Google has signed a deal with marine CO2 removal firm Ebb Carbon for 3,500 tons of carbon removal credits.

As part of the agreement, Google has made a pre-purchase agreement for the removal credits, which will be generated by Ebb’s recently announced deployment in Saudi Arabia. The deployment is being conducted in partnership with the Saudi Water Authority (SWA), which will see Ebb deploy its technology across SWA’s facilities in the kingdom. The companies claim that the project could remove up to 85 million tons of CO2 annually at full deployment.

“We’re thrilled to work with Google to scale low-cost carbon removal with Ebb’s technology,” said Ben Tarbell, CEO of Ebb. “The natural systems in the ocean represent the most powerful and rapidly scalable path to meaningful carbon removal. By integrating our technology with desalination facilities, we're transforming what has historically been a waste stream into a climate solution.

Ebb removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using its Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement (OAE) technology. The technology accelerates the natural process that converts atmospheric CO2 into safe, durable bicarbonate in seawater. The company aims to integrate its technology into operating desalination facilities, where it can intercept brine discharge and process it through Ebb’s electrochemical system. The system then converts it into an alkaline solution that can be returned to the ocean to draw down atmospheric CO2.

“The possibility of highly affordable carbon dioxide removal is extremely exciting. The combination of ideas from Ebb and X [an Alphabet subsidiary] is the kind of creative thinking that we need to solve the climate crisis,” said John Platt, Google Climate & Science fellow.

The company claims that due to its modular approach, it can integrate with existing infrastructure to reduce deployment costs and complexity. In addition, the company has said that through its process, it can increase freshwater yield at the facilities and produce valuable chemical co-products that can be used in the desalination process or sold to other industries.

In addition to the carbon removal deal, Ebb has also partnered with Alphabet's moonshot subsidiary X to explore utilization pathways for the acid coproduct of Ebb's process. X has developed a technology that utilizes this type of acid to recycle concrete waste.

“Combining Ebb’s electrochemical approach to ocean alkalinity enhancement with X’s acid utilization technology has the rare potential for cost-negative carbon sequestration. It’s rare for waste streams to become revenue streams, and we hope our research provides the industry with a blueprint for harvesting this untapped value,” said Antonio Papania-Davis, project lead, X.

Ebb Carbon was founded in 2020 by former Tesla, SolarCity, and Google X executives. In April 2023, it raised $20 million in a Series A funding round to develop and deploy its technology, the largest investment in an ocean-based CO2 removal technology to date.

Last year, the company signed a massive 350,000-ton removal deal with Microsoft, expected to be delivered over the next ten years. The agreement involves an initial commitment to remove 1,333 tons of CO2, with an option to remove the remaining CO2.