Episode 9 of The Carbon Curve is with Robert Höglund and Dr. Natalya Jarlebring from Milkywire’s Climate Transformation Fund.

Over the last year or so, interest in carbon removal (CDR) has taken off.

From the formation of new corporate buying coalitions, like Frontier, to large venture rounds, and ambitious new policies like Direct Air Capture Hubs, CDR is starting to hit an inflection point. All of this early traction is encouraging, but it also necessitates taking a step back, and reflecting on the carbon removal industry as it currently stands, and where it should go from here.

It requires revisiting questions that some of us working in the industry with all the recent activity and excitement take for granted, like:

* What is carbon removal’s role?

* How should we define CDR?

* How should corporates think about supporting the burgeoning CDR market?

* Is it accurate to say there’s a CDR market in the first place?

I’m excited to speak to today’s guests because they bring a degree of clarity to a marketplace that still feels shrouded in obscurity. They work on Milkywire’s Climate Transformation Fund supporting catalytic solutions - including permanent carbon removal - that are needed to reach global climate targets.

In their capacity, they have worked through pretty foundational questions about CDR and have valuable insights to share on how we should be defining carbon removal, the state of the market today, and key priorities for the industry going forward.

In this episode, Na’im, Robert, and Natalya discuss:

* A more precise definition of carbon removal

* Milkywire’s Climate Transformation Fund

* The effective altruism case for supporting carbon removal

* Does the carbon removal market even exist?

* Where does the CDR industry go from here?

Relevant links:

* Milkywire’s Climate Transformation Fund

* Climate Transformation Fund’s 2022 Progress Report

* Article: Nature restoration and carbon removal are not the same. Here’s why it matters

* Article: The carbon removal market doesn’t exist

* CDR.FYI dashboard

About Robert Höglund:

Robert is an independent consultant dedicated to advancing the carbon removal ecosystem, writing about it, working on research and policy projects, running CDR trainings, etc. He also manages the Climate Transformation Fund at Milkywire, a donation fund that supports CDR and other climate projects. (Twitter)

About Dr. Natalya Jarlebring:

Natalya is a senior environmental lead at the tech platform Milkywire. She holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science from Södertörn University, Sweden. Her research focused on various aspects of natural resource governance, as well as forest-related policy debates and their implications for the EU climate commitments. Natalya has also extensive experience working as a consultant in natural resource management and climate adaptation solutions. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge of removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

Last month, the Department of Energy hosted a virtual summit convening innovators, environmental organizations, government leaders, and other stakeholders about The Carbon Negative Shot. The DOE launched this bold initiative last year to stimulate innovation in carbon removal (CDR) pathways that remove and durably store CO2 from the atmosphere at gigaton scale for less than $100/net metric ton of CO2.

I wrote about this target in a recent report I did on barriers to scaling up the carbon removal industry. In my conversations with stakeholders across the carbon removal field, there’s a widely held belief that in order to scale carbon removal we need to get the cost below this $100/ton threshold. Which I can understand, but …

Why are we anchoring to this number in particular? Is it even realistic? What exactly is included in that cost? Is that the cost to the carbon removal provider? Or is it the price to the end buyer? Does it include subsidies? How about the cost of measurement, reporting, and verification?

I think making carbon removal much more economical is absolutely necessary to successfully scale it up - and initiatives like the Carbon Negative Shot, policies like the expanded 45Q tax credit, and others will play a big role to get us there. But I think we need more precision in how we talk about cost and a better understanding of carbon removal’s many cost drivers. So I wanted to get into this topic with someone leading a carbon removal company and navigating this uncertain road - the CEO of Heirloom.

We talk about the importance of clearing up these definitions, and the ecosystem levers that can help drive carbon removal down the cost curve.

In this episode, Na’im and Shashank talk about:

* A baseline definition for carbon removal

* Key carbon removal cost drivers and implications for sub-$100/ton carbon removal

* Challenges with storage, injection, and transportation

* The ideal role of the public sector in supporting carbon removal

* The importance of modularity for high technology learning rates

* Other ecosystem barriers that could help drive down costs and scale up carbon removal

Relevant show links:

* Heirloom’s website (see careers page and white paper)

* Report on Barriers to Scaling Long-duration Carbon Removal

* How Solar Became Cheap by Greg Nemet

About Shashank Samala:

Shashank Samala, CEO of Heirloom, a company with a goal of removing carbon dioxide out of the air at gigaton scale by 2035 to help reverse climate change. Shashank grew up in Southeast India where he saw firsthand the impact of climate change on some of the world's most vulnerable people.

Shahank was previously an Entrepreneur in Residence at Carbon180, a leading climate policy NGO working on atmospheric carbon removal, and a founder at Tempo, which builds mission-critical electronics for surgical robots, satellites, reusable, rockets, and more, and raised over $100M from leading investors.

