World’s largest facility to help remove CO2 from the ocean to begin operations in Singapore in 2026
Chin Hui Shan Straits Times Published Aug 24, 2025, 12:00 PM
SINGAPORE – The world’s largest facility to boost the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) is set to begin operations in Singapore in the first quarter of 2026, with initial phases of installation to start by end-September.
The Equatic-1 demonstration plant in Tuas is a collaboration between national water agency PUB and American start-up Equatic, which developed the ocean-based carbon removal technology.
In essence, the technology works by changing the chemistry of seawater it takes in, by removing dissolved CO2 for long-term storage.
When that same volume of seawater is discharged back into the ocean after being processed to preserve the ocean’s chemistry, more CO2 from the atmosphere is able to dissolve in it.
If replicated on a large scale, this would, in theory, enable the ocean to soak up more of the planet-warming gas driving climate change.
However, scientists have warned that such manipulation could have impacts on marine life and the ocean environment.
The ocean covers 70 per cent of the earth, and is already considered a natural store of CO2, absorbing around 30 per cent of CO2 emissions from human activity.
The marine carbon dioxide removal technology, which aims to give the ocean’s natural ability to fight climate change a boost, is attracting investor interest.
On Aug 12, the Catalytic Capital for Climate and Health (C3H), an investment vehicle by Temasek Trust, announced that it was co-leading a US$11.6 million (S$14.9 million) Series A fund raising for Equatic with Kibo Invest.
The latter is a Singapore-based private investment office with a focus on climate technology. Temasek Trust is the philanthropic arm of Singapore’s investment company Temasek.
The investment will support the ongoing engineering scale-up of Equatic’s first commercial facility – previously announced to be in North America – as well as commercialisation, manufacturing and technological development of the technology, C3H said in a statement.
As for the Singapore plant, which takes in seawater from adjacent desalination plants, PUB said that it will initially have the capacity to remove 1 tonne of CO2 per day.
When fully operational, the US$20 million facility will be able to remove 10 tonnes of CO2 from seawater daily.
This is equivalent to taking roughly 870 average passenger cars off the road.
Within the plant, an electrical current is passed through the seawater. This leads to a series of chemical reactions that split the water (H2O) into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O2).
The dissolved CO2 is combined with minerals in seawater like calcium and magnesium to produce limestone and magnesium bicarbonates, which Equatic said can trap the CO2 for at least 10,000 years.
The process mimics the natural formation of seashells, and the solid calcium and magnesium-based materials can either be stored on the ocean floor, or potentially be used for construction materials.
In the meantime, the process also produces hydrogen, which is a clean source of energy. PUB had said that the planned facility could produce 300kg of hydrogen daily, which can power the plant or be used in other industrial applications.
The demonstration plant is co-funded by PUB, the National Research Foundation, Singapore, and the University of California, Los Angeles’ Institute for Carbon Management.
Identifying novel technologies is one way by which PUB is trying to reduce its carbon emissions.
The water agency is also trying to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, such as by putting solar panels on reservoirs, and investing in research and development to reduce energy required in energy-intensive water treatment processes.
The scaling up of the novel technology comes after two smaller pilots proved successful in removing CO2 – one in PUB’s R&D desalination plant in Tuas, and the other in the Port of Los Angeles.
Set up in April 2023, each pilot plant was able to remove 100kg of the greenhouse gas from the ocean each day.
The Straits Times had reported that the Equatic-1 demonstration plant was expected to begin operations in the last quarter of 2024 and be fully operational in 2025.
When asked about the delays, PUB said that additional time was required to finalise the design of the plant’s various systems.
Experts have said that marine carbon dioxide removal is a nascent technology and it remains to be seen how such technology could affect the marine environment and ecology when it is upscaled.
Marine biogeochemist Patrick Martin from NTU’s Asian School of the Environment said that if the technology is deployed at a large-enough scale, it represents a “major manipulation” of the ocean’s chemistry.
“All approaches for marine carbon dioxide removal will cause some degree of change in the dissolved carbon and pH chemistry of seawater, which could impact some marine species,” said Associate Professor Martin. pH is a measure of how acidic something is.
