(gentle brooding music) - Climate change is real.

- The problem is huge.

- I think the most important thing from this work is for people to realize how critically important the ocean is.

- Carbon capture is a complement to decarbonization.

Both have to go hand in hand.

- It's just satisfying just to see things moving along now versus talking about 'em.

(chuckles) (gentle music) - [Announcer] "Bay Area Bountiful" is about agriculture.

It's about feeding us.

It's about land and water.

It's about the health of our planet.

It's about stories that matter.

(bright music) "Bay Area Bountiful."

Cultivate.

Celebrate.

Connect.

- [Announcer] "Bay Area Bountiful" is made possible in part by Rocky The Free Range Chicken and Rosie The Original Organic Chicken, the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, Made Local Magazine, and Sonoma County Go Local, and through the generous support of Sonoma Water.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] In the San Francisco Bay Area, we are a maritime region.

Our nearby oceans and bay influence everything in our lives, the air we breathe, the water we drink, and sometimes, even the weather that leads to droughts and floods.

Here, we are literally living on the edge of climate change as sea level rise now directly impacts the 40 cities and 9 counties that are reached by bay waters.

Climate change is here.

How will we keep our heads above water?

(gentle music) - The thought of impending sea level rise, that's terrifying.

(laughs) - I think that's something that seems to be an immediate concern, is that we're going to have to start dealing with the rising water and how we're going to end up losing a lot of land because of that.

So.

- [Narrator] The wide open waters of San Francisco Bay become shallow at its southern edge where rich marshlands once thrived.

(gentle music) Embarking from the Alviso slough boat ramp on summer afternoons at high tide, Santa Clara County Parks conduct sightseeing tours of this little known waterway, and educates the public about current challenges.

- We add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, which traps heat, warms and expands ocean water, causing sea levels to rise in San Francisco Bay.

And that's important because the community of Alviso sits 13 feet below sea level.

Visible from our parking lot for the next several years will be the construction that you see called the South Bay Shoreline Project.

And they're constructing a levee from Alviso Marina to Coyote Creek.

The purpose of the levee is to protect from coastal flooding and sea level rise.

- [Narrator] Construction of the new levee is overseen by the US Army Corps of Engineers.

- Obviously, the South San Francisco Bay Shoreline is very vulnerable to future sea level rise.

And the larger Shoreline Phase I Project, we are looking to build four miles of levee, so those will continue to the east behind me.

Working in this general vicinity poses a lot of complicated issues that our contractors working through the current operations have built temporary cofferdams around the site to displace the water so we can overexcavate where the levee foundation is going to go.

- [Narrator] The first phase will enclose a long gap between existing certified levees.

- The Guadalupe River and Coyote Creek, those are already 100-year certified levees.

And so by construction of the Shoreline Phase I Project, we'll be able to connect that and meet that to provide for the coastal storm risk management.

- The flood risk management includes constructing engineered levees to 15.2 feet high.

Benefiting is definitely the Santa Clara-San Jose Regional Wastewater Facility.

Also, the community of Alviso, a community where much of the land has subsided and is below sea level, has a history of devastating flooding in the area.

There's an existing risk, and that risk is just going to get worse as we move into the future due to sea level rise.

The current estimated project cost is around $545 million, and of that, the local sponsors are responsible for around 400 million of that.

And so our local partners on this project are the California Coastal Conservancy, the US Fish & Wildlife Refuge, and the Santa Clara Valley Water District.

- [Narrator] One long-time Valley Water Board member is also a native of Alviso with deep roots in the community.

- I'm an activist in Alviso all my life.

I'm so supportive of the shoreline, and I'm so proud of the Santa Clara Valley Water District and its employees, and our board of directors who all voted to support it.

It's been a tough road.

Government has never been kind to Alviso, because all water flows here, and we're the ones that took all the damage and all the heartache.

That's what disadvantaged communities go through because no one represents us to tell us the truth.

My dad was the first one born here in 1916.

Then when the cannery was operating here in Alviso called the Bayside Canning Company, and that's where everybody worked at the time, it's a great place to be brought up, you know, because we had all these environmental opportunities and recreation.

We learned to swim by they just throw you in and that's the way it was.

You know, it was like a Huckleberry Finn.

