Additional Ventures has announced the launch of the Carbon to Sea initiative, a nonprofit scientific research program with more than $50 million in commitments over five years from multiple funders to accelerate research on the use of the oceans as a store for carbon dioxide from earth’s atmosphere.

Additional Ventures, co-founded by Erin Hoffmann and former Meta chief technology officer Mike Schroepfer, has already committed grants totaling $23 million to a network of researchers focused on ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), a carbon capture method that uses the oceans to sequester the greenhouse gas. Funders include the Astera Institute, Builders Initiative, Catalyst for Impact, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, OceanKind, and the Grantham, Kissick Family, and Thistledown foundations. Additional Ventures is a group of entities that include the Additional Ventures Foundation, Additional Ventures LLC, and a donor-advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

According to Additional Ventures, OAE has the potential to permanently remove and store carbon, and more funding for research is needed. The ocean already contains 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere and permanently locks away more than a gigaton of atmospheric carbon dioxide every year via a natural process called “weathering.” As alkaline rock washes into the sea, it neutralizes harmful acid and enables the ocean to pull more carbon dioxide from the air and safely store it. OAE could dramatically accelerate this natural process while counteracting ocean acidification.

“We created the Carbon to Sea Initiative to determine if and how OAE can become a gigaton-scale carbon removal solution,” said Additional Ventures in a press release. “The initiative will evaluate a dozen potential OAE pathways, answer outstanding science and engineering questions, catalyze locally owned and operated field research sites, help develop responsible regulatory frameworks, and bring more scientists and funding into the field.”

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