Shashank previously worked at Square and received his Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge of removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

In Episode 7 of The Carbon Curve, Na’im speaks to Dr. Meron Tesfaye and Dr. Danny Broberg from the Bipartisan Policy Center.

This week, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been called the most consequential climate bill in history. Among other things, it makes a $369 billion investment in reducing carbon emissions and lowering energy costs, putting America closer to reaching the climate goals set by the current administration.

It also has provisions that affect the carbon removal sector directly - expanding much-needed incentives that will grow the CDR industry, and position the US as a leader in this rapidly growing field.

In my view, well-designed and well-executed policies can have the single greatest impact on scaling up CDR. So I wanted to speak to policy experts Dr. Meron Tesfaye and Dr. Danny Broberg at the Bipartisan Policy Center - a think tank based here in Washington, DC working on carbon removal policies - about the specific carbon removal investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, as well as supportive policies that have been recently passed, and new proposals we should be watching for on the near horizon.

In this episode, Na’im, Meron, and Danny discussed:

* Carbon removal in The Inflation Reduction Act

* The CHIPS Act’s funding for carbon removal research, development, and deployment

* Government procurement of carbon removal proposed in the Federal Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act (CDRLA) and the Carbon Removal and Emissions Storage Technologies (CREST) Act

* The DAC Hubs Program as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law

* The Growing Climate Solutions Act, REMOVE Act, and SCALE Act

* Policy priorities for carbon removal going forward

Relevant links:

* Bipartisan Policy Center website

* Summary of Energy and Climate Provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act (BPC)

* Farm and Forest Carbon Solutions Task Force at BPC

* Direct Air Capture Advisory Council at BPC

* DAC Day Event Recap

* Promoting Early Markets for Carbon Dioxide Removal Through Federal Procurement by Natalie Tham, Danny Broberg, and Xan Fishman

Dr. Meron Tesfaye is a senior policy analyst for BPC’s Energy Program. Meron has a Ph.D. in clean energy & hydrogen research and combines that state and federal-policy experience. Prior to BPC, she was a Senior Policy Fellow at Carbon180 and a Science Fellow in the California Senate Budget office. As a scientist turned policy enthusiast, Meron works on issues such as biomass-based carbon removal, hydrogen, and industrial decarbonization.

Dr. Danny Broberg received his Ph.D. in Materials Science at UC Berkeley, where he researched next-generation solar and battery materials. After finishing his Ph.D., he went to Capitol Hill where he was a legislative fellow for Senator Chris Coons (D-DE). While there he helped craft and drive forward bipartisan policies relating to carbon management and clean energy commercialization. After a year and a half on the hill, he joined the Bipartisan Policy Center where he focuses primarily on carbon management policies, with a focus on technological solutions and critical mineral supply chains. He runs the BPC’s DAC Advisory Council, which includes companies like Carbon Engineering, Climeworks, Global Thermostat, and Air Liquide, as well as former members of Congress like Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), John Delaney (D-MD, former presidential candidate), and Byron Dorgan (D-ND).

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge of removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

Episode 6 of The Carbon Curve is with Robert Niven, Chair and CEO of CarbonCure Technologies.

Carbon removal (or CDR) is often represented as a process that involves pumping captured CO2 back underground where it belongs. But we can actually use CO2 removed from the atmosphere in every day products like plastics, fuels, and building materials. This is a burgeoning industry known as “carbontech” - where innovators are working on carbon neutral, and even carbon negative, products.

One application that’s really intriguing to me is the process of infusing CO2 into concrete. Which means that concrete can potentially serve as a carbon sink, permanently locking away atmospheric CO2 while also reducing the amount of cement needed in the concrete mix - further reducing this essential product’s carbon footprint.

I think this could be really impactful. Concrete is the second most consumed material in the world, second to water. If concrete production was a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter on Earth, contributing to roughly 7% of global CO2 emissions. Additionally, because of chemical reactions integral to its production, concrete is really difficult to decarbonize.

Thankfully, there are companies that are using CO2 to make concrete less carbon intensive. I wanted to speak to a leading company that’s working to solve this problem directly, to learn more about their technology, and find out about what businesses and governments can do to help drive greater demand for low carbon concrete.

In this episode, Na’im and Rob discuss:

* The carbon intensity of the concrete industry

* An overview of CarbonCure’s technology

* CarbonCure as a carbon removal company, and using carbon removal credits to erase low carbon concrete’s “green premium”

* Policies that can support the scale-up of low carbon concrete, as well as opportunities for cities and communities to help drive demand

* What Canada do to help commercialize more carbon removal companies like CarbonCure

* The next six months for CarbonCure

Relevant show links:

* CarbonCure’s website, resources, and careers page, (Twitter and LinkedIn)

* CarbonCure’s mission to reduce concrete emissions by 500 million tons per year (PDF)

* Carbon180 report on federal strategies to support low carbon concrete, by Shuchi Talati, PhD, Chris Neidl, and Na’im Merchant

* OpenAir Collective’s work on Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act (LECCLA)

* This Is CDR episode (YouTube) on combining DAC and concrete with Chris Neidl and Na’im Merchant

* Carbon Curve post on companies at the cutting edge of carbontech (May 2022)

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up the climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

Episode 5 of The Carbon Curve is with Ben Rubin, Executive Director of the Carbon Business Council.