Everybody here was a disadvantaged community.

We didn't know it until you go other places.

(gentle music) So anyway, we have a history of flooding.

I've lost everything I own and our family, '56, '58, '83.

(gentle music continues) In Alviso, it was up to eight foot, destroyed this whole community.

It was gone.

That's why, today, you have to build 13 feet high with the FEMA requirements.

But the Shoreline Project, this is the biggest project, as far as I understand, west of the Everglades.

It'll protect this community, but they didn't do it for Alviso.

They did it for the commuters, the business people, and Levi's Stadium, the homes, hospitals, schools, and Silicon Valley, which is worth billions.

(tractor engine rattling) So it's a very, very important project and it raises the levees up and it makes them engineered, which then makes 'em more reliable and more safe.

It's a blessing to have it.

(gentle music) - In addition, it's a unique levee in that it's not just steeply sloped on both sides.

The north facing side is gradually sloped.

They will plant native plants on it to enhance the wildlife habitat for the endangered species that live here.

- [Narrator] As native plants take root, habitat for the endangered Ridgway's rail and salt marsh harvest mouse will become plentiful again.

- We're going to be restoring around 2,800 acres of former salt ponds, implementing ecotone into the design.

A sloped levee going out to the bay provides transitional habitat.

And then, also, as sea level rises over the longer term, it'll allow for that marsh habitat to migrate up that slope.

And so it provides an immediate benefit for the ecosystem as well as a longer term benefit that'll be more resilient for sea level rise.

- There's five reaches in Shoreline Phase I, and 1 through 3 is currently in construction and will be continuing through January 2024.

And the remainder reaches, 4 through 5, are currently in design.

And Shoreline Phase II is currently in City of Palo Alto, and will take about five years for completion for the feasibility study.

And then a future Phase III is in the City of Sunnyvale.

(gentle music) - It's going to take 15 years to have the flood risk management and the ecosystem restoration completed, as well as another 10 years beyond that for making sure that the habitat's forming in the way it needs to.

- You'll be able to go out, walk along the levee, and enjoy the new restored marsh habitat and then the wetlands.

I was at a public meeting, and one of the residents had mentioned, "Thank you.

Thank you for working on this project.

And by seeing this project come through, we won't have to worry about floods."

And just hearing that is why I do this job.

(gentle music) - One of the sad things that would happen if we lose kelp and also other algae is they are what takes up most of the carbon in the atmosphere.

Most of the plants that suck in carbon are in the ocean.

It's not actually our forests and trees.

(gentle music) - Where we are, Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, this is a federal marine protected area, part of NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

And we're a system of federal marine protected areas that protect some of our nation's most prized underwater jewels, both fresh and marine water areas.

And the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary is one of the most productive areas on the West Coast.

We have incredible fisheries and marine life, from the tiny microscopic plankton all the way up to sea birds and whales and white sharks.

And this is a very rich, valued ecosystem for not only the animals, but also for communities and people.

Along the Greater Farallones Coast between Sonoma and Mendocino, we have bull kelp forests, which are very rich habitat near shore growing from 10 to 60 feet underwater.

And this kelp forest ecosystem supports invertebrates and fishes, which supports commercial, recreational fisheries, as well as recreation, and indigenous practices and cultural practices that are valued by our coastal communities.

In addition to kelp being an incredible ecosystem for marine life, it also plays a role in climate change.

- We know that marine protected areas conserve biodiversity and increase the abundance of marine organisms and protect habitats.

And a number of the habitats that marine protected areas protect also absorb carbon dioxide.

So we have habitats like salt marsh and sea grass, and even kelp.

These are photosynthesizing plants and algae, and so they absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen.

And when they do that, they actually accumulate carbon in their tissues and then into the sediments that the roots of those plants are holding in place.

And so when we protect these coastal areas and prevent them from being impacted by human development, that means that these carbon dioxide sponges are able to continue doing what they do naturally.

And what we really wanted to learn more about at the Farallones Sanctuary is what role does kelp play in carbon sequestration?

So we did a study at the Farallones Sanctuary and we basically found out that the kelp in our sanctuary absorbs about 600 metric tons of carbon dioxide every year.

That's equivalent to about 500 cars driving for a whole year.

