Sponsors (3)
The bill accelerates federal support, coordination, and standards for marine carbon dioxide removal—boosting research, monitoring, and potential commercialization—while shifting costs to taxpayers and risking ecological harm, community disruption, and market distortions unless funding, safeguards, and clear enforcement are strongly implemented.
Scientists, universities, National Labs, and research institutions will get sustained federal funding and coordinated grant programs to study marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR), expanding research capacity and enabling longer-term projects.
Coastal communities, regulators, and researchers will gain improved monitoring, modeling, measurement tools, and public data access that strengthen the scientific basis for mCDR and help detect environmental or health impacts.
Project developers, registries, and manufacturers will get clearer statutory definitions, standards, and benchmarks for mCDR and carbon removal credits, reducing market uncertainty and making commercialization and private investment more feasible.
Coastal communities, fisheries, and marine ecosystems face substantial ecological risks from experimental and scaled mCDR deployments that could harm biodiversity, fisheries, tourism, and subsistence livelihoods.
U.S. taxpayers may face significant and open‑ended costs because the bill authorizes multi‑year appropriations and often uses unspecified "such sums as may be necessary," increasing long‑term federal budgetary pressure.
Markets and standard‑setting could prioritize commercially marketable mCDR approaches and create proprietary winners and losers, disadvantaging smaller firms, discouraging some private investment, and possibly sidelining nonmarket environmental priorities.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Creates a coordinated federal research, standards, and grant program to study, monitor, and validate marine carbon dioxide removal and to engage affected communities and Tribes.
Official title: To support marine carbon dioxide removal activities, and for other purposes.
Introduced February 24, 2026 by Suzanne Bonamici · Last progress February 24, 2026
Creates a coordinated federal effort to research, test, monitor, and standardize marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR). The bill directs NOAA (with an interagency working group) to stand up a Program for mCDR research and field trials, authorizes NSF grant programs and NASA monitoring/modeling support, and tasks NIST with developing measurement and validation standards; it also requires community and Tribal engagement and preserves existing ocean and maritime law protections.