Over the past two years, the carbon removal (CDR) sector has flourished according to a Climate Tech VC report.

Carbon removal, carbon utilization and CCS companies, as well as carbon marketplaces raised a combined $1.5 billion in the first half of this year. That's an eightfold increase over the same period last year (with much of that growth happening in the carbon removal space) which led me to ask: with the carbon removal industry beginning to take shape, when does it make sense for this plethora of startups to join forces, learn from one another and secure the policy wins necessary to thrive as an industry? And how do you find common interests across companies with different technologies, geographies, and business models.

A few weeks ago, the Carbon Business Council officially launched with 40 member organizations in tow representing every facet of the carbon management space. I thought I'd ask their new Executive Director, Ben Rubin, about their theory of change (especially given their technology neutral approach) and how they are going to find a shared set of priorities in this nascent and disparate industry to help get to gigaton scale carbon removal.

In this episode, Na’im and Ben discuss:

* What makes the Carbon Business Council different from other system actors in the carbon removal space

* The types of members represented in the Carbon Business Council, and how they’re being brought together to help shape the policy landscape to achieve gigaton scale carbon removal

* Why they endorsed the Carbon Removal and Emissions Storage Act (CREST Act) at launch

* How they address the needs of members outside of the US

* Their Ethical Oath to Restore the Earth

Mentioned in this episode:

* Climate Tech VC’s analysis on climate funding in 2022

* Carbon Business Council website and Oath to Restore the Earth

* Bipartisan Policy Center’s blog post comparing the CREST Act and CDRLA; also my previous post on government procurement of carbon removal

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up the climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

Our 4th episode of The Carbon Curve is with Peter Reinhardt, CEO and co-Founder of Charm Industrial, where they're developing novel carbon removal and renewable industrial syngas technology. Prior to charm, Peter was CEO and co-founder at Segment a software as a service customer data platform, which grew to 600 people before it was acquired by Twilio in 2020 for 3.2 billion. He previously studied aerospace engineering at MIT

Building trust is absolutely critical to generating the political will and stakeholder buy-in we need to scale up carbon removal or CDR.

The challenge is that there are few if any trusted third-party systems to stand behind a carbon removal project’s claims about tons removed, additionality, permanence, and a number of other factors that are important in ensuring high quality carbon removal did in fact happen.

Most of the certification and verification systems that exist today are built around avoidance-based carbon offsets - which have a whole host of their own problems around quality and trust.

Unsatisfied with the state of current standards, and recognizing the need to move quickly to solve this problem, Charm Industrial is charting a new path - building their own monitoring, reporting, and verification protocol with input from experts across the carbon removal sector.

I wanted to speak to them to learn more about whether their approach has the potential to build trust in the broader carbon removal ecosystem.

In this episode, Na’im and Peter discuss:

* Charm’s carbon removal process relative to other approaches

* Challenges with existing standard-setting systems in the carbon offsets world

* Why Charm took a different approach to MRV, and what that looks like

* If Charm’s approach is adopted by other companies, can it “abstract up” into a generally accepted, third party approach?

Show links:

* Charm’s website and blog post on their path to MRV

* Charm’s public registry on carbon removal deliveries

* Charm’s blog where more details on their protocol will be forthcoming

* Na’im’s report with CarbonPlan on barriers to scaling carbon removal, including stakeholder perceptions on existing standard setting systems

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up the climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

The third episode of The Carbon Curve podcast is with Dai Ellis.

Today’s discussion is about sketching out a vision for the carbon removal market. Creating that market is going to be really tricky. Unlike other climate technologies carbon removal, for the most part, doesn’t deliver a product or service besides its climate benefit. But the market for carbon removal can’t exist without large purchasers creating consistent demand.

In recent months we’ve seen the private sector take up that mantle by banding together with other companies to create advance market commitments (or AMCs) to buy CDR, establishing much needed demand for this nascent industry.

The model is fashioned after AMCs that were used in the global health space to scale up access to vaccines, HIV medicines, and other life saving health products in low income countries.

Dai Ellis was instrumental in helping shape some of those markets back when we both worked at the Clinton Foundation (referred to as the Clinton Health Access Initiative or CHAI in this episode) well over 10 years ago.

