Climate Workers Anonymous

This week we're joined by two experts in the evolving world of CDR policy in Europe. Eli Mitchell-Larson from Carbon Gap and Lee Beck from the Clean Air Task Force.

The E.U. is working on a certification standard for CDR to complement its existing climate plan. When completed, it will likely represent the largest jurisdiction with a comprehensive policy plan to scale up carbon removal.

Last week the U.K. government sought public input on its own CDR effort. This particular policy effort aims to find business models that will help CDR scale by the end of this decade.

The text of the release finds that a significant barrier to scaling up CDR is “the absence of a predictable revenue stream for negative emissions.” Notably, it also says that “the cost of deploying these techs is borne by polluting sectors to compensate for their remaining emissions.”

Radhika, Eli, and Lee talk about how important these policies could turn out to be, what timeline they are on, and what their organizations are doing to support carbon removal in Europe.

This week Radhika is joined by Dr. Jane Zelikova and Dr. Sarah Myhre, Program Director, Climate Advocacy & Democracy Reform, at the Glaser Progress Foundation.

For decades, the climate science community has examined the problems with climate pledges and carbon markets. But the ascendancy of carbon removal has prompted researchers to take a fresh look at the topic. 

Recently Carton, Lund, and Dooley’s commentary piece looked at assumptions often made in climate pledges and net-zero plans. They highlighted three ways government and corporate climate plans gloss over important nuances when planning their path to decarbonization.

The hosts also discuss a recent article in which David Wallace-Wells examined the confusing and competing narratives about our climate future. This piece warns against looking for a convenient climate story as both the best- and worst-case scenarios imagined in the past now appear unlikely.

The excitement, investment, and research into carbon removal have percolated into international diplomacy and big business. This week Radhika, Jane, and Sarah discuss how CDR fits into the confusing and rapidly evolving global climate conversation.

This week we recorded our business episode live in front of a Zoom audience. The audience was invited to pose questions to our hosts Radhika, Susan, and Na’im. They discussed-

-Which type of CDR will be the first to achieve 1 gigaton of removal

-The effect of global economic turbulence on CDR’s prospects

-The First Movers Coalition

-Occidental’s plan for 70 DAC plants

-& more!

This week we talk about recent developments in local, state, federal, and international policymaking that aim to help scale up CDR.

Joining the conversation is Greg Nemet. His 2019 book “How Solar Energy Became Cheap” traced the history of PV technology and the government policies that helped it become the cheapest form of electricity in history.

At the book’s conclusion Greg examined how the lessons from solar’s rise could inform the effort to scale up DAC and other newer climate technologies. Greg was also an author of the IPCC’s AR6 mitigation report, released in April.

Radhika, Chris, and Greg discuss-

LOCAL: Last month Boulder, Colorado, and Flagstaff, Arizona, announced a partnership to pool $300,000 to purchase carbon removals to help them meet their climate commitments.

STATE: California’s Governor Newsom proposed that the state spend $100 million in this year’s budget to match funding for CDR projects that have received federal grants, specifically mentioning the recent federal infrastructure bill.

FEDERAL: In April the Federal Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act was introduced by two Democratic members of congress, and in May, two Senators introduced a version of the bill. If passed, this legislation would compel the federal government to directly procure carbon removal from various technological methods.

INTERNATIONAL: Carbon removal found its way into two intranational agreements recently. In May, President Biden announced the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with Australia, Japan, and South Korea. According to Brian Dees, the White House Director of the National Economic Council, this plan will promote “carbon removal purchasing agreements.”

That same week the US Special Climate Envoy John Kerry at the Davos Conference announced an expansion of the “First Movers Coalition,” a group of corporations committing to supporting six hard-to-decarbonize sectors, including carbon removal. At this announcement, Alphabet, Salesforce, and Microsoft agreed to spend $500 million on carbon removal purchasing by 2030.

Ocean CDR is attracting attention from many corners of the climate community. In recent episodes, we’ve covered global policy developments in Ocean CDR regulation and research with Wil Burns and the business challenges in the space with two startups working to develop commercial methods to remove CO2 from the ocean.

On this episode we complete the trilogy with a look at some recent science on the topic, focusing on the outstanding scientific questions that we’ll need to be answered before Ocean CDR can be deployed safely and effectively.

First, we look at a 2021 paper from D A Siegel et al., which assesses how long CO2 stored in seawater will remain sequestered in the ocean based on the given location and depth of the process.

Then we’ll discuss a Perspective piece from Nature: Ecology and Evolution from Boyd, Bach, and Hurd et al. Researchers suggested some possible unintended ecological consequences of proposed large-scale kelp planting, such as widespread drift of kelp into new ecosystems and the spread of invasive species. The authors outlined potential research metrics which should be established to evaluate the safety of ‘ocean afforestation.’

Joining us on this episode to talk about the scientific challenges of assessing the safety of ocean carbon storage are Dr. Shannon Valley, United States Geological Survey Postdoctoral Scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and Dr. David Ho, a professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

“Inflection Point,” “New Frontier,” “Finally Getting Serious”- are some of the ways the carbon removal field has been described in headlines over the past few weeks. With Frontier Climate, Lowercarbon capital, and Climeworks all announcing big new infusions of money into the wicked problem of pulling CO2 from the air, it’s fair to say the field has entered a new stage.

At a recent panel at Columbia University, Carbon Direct Vice-Chair Nili Gilbert said that she believes there are currently over 1000 companies working on carbon removal. She also noted that of those that are vetted, only 5% will be invested in.

