With support from the Julia R. Brown Education and Research Fund, MAS Climate Science and Policy student Ella Coulson attended Carbon Unbound East Coast in New York City to deepen her understanding of how carbon dioxide removal is being shaped by research, policy, and investment. The conference directly informed her capstone work on coastal enhanced weathering as a marine carbon removal strategy for California, while also giving her valuable feedback from researchers and policy professionals in the field. The experience strengthened Ella’s interest in working at the intersection of marine science and policy to help guide future climate solutions.
Overview & Purpose
In May 2026, I attended Carbon Unbound East Coast in New York City, the leading carbon dioxide removal (CDR) industry summit, which brought together over 400 senior executives, investors, policymakers, and researchers working across the carbon removal sector. This opportunity was made possible through funding from Julia R. Brown as part of my graduate education at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The summit’s agenda centered on CDR investment trends, regulatory shifts and policy approaches, and the pathways needed to scale carbon removal solutions, which are topics directly relevant to my capstone research on coastal enhanced weathering (CEW) as a marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) strategy for California’s coastline.
Relevance to Research, Climate Understanding, and Professional Development
Attending Carbon Unbound gave me a firsthand view of how the CDR field operates outside of academia through the lens of investors, project developers, and policy professionals who are actively reviewing and determining which removal pathways should receive funding and regulatory support. This context deepened my understanding of the practical and financial hurdles that mCDR approaches like CEW face on the path to deployment, including MRV (measurement, reporting, and verification) standards, integration into carbon markets, and the policy mechanisms that shape market demand.
Beyond the formal sessions, the networking environment was an invaluable aspect of the experience. I had the chance to discuss my capstone framework directly with researchers working in the mCDR space, and many offered generous feedback and went as far as to discuss potential research collaborations. We discussed the technical issues associated with CEW monitoring, as it is still a strategy that is a few years ahead of its time, which made me rethink how I chose to communicate the strategy’s potential in my capstone presentation. Overall, these conversations gave me concrete suggestions for how to strengthen my suitability framework and pointed me toward other research avenues or groups studying CEW to ensure my project was well-informed.
Most Striking Aspect
The most striking aspect of the experience was acknowledging the accelerated speed at which CDR research is moving, yet the difficulty in establishing standardized MRV protocols for specific CDR strategies. For example, CEW lacks a specific MRV protocol despite the active research projects studying this carbon removal pathway. While there are MRV protocol frameworks that have been created for similar CDR approaches, it’s difficult to adapt these frameworks to measure a CDR strategy that is fundamentally different in its approach to carbon removal. CDR may be gaining a lot of attention but the rate at which we can accurately monitor and verify these carbon removal pathways is what’s going to make or break these strategies in these early stages, and will ultimately determine which strategies can scale and which will likely struggle to produce results.
Integration into Career Path
This experience reinforced my interest in working at the intersection of marine science and policy, particularly in roles that translate scientific frameworks like CEW suitability mapping into regulatory frameworks or policies that inform decision making. The connections I made at Carbon Unbound with researchers and policy professionals offer a network for potential future collaboration as I move into a career in coastal and ocean policy, whether in state regulatory bodies or in specific research-policy roles working at the intersection of ocean policy.
Blog content and images provided by Ella Coulson – thank you!
Naomi Howard also attended the 2026 Carbon Unbound East Coast summit. Read about Naomi’s experience here.