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WWU alum Greg Rau claims XPRIZE with Planetary

Rau second alum to win an XPRIZE in as many years

by Mikayla King

WWU Communications

Greg Rau, '71, won an XPRIZE with his company, Planetary. Photo courtesy of Greg Rau.

When Greg Rau first stepped on Western Washington University’s campus, he didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he felt like WWU would be a good place to figure it out. 

Rau’s experience at Western was defined by excellent professors and intimate classes, he said. But what he remembers best was the natural beauty of the Bellingham campus.  

“I have fond memories of the days it wasn't raining,” he said. “The beautiful sunshine; the views of Mount Baker and Mount Shuksan. I took a mountaineering class (taught by local legend Dallas Kloke) in my senior year, and from that I developed a lifelong interest in the mountains and mountaineering. My mountaineering days are over, but it was at Western that I really fell in love with the alpine scenery and being out there in the mountains.” 

It may not be a surprise, then, that Rau’s passion for the natural world pulled him toward a career in the sciences. Specifically, Rau became interested in studying biology and human impacts on the environment.  

Rau’s interest was ignited after attending a speech on campus by Paul R. Ehrlich, a famous biologist from Stanford. Erlich’s book, “The Population Bomb,” focused on worldwide overpopulation and its potential consequences, including worldwide famines and societal upheavals.  

“It really brought to the forefront how tenuous biology is on Earth and how we're impacting it,” Rau said. “And it struck me that if we could understand how biology operates, we could go a long way in figuring out how to have a sustainable existence on Earth.” 

After graduating with a degree in biology in 1971, he went on to gain a master’s degree and a doctorate from the University of Washington.  

Rau said he’s since learned that human behavior, psychology and policy are the true determinants of combating climate change, but the foundation Western provided in biology acted as “a springboard to go on and learn more about the fundamentals of carbon cycling on Earth.” 

Eyes on the XPRIZE 

Carbon cycling is the natural recycling of carbon atoms, the building blocks for all life on Earth, and a subject that has driven Rau’s professional career.  

After 25 years of studying carbon cycling as a senior researcher at the Institute of Marine Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz and as a Visiting Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Rau was enjoying retirement when he got a cold call from Canadian entrepreneur and software engineer Mike Kelland.  

Kelland stumbled upon Rau’s published carbon management ideas and invited him to partner in developing the research into a scalable method of combating excess carbon dioxide and climate change. Rau agreed and together they created Planetary, a "climatetech” company dedicated to reducing the world’s carbon dioxide through a process known as Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement.  

Planetary helps reduce excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by adding an antacid to the ocean, which increases its capacity to capture carbon dioxide. Illustration courtesy of Planetary.

Ocean water naturally collects carbon from the atmosphere through the very slow but effective geochemical weathering of rocks with water and atmospheric carbon dioxide. This converts excess carbon dioxide into stable, alkaline forms of dissolved carbon that eventually are washed into the ocean. 

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is naturally removed via geochemical rock weather, and the resulting dissolved alkaline carbon is stored in the ocean. Illustration courtesy of Planetary.

Planetary hopes to accelerate this carbon dioxide removal by adding safe doses of antacid, magnesium or calcium hydroxide, directly into seawater via existing, permitted ocean discharges like municipal wastewater or power plant cooling water. This not only helps counter ocean acidification but also makes the ocean more absorptive of carbon dioxide, converting it into an already abundant, dissolved bicarbonate salt in seawater that the ocean can store for 100,000 years. 

Planetary took these ideas to the XPRIZE competition, a 4-year competition designed to challenge more than 1,300 teams to develop durable, scalable solutions that pull carbon dioxide from the air or oceans and lock it away permanently or sustainably.  Planetary won an XPRIZE for Carbon Removal Milestone in April 2022 and the XFACTOR award in April 2025.  

Rau joins Neal Digre as the second WWU alum to win an XPRIZE in as many years. 

