A New Pilot Project Opens the Path to Net-Zero by 2030

And to the possibility of restoring preindustrial CO2 levels by 2050

In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. The eruption was one of the largest of the 20th century; Pinatubo’s ash cloud circled the globe. Temperatures dropped. Then something happened that took scientists decades to fully understand.

Mt Pinatubo Eruption, June 15, 1991. USGS

For a brief window in 1992, Earth achieved something we have been struggling toward for decades: net-zero CO2 emissions. Yes, net-zero was achieved for a year. The Keeling Curve, that relentless upward march of atmospheric carbon that has defined our era, went flat. That shows that the emissions we did release that year, about 20 gigatons of it, was removed from the air. Not thanks to clever policy or technology. But because a volcano, by accident, did something extraordinarily powerful.

The Keeling curve showing the Pinatubo CO2 pause after the eruption: net-zero for more than a year.

We’ve spent years trying to understand exactly what happened and why. What we found changes everything about how I think we will solve the climate crisis.

The Eddy in the Ocean

Here’s what the data now shows: Pinatubo’s iron-rich ash didn’t fall just anywhere in the ocean. It landed in a specific marine structure: a recurring, 300-kilometer-diameter ocean eddy, or circular current, in the South China Sea. This one is “downwelling,” which means it concentrates, traps, and sinks whatever falls into it. Our preprint article gives more detail.

Iron is the missing nutrient in much of the world’s ocean. Without it, phytoplankton, the microscopic ocean plants that form the base of the marine food chain, cannot photosynthesize. Add iron, and they bloom. Bloom, and they pull CO2 out of the atmosphere at massive scale, converting it into organic matter that eventually sinks and dissolves in the deep ocean.

Pinatubo didn’t save the climate. But it accidentally ran the experiment. And the results were extraordinary.

This wasn’t a one-time fluke. Similar massive CO2 drawdowns followed eruptions in 1580 and 1815. We now have evidence that these events also deposited iron-rich ash into ocean eddies. In the same period, six other large eruptions had no such effect on CO2. Wind patterns show that their ash fell far from eddies.

Then in 2004, a scientific experiment called EIFEX deliberately added iron to a Southern Ocean eddy and documented exactly the kind of CO2 removal the theory would predict.

Nature has shown us the mechanism. Three times by volcano. Once by design. The question is no longer whether this works. The question is how we can replicate it at scale. Deliberately, safely, and verifiably.

The caldera in August 1991. USGS

The Case for Ocean Iron Fertilization

The math is both humbling and hopeful.

If we successfully replicated the Pinatubo CO2 pause, and optimize the process a bit, we could achieve net-zero emissions by 2030. That’s net-zero In 4 years, not 24.

Sound impossible? Consider this: Pinatubo removed about 20 Gt of CO2. With intelligent scale-up, we expect to remove at least 30 Gt, which would compensate for continuing emissions. Then we have net-zero.

Continuing at that rate, we will have restored pre-industrial CO2 levels by 2050.

Localized Ocean Fertilization (LOF) is the deliberate replication of what happened post-Pinatubo, The critical insight is the word localized. We don’t need to fertilize the whole ocean as many assume. We need to identify the right eddies and work within them. Downwelling eddies that concentrate phytoplankton and carry their biocarbon to depth exist in about 1% of the ocean’s surface area.

At that scale, LOF is not just climatically significant. It becomes economically significant. Hundreds of corporations and countries have made public net-zero commitments and collectively budgeted billions of dollars to fulfill those commitments. They need verified carbon credits to do so. A working LOF operation would produce those credits at costs that are potentially far below anything currently available. And at a scale that actually bends the CO2 curve down—benefiting all our children and nature.

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Continuing at that rate, we will have restored pre-industrial CO2 levels by 2050.

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The Measurement Breakthrough

For 36 years, roughly since the “iron hypothesis” was first proposed, and almost exactly since Pinatubo, ocean iron fertilization has remained stuck at the level of scientific curiosity rather than operational solution. The reason is simple and frustrating: we couldn’t measure it well enough.

To understand and optimize a process, you need feedback. You need to know, quickly and accurately, whether what you did worked. Traditional techniques for measuring oceanic CO2 removal are expensive, slow, and imprecise, often returning results months later with uncertainty that makes operational decisions nearly impossible.

We’ve developed something different.

Our patent-pending Atmospheric CO2 Perimeter Flux (ACPF) technique will measure CO2 removal from the atmosphere surrounding an eddy, using instruments and satellite data to detect the flux in hours rather than weeks. It is designed to deliver significantly higher accuracy while costing less than one-hundredth the cost of conventional methods. We’ve already validated the concept using data from NASA’s orbiting carbon observatories.

This isn’t a minor improvement. It’s what turns LOF from a hypothesis into an engineering project—one we can actually build.

What the Pilot Will Show

We are preparing a pilot project designed to answer the questions that matter most to scientists, funders, and future carbon credit buyers alike.

How will we replicate the results of the 2004 EIFEX study, demonstrating measurable CO2 removal from a downwelling eddy, accelerated by iron addition? How will we measure that removal with enough accuracy and speed to guide optimization? How will we do it within the bounds of existing environmental regulation—EPA, London Protocol, London Convention—with safety provisions that hold up to scrutiny?

And critically: How will we bring the traditional environmental critics along? The old full-basin OIF concept faced warranted skepticism from conservation communities worried about unintended ecological consequences. We take that seriously. Part of what the pilot will demonstrate is that localized, carefully monitored iron fertilization in specific eddies is geo-biomimicry.

We are replicating what volcanoes have done occasionally for millions of years. We would only do it where it removes the most CO2, with the minimum intervention, and with continuous safety and performance monitoring—none of which nature does.”

We also aim to demonstrate that science supports the key hypotheses: the behavior of downwelling eddies, the role of nitrogen-fixing bacteria, the durability of CO2 sequestration, and the reliability of our sensor suite. We have a publication in peer review, and anticipate more as we progress. Further, we aim to open the door with a carbon credit certification body willing to evaluate LOF credits.

If the pilot succeeds on these fronts, LOF moves from proof-of-concept to operational readiness. Two parallel development tracks will then accelerate scale-up: optimizing iron fertilization procedures for larger and multiple eddies, and cultivating the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that make this process self-sustaining over the long term.

Let’s start now

Net-zero by 2030 sounds like a political slogan. I’ve come to believe it’s a physical possibility because nature has already achieved it and shown us how. I promise you that we’re not giving up until we achieve it.

The CO2 record doesn’t lie. In 1992, the planet briefly balanced its carbon books. It happened because iron-rich ash fell into the right eddies at the right time. We are not waiting for the next volcano.

The pilot will cost $5 million. That’s the price of finding out whether the most elegant, scalable, nature-proven carbon removal mechanism on the planet is ready to be brought to scale.

I think it is. The data says it is. Now we prove it.