Equatic said that it employs continuous real-time monitoring and periodic laboratory testing of its process operations to ensure compliance with environmental standards.
Dr Karenne Tun, group director of the National Parks Board’s (NParks) national biodiversity centre, said that human interventions can introduce impacts to the marine environment and ecosystems.
She added that the potential impacts from marine carbon dioxide removal will likely be associated with altered ocean chemistry.
However, she said that NParks had noted that the demonstration project will have minimal impact on the environment.
This is because the planned system is designed to process seawater which is then returned to the ocean without altering the ocean chemistry, she said.
“Given that Equatic’s processes do not alter ocean chemistry, the environmental impacts are expected to be minimal if procedures and processes are followed and discharge water quality is validated and monitored,” added Dr Tun.
When the project is ready to be scaled up, NParks will work with PUB, Equatic and other stakeholders to regularly review and ensure that required environmental quality objectives are met, she added.
PUB also said that effluent streams will be measured and treated before discharge into the marine environment to comply with the allowable limits for trade effluent discharge under existing regulations.
An independent consultant has also been engaged by Equatic to conduct a desktop study and simulations to model the impact of untreated discharge, said PUB.
What tech is used for ocean CO2 removal in Singapore facility, set to be the world’s largest?
Chin Hui Shan Straits Times Published Sep 01, 2025, 05:00 AM
SINGAPORE - The largest facility in the world that can help to remove planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) from the ocean, located in Singapore in Tuas, is expected to begin operations in the first quarter of 2026.
It uses technology to change the chemistry of seawater and remove dissolved CO2 so that the water can absorb more CO2 when released back into the ocean, The Straits Times had earlier reported.
The seawater is discharged back into the ocean only after it is processed to preserve the ocean’s chemistry.
Efforts that manipulate natural processes to tackle climate change are known as geoengineering.
Tuas’ Equatic-1 demonstration plant is a collaboration between Singapore’s national water agency PUB and American start-up Equatic, which developed the technology.
ST finds out more about this nascent technology, as well as its benefits and challenges.
What is marine carbon dioxide removal?
Marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) is a broad category that involves using the marine environment to take up and remove atmospheric CO2, said Dr Andrew Lenton, director of Australia’s national science agency Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation’s (CSIRO) carbon dioxide removal programme CarbonLock.
CO2 is the main pollutant driving climate change.
The ocean, which covers 70 per cent of the earth, is one of the world’s largest natural stores of carbon. It can store carbon more effectively and over longer periods than other natural ecosystems, such as forests.
Estimates show that the ocean absorbs around 30 per cent of CO2 emissions from human activity.
mCDR efforts such as the Equatic-1 demonstration plant seek to enhance or accelerate the ocean’s ability to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere.
Why are countries looking to tap mCDR technology?
Climate change – driven by ever-increasing amounts of planet-warming gases being released into the atmosphere from human activities – is fuelling a rise in temperatures and more extreme weather events.
Investments are already being made into technology that can prevent the release of more planet-warming emissions, such as replacing fossil fuel plants with renewable energy.
But scientists have also said that novel solutions are also needed to draw down the CO2 already in the atmosphere.
Dr Asbjorn Torvanger, senior researcher at Norwegian climate research institute Cicero Centre for International Climate Research, told ST that past pollution has left a “carbon debt”.
Given this, ambitious climate policy targets would require large volumes of CO2 to be removed, he added.
“Given the large volume of the ocean and the sizable absorption share of human CO2 emissions by the ocean, the ocean’s CO2 removal potential might be large,” he said.
What are the different approaches to mCDR?
CSIRO’s Dr Lenton said there are mainly two approaches to mCDR – chemical and biological.
The Equatic-1 facility will use the chemical method, he added.
An electrical current is passed through the seawater pumped into the plant from adjacent desalination plants.
This leads to a series of chemical reactions that split the seawater into hydrogen and oxygen. The dissolved CO2 is combined with minerals in seawater like calcium and magnesium to produce solid limestone – essentially trapping the CO2 for at least 10,000 years.
