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Part 5 — The impact of climate change on Puerto Rico: Seizing the opportunity

Cade Johnson explores how carbon removal could drive economic growth and resilience.

We’ve been considering climate change, the challenges it brings to Puerto Rico and some of the ways we will be compelled to adapt. Now, let’s return to the root of the problem and see that it reveals its own solution.

The Earth’s cycles are disturbed by human activity on a scale that is difficult to contemplate. The oceans and the atmosphere are so immense that nobody in past generations imagined humanity could possibly wreak changes.

And yet, now that the evidence of this change is before us, we are confronted with the challenge of how to live with it or, better, to reverse it — especially since we have strong indications that living with it will become increasingly nightmarish.

We have increased the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content by 50% over the past century or so, and very simply, to have a chance of slowing or reversing the changes we have begun, we’ll have to take that carbon dioxide back and return it to the Earth’s crust whence it came. It is a level of effort comparable to the entire fossil fuel industries’ efforts of the past 150 years extracting all that material in the first place.

But it is one thing to pump oil out of the ground or dig coal and burn them for energy production with economic benefit — and quite another to extract a thinly diluted trace gas from the air, make it solid and store it away in a process that consumes energy.

Fortunately, nature provides a way to remove carbon dioxide using only water and solar energy — which we have in abundance — green plants. Our tropical environment can grow biomass faster than almost anywhere else in the United States. We could grow fast-converting plants like bamboo in the millions of tons per year (it may seem like we already do!). We could also grow marine algae in our vast and virtually unutilized exclusive economic zone — more than 10 times the area of the island itself.

We already know sargassum, of course, but consider giant kelp instead: It is the fastest-growing multicellular green plant on Earth. It does not grow naturally in tropical seas because they are too warm, but the seas around us are literally miles deep — and kelp might grow very well if we drew up some of that abundant deep, cold and nutrient-rich water.

Growing plants alone is not a climate solution, however. Plants grow, but then they decay, and carbon dioxide returns to the atmosphere. We will have to artificially interrupt that cycle — ever growing but then locking away the carbon. There are already some well-known ways to do that. Biomass can be “cooked.” When it is heated above about 300 degrees Celsius, the biomolecules break down.

In a very simple way, the biomass can be converted to charcoal or biochar (the same thing, differing only in how we intend to use the material). Biochar can be mixed into soil, improving the soil quality both immediately and long-term; it can be mixed in concrete, or it can be stockpiled because it will not naturally decay (but it must be protected from burning or the carbon will go back to the atmosphere!).

If more sophisticated cooking techniques are used, biomass can also be converted into a whole array of organic chemicals — chemicals used in all modern commercial products and that are now derived from fossil fuels.

In the future, when fossil fuel production ends, the world will be starved for organic chemicals. Would Puerto Rico like to have that kind of industry?

Biomass or biochar can also be sunk into the deep oceans. Right now, scientists are very cautious about embracing this idea — because dumping into the oceans has been done irresponsibly in the past. We do not understand deep ocean ecosystems very well — they are difficult to study.

But one of the deepest ocean basins in the world is right off our north coast, and another fabulously deep basin is just to our south. If any place can study and learn to exploit deep oceans, it is Puerto Rico. For the most part, at maximum depth, these basins appear as desolate plains, nearly freezing and almost devoid of life.

If this impression proves to be comprehensively true, then we are surrounded by one of the premier locations in the world for storing carbon.

The world is waking up to the need for carbon dioxide removal. Major governments have not yet made serious commitments to paying for carbon, but large corporations are already paying upwards of $200 per metric ton for carbon dioxide removal. Who would have imagined a decade ago that a cuerda (or nearly an acre) of bamboo could be worth $3,000 per year?

But a bamboo grove can easily yield 10 metric tons of biomass annually — each ton representing the removal of 1.6 tons of carbon dioxide. Puerto Rico has a land area of nearly 3 million cuerdas (more than 2.9 million acres), so growing bamboo on only a quarter of the land could generate more than $2 billion in revenue.

True, that is only 2% of Puerto Rico’s current gross domestic product, but it illustrates that carbon removal already has significant potential economic benefits — before we even begin applying ingenuity to the project.

Offshore, the potential is greater: Kelp has a variety of commercial uses, and while it is difficult to know what kelp yields might be in tropical seas before we try it, there are indications that it could produce three to five times as much biomass per year as bamboo. 

Kelp forests also support vibrant fish populations, so not only can growing seaweed yield carbon dioxide removal revenue, but its presence — and the industry of seafarers who manage it — can also bring in abundant seafood, perhaps turning Puerto Rico into an export economy (even without a chemical industry!). And imagine the tourism potential of vast ocean forests.

Puerto Rico seems to have not yet considered the huge potential of the new carbon removal industry that is being born. And yet our island holds all the cards of a winning hand: tropical sun and seas, a well-educated and motivated workforce, a desire to restore our agrarian (or even fishing) traditions and self-sufficiency, and a keen entrepreneurial drive.

As we think about how to reshape Puerto Rico in the face of climate disruptions, let’s not forget to turn some thought to realizing improvements and making money on the flip.

Author Cade Johnson is a retired chemical engineer (Georgia Tech ’83), and a volunteer with the 501(c)(3) Exaquest Carbon, in California. He has been volunteering with various climate response organizations for almost 10 years, and he has lived in the Caribbean since 2001 — currently in Naranjito, Puerto Rico. Send comments to [email protected].

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This story was written by our staff based on a press release.
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