Blue is the New Green

Leaders in carbon offsets say marine-based “blue carbon” projects are the next big idea.

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Blue carbon is an emerging concept in the offset and sequestration sector. While long-established green carbon programs involve such things as solar and wind power, blue carbon focuses on coastal vegetation such as mangroves and seagrass. For blue carbon, standards are being developed for how to calculate each program’s impact.

According to Jason Donofrio of The Ocean Foundation, a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., more and more people are looking at blue-carbon projects because mangroves and seagrass are 10 to 15 times more effective at sequestering carbon than a tree in the Amazon rainforest — and because blue carbon offers “additionality,” or benefits beyond carbon sequestration itself.

Rachel Goult, managing director of the British company Yacht Carbon Offset — which has helped large yachts offset carbon emissions since 2008 — says yacht owners started asking about blue carbon projects after seeing options limited to green-carbon initiatives.

“People were asking why there couldn’t be something specific to marine,” she says. “The answer is that the carbon credits really weren’t out there, but I did some research and managed to find one project, a mangrove restoration and conservation project in Kenya.”

Nonetheless, even getting a blue-carbon project to the point of verification means overcoming substantial hurdles. To get The Ocean Foundation’s SeaGrass Grow project up and running in Puerto Rico, the organization needed approvals from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, clearance under the Endangered Species Act, and more.

These challenges are one reason that the organization also undertook an initiative directed at the biggest threat to seagrass: boaters. Seagrass grows in shallow waters, typically 15 feet or less. When boats hit bottom and get stuck, skippers tend to rev the engines and spin the props. That action destroys seagrass that may take hundreds of years to grow back. Preventing that damage is a lot easier than fixing it.

So with funding from the Chesapeake Bay Trust in the mid 2010s, The Ocean Foundation worked with marinas to determine what kinds of signs were best for educating boaters.

Another small but effective industry initiative is happening in yacht charter. During the pandemic’s travel downturn, Yacht Carbon Offset worked with charter companies to add a question to client preference sheets about funding carbon offsets. On a one-week charter that burns around 2,640 gallons of fuel, she says, a client can offset carbon emissions for about $325.