OTTAWA, Ontario – Planetary Hydrogen was founded with the mission to make a major impact on our climate emergency.
Today, we take a major step forward in that mission by announcing plans for our first sale of carbon removal to global commerce company, Shopify. The company intends to purchase negative CO2 emissions that will be generated by Planetary Hydrogen’s pilot plant. When the plant begins operation in 2022, it will produce clean hydrogen while employing Ocean Air Capture to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. In the process, it will help to lower ocean acidification effects in the local area around the plant, helping to increase yields of shellfish including oysters and lobsters.
“This first sale to Shopify will be a huge boost to our business.”, said Mike Kelland, CEO at Planetary Hydrogen, “Shopify is the ideal client – they care deeply about making an impact on the climate crisis. Our ambition is to safely scale our solution to the point where we’re taking gigatons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. I’m excited to be teaming up with Shopify to get there.”
“There’s a ton of research showing that we need to leverage the ocean as the world’s largest carbon sink,” said Stacy Kauk, Director of Shopify’s Sustainability Fund. “By purchasing from Planetary Hydrogen, we’ll help fund their pilot project and take their method from research papers to real life. As a fellow Canadian company, we are proud to support homegrown technology. We’re excited to watch Planetary Hydrogen grow, scale, and have a massive impact globally, from Canada.”
The Planetary Hydrogen pilot plant is being designed to demonstrate a scaled version of the patented SeaOH2 process, a method of Ocean Air Capture. This process, originally developed by Planetary Hydrogen co-founder and CTO Dr. Greg H. Rau, mimics the natural global carbon cycle to remove CO2 emissions from the air and store them as a natural component of ocean chemistry. In the process, seawater that has been acidified by climate change is restored, helping shellfish and other marine life to thrive.
The pilot plant will have a phased rollout, integrated with a major oceans research project to monitor the chemical and organism effects of the SeaOH2 process. The research project will start in the lab, monitoring the effects of the SeaOH2 process on ocean chemistry and organisms prior to moving to the pilot plant to scale up experimentation and fine tune the process.
“The Planetary Hydrogen team has developed a highly novel process with the potential to have a positive impact on carbon emissions and their direct and indirect effects on the ocean. “ said Dr. Douglas Wallace, Professor of Chemical Oceanography at Dalhousie University, “Their plans include integration of scientific research to guide both safety and assessment of effectiveness along the development path.”
About Planetary Hydrogen
Planetary Hydrogen is upending the global hydrogen market with the first scalable, truly carbon-negative form of hydrogen production. Their process converts greenhouse gases directly out of the air into an antacid for oceans damaged by climate change. This Ocean Air Capture (OAC) system is the first to be able to both remove the carbon dioxide that is causing climate change and to restore ocean chemistry. Planetary Hydrogen is a graduate of the StartupYard accelerator by Innovacorp and the Ecofuel accelerator. To learn more about Planetary Hydrogen, visit http://planetaryhydrogen.com
About Shopify
Shopify is a leading global commerce company, providing trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business of any size. Shopify makes commerce better for everyone with a platform and services that are engineered for reliability, while delivering a better shopping experience for consumers everywhere. Headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, Shopify powers over one million businesses in more than 175 countries and is trusted by brands such as Allbirds, Gymshark, and Staples, and many more. To learn more about Shopify’s sustainability efforts visit Shopify’s Sustainability Fund.
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