The online newsletter Climate Tech VC found that after the IPCC mitigation report identified a major need for carbon removal in April, over $2.2 billion has been invested into CDR.

Forty-five companies received funding, with $1,100 million flowing to climate tech, $920 million to carbon accounting and marketplaces, and $65 million to MRV (with the other $1b committed by Stripe et al. via Frontier).

Before all this happened, our co-host Susan Su said that if a startup has a good CDR idea, it will access funding. That has turned out to be very prescient in the months since that forecast.

On this episode we talk about some of the big deals that have happened in 2022, the technical aspects of different funding methods, as well as what VC can and cannot do for CDR companies. The group also discuss Adam Neumann’s much-publicized foray into the world of carbon credits.

There’s also one more piece of big news we can announce - Na’im Merchant will be joining us as a regular co-host! That means every month you can hear Radhika, Susan, and Na’im discuss the latest news in CDR Business.

This week, we’re joined by four of the teams that won the Carbon Removal Xprize Milestone award.

On April 22nd, Xprize announced the 15 winners of the second round of their competition for carbon removal solutions. Each of these teams was been awarded $1 million to help them compete for the grand prize of $50 million, or 3 $30 million runner-up slots, which will be awarded three years from now.

The grand prize winner may not be one of the 15 Milestone awardees, but these teams are a step ahead of the competition and have already demonstrated an ability to impress the Xprize judges.

Of the 15 teams, six are building DAC solutions, three are sequestering CO2 from seawater, three are producing biochar, one is growing algae (stay tuned for more on that), one is utilizing enhanced weathering, and one encourages tree-planting.

In the first segment, we spoke with:

Steve Oldham, CEO of Captura, which is building plants that will extract co2 from ocean water and…

Hans de Neve, CEO of Carbyon which is developing a novel machine design for a DAC system with a small footprint.

In the second segment, we heard from two other Milestone-award winners:

Jason Vallis, VP of External Relations Planetary which aims to use direct ocean capture to remove co2, reverse ocean acidification, and create renewable fuels and…

Dave Hazlebeck, Founder & CEO Global Algae which uses algae farming to capture co2 and make products like polymers and displace farming operations, leading to the regrowth of rainforests.

Joining Radhika to talk with these teams are Na’im Merchant and Susan Su.You’ll learn about the CDR approaches these teams are using, what they are working on right now, how the $1 million prize will help them advance towards their goals, and what they think they need to do to win the grand prize in a few years.

Special behind-the-scenes episode! 

This week we're rebroadcasting a show from the other Nori podcast, "Reversing Climate Change" hosted by Ross Kenyon.   

From the RCC Feed-  "Carbon Removal Newsroom, the sister podcast to Reversing Climate Change, was born out of a desire to explore current events in the carbon removal space from a policy perspective.  

But since the show debuted in early 2019, its production team has evolved and so has our approach to discussing the latest in climate news.  Radhika Moolgavkar is Head of Supply and Methodology at Nori and Host of Carbon Removal Newsroom, and Asa Kamer serves as Producer of CRN.  

On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Radhika and Asa join Ross to explain how CRN evolved to focus on the business, policy, and science of carbon removal news and share their favorite episodes from the recent past.  

Radhika and Asa explore how podcasting facilitates thoughtful public conversations around meaningful issues and describe how a show benefits when its host approaches the subject matter with a beginner’s mind.  Listen in to understand how CRN stays up on big news in the industry and get Radhika and Asa’s take on the future of carbon removal."

It’s been a big month in carbon removal funding news.   

Climeworks announced $650 million in new fundraising from an extensive group of private equity and investment management firms.   

Then, Stripe made public a nearly $1 billion plan to take their CDR purchasing program to a new level by partnering with Alphabet, Meta, McKinsey, Shopify, and more to pool their carbon credit dollars and buy removals from companies and facilities that don’t even exist yet. This plan was inspired by programs that have developed vaccines with Advanced Market Commitments.   

Rounding out the month’s big funding news was an announcement from climate-focused VC firm Lowercarbon Capital that they’ve raised $350 million to invest in carbon removal companies.   

Add that to the 15 $1 million milestone grants given in the first round of the carbon Xprize and the extensive public conversation around carbon removal that’s taken place since early April’s IPCC mitigation report. There’s a lot of news to talk about in the world of carbon removal.   

Joining Susan and Radhika to talk about all this is Josh Santos, CEO, and Co-Founder of Noya. Josh also gives some updates about Noya's recent progress.  

Resources: A Revamped Cost Curve for Reaching Net Zero Emissions- EDF https://www.edf.org/revamped-cost-curve-reaching-net-zero-emissions  

This week our guest is Roger Aines the Energy Program Chief Scientist in E Program at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Roger leads the Carbon Initiative at LLNL, which “aims to understand, develop, and implement technologies for the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”

Several months ago, Roger wrote about the “Three Demons of Carbon Removal” in a submission to the journal Chem about “Misconceptions and Myths Surrounding Carbon Removal.”

In that piece, he said that three big issues stand between us and our goal of reaching our climate goals-

-The Timing Demon- resources are required to stop emissions today but building a carbon removal industry will take decades and needs to begin now.

-The ‘Me-Too’ Demon- will the reality of carbon removal mean that emitting industries do not pursue decarbonization aggressively?

-The Demon of Injustice- carbon removal must demonstrate it can exist to benefit, not burden, communities who have previously been burdened by industry.

On today’s show, we’ll discuss these demons with Roger and how he sees them in the context of some recent news in the world of carbon removal. Also with us, as always, is our policy co-host Chris Barnard, Policy Director at the American Conservation Coalition.