Ebb, a climate and water technology company, has signed a prepurchase agreement with Google to remove 3,500 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. The partnership with Google follows Ebb’s landmark deployment agreement with the Saudi Water Authority (SWA) to pilot its technology at SWA’s state-of-the-art facility in Jubail – a partnership that could unlock up to 85 million tonnes of annual CO2 removal capacity, which will help fulfill agreements with Google and other corporate customers while positioning Saudi Arabia as a global leader in ocean-based climate solutions.
Recognized as offering a promising, scalable approach to carbon dioxide removal, Ebb is accelerating the natural process that converts CO2 from the air into safe and durable bicarbonate in seawater. This storage pathway taps the ocean’s natural ability to store carbon durably, which to date has locked away around 30 percent of all carbon dioxide emitted since the industrial revolution.
Ebb is pursuing a deployment strategy that centers on integrating its technology with desalination facilities, which already process over a hundred of million of tonnes of seawater each day. Ebb’s modular technology can easily integrate with desalination plants, intercepting the outflow of brine discharge – the salty waste stream of the desalination process – before it returns to the ocean. This waste brine is then processed through Ebb’s electrochemical system, converting it into an alkaline solution that can be returned to the ocean to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere.
By integrating with desalination facilities, Ebb can leverage existing infrastructure to reduce deployment costs and complexity. Currently, there is enough global desalination infrastructure to nearly a billion tonnes of carbon removal per year.
The partnership with SWA is particularly significant given Saudi Arabia’s position as the world’s largest desalination operator, accounting for 22% of global desalination capacity. The initial deployment at SWA’s state-of-the-art research facility in Jubail will establish a foundation for scaling across the Kingdom’s national desalination network, directly supporting Vision 2030’s goals of environmental sustainability and technological innovation. With the GCC region representing 60% of global desalination capacity, the Saudi deployment serves as a model for expanding ocean-based carbon removal throughout water-scarce nations in the Gulf and beyond.
“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. Perhaps most importantly, Ebb’s technology can support our desalination partners’ core business through additional freshwater recovery, energy savings, and valuable chemical co-products. Our ability to remove CO2 at scale becomes the natural outcome of smart business decisions – a powerful financial incentive that will drive expansion of our technology. Our partnership with the Saudi Water Authority demonstrates this pathway at unprecedented scale, transforming the world’s largest desalination network into a powerful climate solution while creating new economic value for the Kingdom.”
“The possibility of highly affordable carbon dioxide removal is extremely exciting. The combination of ideas from Ebb and X are the kind of creative thinking that we need to solve the climate crisis.” said John Platt, Google Climate & Science Fellow.
Ebb and Google have a shared history on which the strategic collaboration is built. Two of Ebb’s cofounders – Ben Tarbell and Matt Eisaman – led climate and carbon removal initiatives at Alphabet before founding Ebb in 2021.
About Ebb
Founded in 2021, Ebb has quickly established itself as a leading supplier of high-quality carbon dioxide removal and electrochemical water technologies. The company has raised $40 million to-date and has a track record that spans multiple U.S. projects, including multi-year demonstrations with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Project Macoma in Port Angeles, Washington. Both operate in tandem with desalination technology, validating Ebb’s performance and scalability under real-world conditions
