allows the company to more easily manage, maintain and scale its nurseries. “You don’t need to wait for good weather and swim out to check on a tank,” Teicher says.

But perhaps the most significant advantage of growing coral in tanks, as opposed to the sea, is that the water temperature can be changed to match projections of future sea temperatures, helping accelerate evolution in coral offspring to produce what Teicher calls “stress hardened” coral: reefs capable of surviving the decline in ocean viability already locked in by climate change.

“Even if we turned off greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the oceans have so much heat locked in that coral are going to keep dying,” Teicher says. “That’s why it’s essential we scale up restoration, because the cost of inaction is a lot greater than the cost of acting today.”

Eamon Barrett
greeninc.news@gmail.com
@eamonbarrett88

CARBON COPY

Trash to gas

Shell agreed to buy a Dutch biogas manufacturer for nearly $2 billion, becoming the latest oil major to make a multi-billion-dollar acquisition in the “renewable gas” sector. BP and Chevron have both purchased biofuel companies this year, splashing $4.1 billion and $3.15 billion respectively. Denmark’s Nature Energy Biogas, the target of Shell’s acquisition, produces biogas by capturing methane from decomposing trash and agricultural waste. WSJ

Re:insurance

The market for property catastrophe reinsurance is crumbling after a year of extreme weather events, and premiums are set to spike. Multiple reinsurance firms—that is, companies that insure primary insurers—have left the market, after confronting a surge in payouts caused by increasingly inclement weather. Property reinsurance analysts predict the tighter market could inflate prices between 30% and 50% next year. FT

Deaf whales

Woodside Energy is awaiting approval to start probing for natural gas deposits in an area off the coast of Western Australia, using high frequency ultrasound to probe beneath the ocean floor. Deposits in the $12 billion gas field could account for 10% of Australia’s gas exports. But Greenpeace warns the search method could irreparably deafen endangered whales that migrate through the same waters. “A deaf whale is a dead whale,” Greenpeace says, since the mammals rely on echolocation to find partners and food. Woodside says it has conducted studies to prove its ultrasound techniques won’t cause injury to whales. Bloomberg

EU drafts carbon capture rules

The EU released draft plans to certify carbon removal from the atmosphere Monday, but campaigners say the vague regulations leave major loopholes that companies could exploit for greenwashing. Among the key shortfalls, the proposed rules don’t provide a clear timeline for how long captured carbon must be stored in order to be certified “removed” from the atmosphere. The proposals also validate carbon captured methods that only trap new emissions, rather than suck existing pollution straight from the atmosphere. Previous EU rules only qualify direct air capture as “permanent” carbon removal. FT

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Rolls-Royce is building a clean-energy airplane engine, and it just passed its first major test by Prarthana Prakash

Wind farms kill millions of birds each year. Scientists may have found a simple solution: paint turbines black by Ian Mount

Fast-fashion brands claim they’re cleaning up their act for the planet, but their premise might be inherently flawed by Marianna Cerini

The world needs a Marshall Plan to fight climate change–and politicians are failing to show ambition. Business can’t afford to wait by Paul Polman

The Global Methane Pledge could be our only realistic chance to slow down climate change within a few years–but time is already running out by Graeme Malcolm

‘We are treading water:’ An energy crisis is grinding European industry to a halt as the U.S. and China race ahead, Volkswagen warns by Tristan Bove

CLOSING NUMBER

$100 billion

The EU awarded polluting industries $100 billion worth of free carbon credits between 2013 and 2021, the WWF says in a new analysis—more than the $89 billion the bloc’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) charged polluters during the same period. Governments managing ETS schemes often give out a portion of free carbon credits to ensure liquidity and ease costs for participating industries during early stages. But the WWF says the EU attached zero conditions, such as demanding recipients improve energy efficiency, to its free allowances. Some polluters then made billions of dollars in profit by selling their free allowances to other companies.