Planetary received $1 million for each XPRIZE, which Rau and Kelland reinvested into the company. 

Planetary’s current flagship operation is in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and it partners with Dalhousie University among others in verifying the safety and effectiveness of this form of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal.  The company has also conducted small scale trials in Norfolk, Virginia and in Hayle on the SW coast of the UK, in collaboration with the University of Maryland, the University of Delaware and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). Planetary hopes to expand globally and is identifying locations in Japan, the Middle East, Europe and Australia to further test and expand Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement. 

WWU grad student Rhiannon Holmes holds up two female Dungeness crabs. Holmes uses the ocean acidification system, donated by Greg Rau, to perform research on her master's thesis. Photo by Luke Hollister.

Oceans of Impact 

Rau has been a long-time supporter of Western’s Shannon Point Marine Center and the Marine and Coastal Sciences (MACS) program, which began in 2018. He served on the MACS advisory board and established the Ocean Acidification Research Endowment Fund, which financed a walk-in environmental chamber and an ocean acidification system.  

The ocean acidification system allows students to measure the effects of changing ocean conditions on marine organisms by mimicking the environments they might naturally encounter and is used regularly to offer students hands-on experimental and lab opportunities. 

The system works by allowing researchers to control the pH of water by regulating how much carbon dioxide is bubbled into the water. The more carbon dioxide, the more acidic the water becomes. 

Each spring, MACS students use the ocean acidification system by introducing young Olympia oysters into two different environments to study how they will grow under different acidities. Then, in the fall, students return to note how well each oyster group fared. 

MACS junior Sophia Nowlen peers through a handheld microscope at recently hatched Dungeness crabs, also known as zoeae. Photo by Luke Hollister.

MACS junior Sophia Nowlen described using the ocean acidification system as “powerful” because of the real-world applications of the experiment. 

 “It's not just a worksheet. You're looking at how these water conditions help the oysters’ growth or hinder their growth, and you're looking at it first-hand,” Nowlen said.  

Originally from California, Nowlen was drawn to Western because of the marine programs and resources offered to students. Like Rau, she’s passionate about education and stewardship around climate change.  

 “I think it's really hard to use examples that a lot of people understand for such a broad concept like climate change,” she said. “But when you talk about how it's affecting the ocean — because it's affecting the ocean so disproportionately, unfortunately — it's a lot easier to lead people to this example and then say, ‘Hey, this is what's happening, this is what we need to fix and this is what it's affecting.’” 

After she graduates, Nowlen plans to pursue a master’s degree in marine sciences and said that she thinks understanding ocean acidification will inform any research she specializes in.  

“It's something that's impossible to ignore when you're going into the world of modern oceanography,” she said. “Whatever I end up doing, it has to be a factor. I think to pretend that the ocean isn't getting more acidic is to not even do accurate research.” 

WWU grad student Rhiannon Holmes loads a tank into the ocean acidification system. Holmes is studying Dungeness crabs to see if she can identify genetic markers that point to ocean acidity resistance. Photo by Luke Hollister.

The ocean acidification system has also supported undergraduate student research, graduate theses and even visiting students working on summer research sponsored by the National Science Foundation.  

None of this would be possible without Rau’s support, MACS Director Brian Bingham said.  

“You have to have some infrastructure to do the kinds of work that we're doing, and that was outside what we had the budget capacity to build here,” he said. “Greg bringing the equipment, bringing the resources and bringing the instrumentation was critical. He really is an innovator who's making a difference.” 

For Rau, it is not only an investment in Western and its students, but in the world.  

“Institutions like Western exist in order to not only educate future marine scientists,” Rau said, “but to educate the general population about the importance of the marine environment, its role in our in our world and how important it is to respect it and try to preserve it.” 

Mikayla King (‘17) covers the College of Science and Engineering and Woodring College of Education for University Communications. Reach out to her with story ideas at kingm24@wwu.edu.