Corporates to Focus on Blue Carbon in Tokyo

Hatch Blue is organising an event in Tokyo on 11 March to gather investors, industry leaders, and policymakers to explore scaling ocean-based carbon removal. This event follows a new study published in Nature that details how to measure the amount of carbon captured in the sediment beneath seaweed farms.

Seaweed farming?has been cited as a nature-based climate solution, but?quantifying its carbon benefits has been challenging. Establishing a baseline for measuring carbon sedimentation is important to understanding seaweed's role in ocean-based carbon removal and mitigation. While this doesn't resolve debates about the financial feasibility of scaling seaweed farming for carbon sequestration, it provides a foundation for assessing its broader environmental and economic value.

One practical outcome of this work is an improved focus on data collection regarding seaweed ecosystem services. Beyond carbon storage, regenerative seaweed farming contributes to:

• Water quality improvements
• Habitat restoration
• Nutrient cycling

Seaweed's greatest climate impact may lie in its role as a feedstock for products such as bioplastics, biostimulants, and methane-reducing livestock feed, each of which can reduce emissions by displacing more carbon-intensive alternatives. However, realizing these benefits depends on scaling production cost-efficiently, additional product trials, and integrating cultivated seaweed into established industrial supply chains, all of which remain significant challenges.

The upcoming event in Tokyo will focus on issues related to monitoring, costs, and products. The challenge now is to turn this growing attention into practical, well-regulated strategies without losing sight of the scientific and economic realities.