The process mimics the natural formation of seashells. The solid calcium and magnesium-based materials can either be stored on the ocean floor, or potentially be used as construction materials.
Biological methods include farming seaweed or restoring coastal ecosystems like mangroves.
Seaweed absorbs CO2 through photosynthesis. The seaweed may then be harvested or sunk to deep waters to store the carbon for a long time.
Blue carbon ecosystems such as mangroves, wetlands and seagrass, are natural carbon sinks. Restoring these ecosystems would enable them to take in large amounts of carbon.
Chemical approaches are currently the most technologically advanced and scalable techniques based on field trials to date, according to a blue paper commissioned by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy (Ocean Panel) launched in June.
The Ocean Panel is an initiative of world leaders working together towards a sustainable ocean economy.
How does mCDR affect the marine environment?
The answer to this is not immediately clear, but scientists have warned that the environmental impact of mCDR technology warrants further study.
Dr Xu Haoxin, chief consultant of carbon capture at consultancy firm Ramboll, said that the long-term ecological effects of the removal processes on the marine ecosystems are not yet fully understood.
While the concept holds promise, this is a fairly new research field and much more work needs to be done, she added.
The Ocean Panel blue paper also noted that given the interconnectivity and interdependency of different oceanic environments, any intervention is likely to have environmental impacts.
For example, pH disruption to processes like photosynthesis can affect ecosystem services such as biological carbon sequestration (carbon dioxide removal by natural ecosystems), food production and water quality. pH is a measure of acidity and alkalinity.
Marine biogeochemist Patrick Martin from Nanyang Technological University’s Asian School of the Environment previously told ST that Equatic’s technology, if deployed at a large-enough scale, could represent a “major manipulation” of the ocean’s chemistry.
“When you start doing manipulations in the ocean, you change the ocean’s chemistry. Some species might be fine with that, other species might be harmed by it,” Associate Professor Martin said.
Some methods may change the concentrations and ratios of important dissolved elements such as calcium and magnesium, which are essential for marine species like corals to form shells and skeletons, he said. Other methods may increase the concentrations of harmful trace metals in seawater, which might be toxic for many marine species, he added.
Equatic told ST that its technology was “designed with the health of the ocean in mind”.
“Potential impacts on the marine environment are important considerations and our process directly addresses them through built-in safeguards,” it said.
“Years of ongoing research underpin our approach and we continue to run extensive laboratory-based, and full-scale simulation studies to evaluate environmental effects,” said Equatic.
The company added that ongoing studies have indicated no harm to the marine environment when processes are kept within the ocean’s natural limits.
What are the other challenges of mCDR?
Experts said that more research is needed to understand the permanence and scalability of the techniques, as well as their impacts on ecosystems.
While the natural processes upon which mCDR approaches are based are well understood, the potential to scale mCDR to climatically relevant scales is “highly uncertain”, according to the blue paper.
One challenge is the monitoring, reporting and verifying of the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere and associated environmental impacts, said Dr Lenton. This may become more difficult when systems scale up, he added.
Dr Xu said that some mCDR methods, such as those that use electrochemical processes, may also require a lot of energy with the current technologies.
Another challenge may be the public’s attitudes towards these techniques – marine geoengineering may face scepticism due to perceived risks or lack of transparency, she said.
“Further development, rigorous testing, and public engagement are essential before it can be compared meaningfully with mainstream carbon removal solutions or considered for large-scale investment,” she said.
HSBC’s global head of carbon removal technologies Kash Burchett said that it is important for governments to support the development of carbon removal technologies.
This is because such innovations are essential in abating residual emissions that cannot be tackled via conventional methods like clean electrification.
“Not all approaches are equal and each needs to be assessed on its own merits,” said Dr Lenton. “Carbon dioxide removal is not a silver bullet. (But) it is clear that without carbon dioxide removal, there is no pathway to getting to net zero emissions.”
“The increasing urgency of the climate crisis makes it very important to conduct research on such technologies,” said Prof Martin.
“But it’s very important that we do not rely on such technologies instead of decarbonising our societies. It is very important to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at a much faster rate than is currently being done.”