There are global studies that indicate that kelp around the world altogether absorb enough carbon dioxide that's equivalent to about 10% of the United States emissions in 2019.

So it's not insignificant, but it's a role that the oceans play that is often not talked about and is not included in climate policies and climate mitigation discussions.

Kelp is extremely important for so many other reasons than carbon sequestration.

It's a foundation species.

It's like the redwoods in a redwood forest.

Without kelp, you don't have really much marine life at all here off our coast.

Kelp is also culturally significant.

We know that people have relied on kelp as food and for cultural practices for thousands of years.

Kelp, we also know, alters the nearshore environment, meaning we know that it dampens wave energy.

We have some studies that indicate that ocean acidification is not so severe in a kelp bed, so it offers refuge for organisms from ocean acidification.

- [Narrator] Unfortunately, these amazing ecosystems have been battered by a multitude of maladies over the last decade.

In 2013, sea star wasting syndrome wiped out the sunflower starfish, which, in turn, allowed the purple urchin population to explode by 6,000%, decimating kelp forests.

That was followed by continual marine heat waves and the warm waters of an El Nino.

- All these cascading effects led to about a 90% decline of bull kelp on the Sonoma-Mendocino Coast, up to 95% loss in some areas, which has been devastating for the ecosystem, devastating for the communities that rely on a healthy kelp forest ecosystem.

- And it's really critical that we restore the kelp that we had before this latest marine heat wave.

- [Narrator] Thankfully, California Congressman Jared Huffman was able to secure $2 million in funding in the 2022 appropriations bill to put towards restoring the kelp forests.

- At the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, in partnership with the Greater Farallones Association, we have brought together a huge collaboration of many different partners to really focus on the issue of kelp loss in California.

- We're working with the California Ocean Protection Council, the State of California Fish and Wildlife Department, and California Sea Grant, and many other nonprofit partners and academia to carry out the kelp restoration.

- We know it's critically important to bring that kelp back.

And so we're investing a lot of time and energy right now in better understanding what has driven kelp loss and what might impact the sustainability and the health of our kelp forest moving forward.

And we are moving forward with actually in-the-water kelp restoration to bring kelp back through various methods including removing urchins, which are preventing the kelp from being able to grow, and potentially seeding, so putting out kelp spores into the water to encourage the kelp forest to come back.

- There also could be attempts to bring in baby kelp that's cultivated in the lab to outplant to some of the sites as well.

Kelp is extremely resilient, and in the right ocean conditions, when it's nice and cold, can grow up to 12 inches a day.

And so there's a lot of hope.

(gentle music) - I think the most important thing from this work is for people to realize how critically important the ocean is.

The ocean regulates our climate.

The ocean is absorbing so much of our carbon emissions.

The ocean produces so much of our food.

We have got to put our focus on these critical ocean ecosystems that really sustain life on earth.

And in fact, every third breath that we take, we can thank the ocean for that oxygen, because the ocean produces about 30% of our oxygen as well.

So it's now our turn to take care of the ocean for taking care of us.

And that's really what I see our collective role as, is protecting the ocean from harmful impacts so that it can continue to protect us.

(gentle music) - So in terms of thinking about the future, I think about supporting initiatives and companies which are investing in technologies, initiatives to support the reduction of climate change.

- And there's a lot of good research, a lot of really good companies that are coming up that do great work that's really going to help with climate change.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Our future relationship with the ocean will be, as it always has been, complex.

Along with concerns of rising sea levels and the challenges of maintaining a healthy ecosystem for aquatic life, the ocean may also offer opportunities to reduce and even reverse CO2 emissions.

- The ocean absorbs about a third of our carbon dioxide emissions, and it does that naturally, just through exchanging carbon dioxide with the air.

- Since humans have begun emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere with the dawn of industrial civilization, we've been soaking up carbon dioxide into the ocean.

- If we can pull carbon dioxide out of the water, then that basically makes the ocean as a sponge more thirsty for that carbon dioxide.

It's like if you were to wring out a sponge, it's now able to soak in more water.

That's the same situation with the ocean.

If we can remove some of that carbon dioxide, it can then absorb that much more from the atmosphere.

- Behind me, the team is at our lab here at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

This is our first system.

It's a pilot system.

It captures one ton of CO2 per year.

