SEA VEGETABLES DON'T BURN
Blue Evolution has become a coding and solar company. We code genetics, and we source energy from photosynthesis, both to produce critical materials and provide essential services.
We grow a variety of sea vegetables that offer a truly unique nature-based solution set by which to confront climate change, ecological degradation, resource scarcity, and social inequality - all together. This is biotechnology developed through natural selection over hundreds of millions of years, and it has immense power to transform our dying world…if we can tap into it.
Notably, the US government has finally begun to establish a clear pathway towards addressing climate change, and nature-based solutions figure heavily into the recent climate legislation. This may come as a surprise to some, but I felt relief. Relief because during my life I’ve witnessed a bias towards things mechanical, electronic and digital. All these domains represent essential tools in the development of climate solutions, but I propose that harnessing the power of life itself gives us the greatest potential to slow and reverse climate change, with abundant co-benefits without significant tradeoffs.
Blue Evolution bet on nature-based solutions a decade ago, focusing on sea vegetables as the fastest growing and most potent carbon-absorbing crops on the planet. These are ocean crops which require no arable land, freshwater nor fertilizers. While afforestation and regenerative terrestrial agriculture face tremendous threats from climate change, sea vegetables have significant resistance to climate change impacts. We cannot rely on these biomass sources when they will generally struggle to maintain even their baseline levels in the face of drought, floods, fire and disease.
Sea vegetables don’t burn.
It doesn't really care if it rains or doesn’t. It doesn’t bear fundamental dependence on other resources and long supply chains, as compared to every other material we use. It’s ready to take on our climate calamity directly and at scale, but will also replace a variety of carbon-intensive products and help other sectors improve their emissions performance.
In terms of scalability, sea vegetable stand in a class entirely of their own. No biomass grows faster, nor has less impact, and the ceiling for production may well be in the billions of tons. Sea vegetables can supply functional food ingredients, proteins, animal feed additives, agricultural biostimulants and biopharma markets - even green materials and bioenergy. And it can do all at once, without raising prices.
And unlike most climate solutions, sea vegetables comprise an extraordinary portfolio of solutions and has a role to play in improving climate performance across many markets.
Blue Evolution has worked for many years not just on figuring out how to grow a lot of sea vegetables but how to realize sea vegetables’ greatest potential in addressing the climate crisis, restoring ecosystems, and building social equity. We’ve already established a roughly carbon-neutral supply chain for our kelp crops up in Kodiak- running our processing operation entirely using the island’s 99%+ renewable electricity grid.
Our partners are local fishing families-turned-kelp farmer families, and the Su’naq tribe- which has worked with us to retool their processing plant to kelp. Not only does our kelp absorb an extraordinary amount of carbon as it grows, but it is also hosting myriad marine species, including the meaning of critical economic importance in Alaska. We have given distressed groups access to a new economic opportunity and opened a door to a much brighter future wherein their livelihoods embody regenerative climate solutions. We have changed the habitat around our farms for the better, and have done the same for the local community.
Why do I favor farming sea vegetables over things like direct air capture? Because it is hedged with many possible outputs, it is natural, and it brings about abundant co-benefits. It can create many more new livelihoods and bring about economic gains for a much broader set of constituencies.
I value the role of electric vehicles, wind turbines, and carbon accounting. But we need to go beyond the mechanical mindset.
If you want a solution that addresses climate in many ways at once, while also addressing other social and environmental challenges at a planetary scale, bet on nature. Specifically: bet on mighty sea vegetable.
-Beau Perry, CEO/Founder, Blue Evolution