Now he’s thinking about market shaping in the context of new climate technologies. He wrote a series of four articles on his newsletter (subscribe here) sharing his lessons in global health to the early carbon removal market. Despite some key differences that Dai points out, there’s some really valuable lessons that we can apply from global health to scaling up CDR. This episode will shed some light on those lessons.

Dai Ellis is an entrepreneur and executive coach to climate tech founders and CEOs. He helps companies through inflection-point moments of rapid growth, typically in the Series A to C phase, and his current clients include a range of leading climate tech companies like Arcadia, Sealed, Running Tide, and David Energy.

Climate tech is Dai’s third career chapter after long stints in healthcare and education. Most recently, he co-founded a VC-backed startup in Africa called Nova Pioneer, building the first pan-African network of K-12 schools offering world-class education at affordable tuition levels.

Even more relevant to what we’ll be talking about today, Dai previously led the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s (CHAI) work on creating and shaping markets for drugs, vaccines, and other health products in the developing world. During that stretch of his career he also chaired the Global Fund’s Market Dynamics Committee and served as an advisor to the Gates Foundation.

In this episode, Na’im and Dai talk about:

* What an advance market commitment (AMC) is, and how it was used in creating a market for vaccines and HIV medicines in low income countries

* Features and challenges of these global health markets vs. the early CDR market today

* Key similarities and differences between AMCs from the global health space and AMCs that have emerged to scale up CDR

* Dai’s six building blocks for not just creating, but shaping a healthy, thriving CDR market and the 2 building blocks we need to stand up most urgently

Read Dai’s excellent full series here:

* Frontier and its AMC progenitor

* Adventures in market shaping

* Frontier as a CDR market steward

* Toward a vision for the CDR market

Read my recent report with CarbonPlan on the barriers to scaling the carbon removal industry.

You can connect with Dai Ellis on LinkedIn or Twitter or shoot him an email at ellisdai [at] gmail [dot] com.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up the climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

The second episode of The Carbon Curve Podcast is with Chris Neidl (Twitter, LinkedIn), Co-Founder of the OpenAir Collective. OpenAir is a volunteer-led, global network accelerating carbon removal advancement and evolution through member initiated missions. OpenAir has completely re-imagined climate activism by mobilizing people to not just support, but co-create policies at the local, state, and federal level to scale up carbon removal. The group is grounded in open source principles like decentralization and peer production. Through OpenAir, people are discovering ways to get involved in carbon removal that draws on their unique backgrounds and experiences - which will help make the field more dynamic and diverse.

Chris Neidl is the co-founder of OpenAir, a global volunteer collective launched in 2019 to advance carbon dioxide removal (CDR) through member-driven advocacy and research and development missions. In this role Chris has helped lead CDR focused policy advocacy campaigns at the municipal, state and national levels including the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act (LECCLA), the Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act (CDRLA), and the Luxembourg Negative Emissions Tariff (L-NET) Chris came to DAC and CDR from a fifteen year career in solar energy, which spanned diverse research, activist and project management roles in North America, South Asia, Afghanistan and East Africa. Chris is an upstate New York native and long-time Brooklyn resident currently based in Puntarenas, Costa Rica.

In this episode, Na’im and Chris talk about:

* How working internationally informed their views on approaching climate change with a global perspective

* The origin of OpenAir Collective and embracing “peer-production” to empower its members

* Initiatives like New York State’s Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act and This Is CDR

* OpenAir’s role in advancing a federal Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act

* Zooming out on the carbon removal field more broadly - what’s working well and what’s not

* How people can get involved in OpenAir

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Na’im Merchant is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up the climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere to combat climate change. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

Introducing The Carbon Curve Podcast with Na’im Merchant

Na’im is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up the climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. According to the IPCC, large scale carbon dioxide removal is “essential” to meeting our climate goals - but few people know about carbon removal, how critical a tool it is in combating climate change, or the ways they can have an impact on this field.

Na’im launched The Carbon Curve newsletter in 2021 to start chipping away at this problem. Now he’s launching this podcast to profile the work of inspiring entrepreneurs, activists, scientists, and policy experts pushing the boundaries on what’s possible on carbon removal - with the aim of inspiring more people to get involved in the space.

Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with one of these impressive individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

Jason Hochman and the Direct Air Capture Coalition

Our first episode is with Jason Hochman (Twitter, LinkedIn), Co-Founder and Senior Director of the Direct Air Capture Coalition. The DAC Coalition brings together technology companies and partners to advance deployment of DAC, with over 25 members, and 10 partners and observers to date. As the carbon removal field grows, coalitions like this will be necessary to create the ecosystem for new DAC technologies to flourish. In this episode, Na’im and Jason talk about:

* The origins and mission of the DAC Coalition

* DAC Coalition’s membership

* The DOE’s $3.5 billion DAC Hubs Initiative

* Is DAC getting too much funding/attention?

* Reframing carbon removal from being a burden to an inclusive, global opportunity

If you like this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.