- And we're going to have a chance to look at the hardware, and the entire engine of this process is right here.

It's a unit that performs electrodialysis.

It dissociates water molecules into protons and basic units of OH minus.

And the pH of the water has been altered such that the dominant form of carbon in the water is dissolved CO2 gas, so the CO2 gas wants to bubble out of the water.

Cory's going to tell us about how the Captura system operates, and he's going to describe a little bit about how it works as we begin to start up the operation.

- Yeah.

So I'm just going to flip the switch here.

That's going to start sending our seawater through the system.

It's going to run through these thick gray hoses and it's, for now, just going to run back into the water tank.

Then I'm going to start up these pumps, which will send acid into the water line, which will allow us to start removing CO2.

(gentle music) Look okay?

(gentle music continues) (water splashing) Is it increasing?

(coworker speaking faintly) We're seeing the flow rate of gas coming out of the second pump increasing, which means that we're getting more CO2 out of the water, which means the acid is doing the trick.

- Oxygen, nitrogen, here's carbon dioxide.

So that's our CO2 extraction peak right there.

So the entire process uses nothing more than the seawater itself, plus a source of renewable electricity from solar and wind power to drive the entire process of extracting carbon dioxide as a gas from seawater.

The process is environmentally friendly in that it uses no extra feedstocks other than ocean water and produces no byproducts.

It simply produces clean decarbonized ocean water.

- [Narrator] Once the CO2 is captured, what do we do with it?

Well, one option is to put it back in the ground where it came from.

- We have reservoirs in geological strata around the world that are more than enough, more than large enough to sequester the CO2 that we capture.

It's simple physics.

We can simply put back into these reservoirs what we took out of it.

Here in the lab, we'll be building a 100-ton system, which will capture 100 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

That'll be operating later this year.

But to make the scale large enough to reach relevance for mitigation of the climate emergency, we need to go to the megaton and then to the gigaton scale.

- In the next couple of months, we're going to be taking this down to the ocean at Newport Beach in California where Caltech has a facility.

We'll put the Captura system on a raft.

We'll power it using renewable electricity from the solar panel that we have here.

And then we'll start pulling in ocean water on a continuous basis, running it through our process.

- That'll be our first chance to really be out in the ocean where there's day to day variability in the ocean currents, variability in the amount of solar energy that's collected.

So we'll be able to see how, you know, the system operates on a day-night cycle over many days.

So that'll be very exciting to see how things operate really on the water.

- [Narrator] The scientists at Captura are clear though, that this technology is just one small part in any plan to address climate change.

- Carbon capture is a complement to decarbonization.

Both have to go hand in hand.

- We need to stop emissions and we need to remove legacy CO2.

But stopping every single emission on the planet is really, really difficult.

So if we can remove a CO2 molecule from the atmosphere and put it back underground where it came from, that's the equivalent of not emitting a CO2 molecule.

- The IPCC Report has some very, very sobering implications for the rise in carbon emissions and the rise in temperatures that accompanies carbon emissions.

And I think it's fair to say that it is probably not possible to achieve the goals that the IPCC Report sets out in the next five years or so.

Longer term though, I'm optimistic that we can draw down carbon dioxide in the atmosphere on a longer time scale that will bring us back into the realm that's specified and forecast in the IPCC Report.

When I was starting out in science as a graduate student, the world had approximately one megawatts worth of solar generating capacity.

And today, this month, the world has just approached its first terawatt of solar power generating capacity, which is a billion times larger than when I was a student.

So we've seen an example in the solar power field of tremendous scaling from the lab scale, from a tiny scale, which wasn't significant for energy generation, all the way up to being a major contributor to the future energy supply.

If we can grow carbon capture with a similar growth trajectory, we can, in another generation, make carbon capture on the scale for climate relevance possible.

(gentle music) Let me say one thing here, which is that, the - it's my generation that got us into this mess and it is the next generation of young scientists, engineers, technologists, industrialists, investors, who are going to be needing to lead the way.

- And I also want to acknowledge that coastal wetlands sequester carbon in their soils even more than tropical rainforests do.

So preserving coastal wetlands helps sequester carbon.

So Bay Area innovation is already being harnessed to envision a resilient future San Francisco Bay.

(bright music) (bright music)