Tom and Emily kick off a brand-new three-part miniseries on how people understand (and misunderstand) carbon removal - and what that means for the future of the sector. From the words we choose to the baggage they carry, from early “sci-fi” scepticism to today’s governance debates, this episode unpacks why public perceptions aren’t a side issue: they’re central to whether CDR can scale at all.

In this episode:

🧠 Low Awareness, High Stakes: We look at why knowledge of CDR remains tiny - and yet how support rises sharply once people actually learn what it is.

📜 Early CDR Was… Science Fiction: Back in the noughties, carbon removal felt like aviation before the Wright brothers. But have we caught up?

🗣️ The Language Trap: “Ocean acidification”, “nature-based”, “engineered”: the words we choose shape the reactions we get. We hear why analogies can mislead, why metaphors can create false binaries, and why the “natural = good” instinct is more complicated than it looks.

🌏 When Context Changes Everything: From smallholders in Malaysia to farmers in Cornwall, public perceptions aren’t static - they’re contextual.

🏛️ Governance Isn’t Background Noise: We learn that CDR isn’t just hardware. Change the governance model, and you change the public response. People don’t just ask “what is CDR?”; they ask “who’s in charge?”

🔍 Before We Scale, We Need Trust: Early impressions matter. And in a landscape primed for misinformation and polarisation, how we communicate now will shape the governance, justice, and legitimacy of CDR for decades to come.

👥 Featuring

Guest insights from:

Dave Addison

Ingrid Sundvor (Carbon Balance Initiative)

Dr. Elspeth Spence (Cardiff University)

Dr. Rob Bellamy (University of Manchester)

Hosts: Tom Previte and Emily Swaddle

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

We are hosting an event! 

Together with Coalition Member Supercritical and the FLN: GGR Future Leaders Network, we bring you…

The Carbon Removal Chat Room: Ask Us Anything

Supercritical HQ, London

6pm Wednesday 19th November

Sign up here: https://luma.com/0ii0lsis

We’ve created this event for newbies to CDR, first-timers and anyone who has carbon removal questions they want answered. We’ll be joined by Expert Guests from across the industry ready to share their knowledge and experience.

Bring your questions and your CDR-curious friends!

We'll bring the experts, the snacks, and the answers!

See you there!

In this final instalment of our three-part policy miniseries, Tom and Emily look to the future of carbon removal policy: who’s shaping it, what’s getting in the way, and what else can Emily see in her crystal ball?

In this episode:

🏗️ Building the Future Without a Manual: We meet a company navigating what it means to innovate when the rulebook hasn’t been written yet (and may be printed in two jurisdictions at once).

🎯 How CDR Is Getting Heard: Industry lobbying isn’t just for big corporates - our startup ecosystem can also get involved. But we learn than misperceptions around CDR (it’s not CCS!) are still widespread among policymakers.

💡 Voluntary Policy Is Still Policy: We explore the de facto power of the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi), which influences climate action across thousands of the world's biggest companies - despite being entirely voluntary. But will its guidance on removals give the sector the boost it needs?

🌍 Watch Out for the Global South: We all know that the future of CDR isn’t just in Europe and North America. But how can policy help build benefit-sharing frameworks, bring legal clarity, and drive investment confidence around the world?

🏙️ Think Global, Act Local: While attention is often on the big-hitters, are local initiatives quietly shaping the next wave of CDR? Bonus: you too can be a policy influencer without wearing a tie.

🧵 Now It’s Your Turn: After 15+ hours of interviews and more acronyms than we can legally fit on this page, we reflect on the biggest takeaways from this miniseries - complexity, possibility, and the role each of us has to play in shaping what comes next.

👥 Featuring:

Guest insights from

• Oliver Grogono (Standard Gas Technologies)
• Nikolaus Wohlgemuth (Carbonfuture)
• Chris Sherwood, Elisabeth Harding and Lambrini Margariti (Negative Emissions Platform)
• Robert Höglund (Milkywire)
• Shilpika Gautam (Opna)
• Omoloro Meshack (CAP-A)
• Christopher Neidl (OpenAir Collective)
• Christoph Beuttler (Carbon Gap)

• Hosts Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte
• Producer Ben Weaver-Hincks

In the second of our three-part deep dive, we plunge into the murky, acronym-rich depths of carbon removal policy across the UN, the EU, the US and beyond - and we promise to come up for air, eventually.

In this episode:

🧠 Acronyms and Initialisms Aplenty: Consider yourselves warned. This episode contains more letters than a game of Scrabble. Don't worry, it'll be quacking... sorry, cracking.

🌐 The UN – Going Global: We finally (finally!) get to grips with Article 6 of the Paris Agreement - the big hope for creating a global, compliance-grade carbon market. So, does it deserve its place as the darling of the CDR community?

🧱 The EU – Slow and Steady Wins The Race: We dissect Europe’s tripartite climate framework, learn what the CRCF stands for, and ponder the possibility of removals entering the ETS by 2031 (yes, we said 2031… pace yourselves.)

💵 The US – Land of the Free… Tax Credits: While the EU leans into regulation, the US has chosen financial incentives to scale engineered CDR… for now. (Content advisory: information likely to be outdated within minutes.)

🌏 Zooming Out: Switzerland is quietly blazing a trail. Japan is scaling up a national carbon market. India is laying the foundations. There’s a lot going on out there, if you’re willing to look.

🧩 Policy vs Reality: We explore how the right policy for the right place might be the secret to scaling CDR globally - and why no single blueprint might work for everyone.

👥 Featuring:

Guest insights from

• Sebastian Manhart (Carbonfuture)
• Eve Tamme (Climate Principles)
• Elisabeth Harding (Negative Emissions Platform)
• Varsha Ramesh Walsh (Offstream)
• Shilpika Gautam (Opna)
• Sylvain Delerce (Carbon Gap)

• Hosts Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte
• Producer Ben Weaver-Hincks

Welcome to the first in a Carbon Removal Show three-part policy miniseries! We’re diving into the bureaucratic spaghetti of CDR policy - what it is, why we need it, and why pretending it doesn’t exist is no longer an option. It’ll be fun – we promise.

In this episode:

📜 Policy 101: What do we mean when we talk about carbon removal policy? Tom, Emily and their guests unpack the layers - from global frameworks to national targets, and the many policies themselves that can (hopefully) keep this show on the road.

🏛️ A Brief History of Climate Governance: We rewind all the way to the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement, to understand the context in which CDR policy is emerging. Turns out, carbon removal has technically been part of the discussion for some time - but it took a while to step out of the LULUCF shadows and into the limelight.

🛠️ The Goals of CDR Policy: Whether it’s support for scaling the industry or regulation for doing it right, we explore the many roles that policy can play in ensuring CDR does what it’s supposed to. Who should pay for it? How can we avoid unintended consequences? And is it too late to bribe policymakers with Emily’s banana bread?

🌍 It’s All Connected: We learn that CDR doesn’t happen in a vacuum – and that means CDR policy can’t either. It's entangled with everything from energy to land use to ocean governance. And yes, ocean-based CDR is complicated when 40% of the sea has no nation.

🍖 The Bony Meat Pie Metaphor™: How do NDCs, interim targets and policies work together to meet(/meat?) our climate goals? It’s all very clever, but not especially appetising.

🧪 Avoiding Déjà Vu: We ask what we can learn from previous climate and environmental policies – so we don’t spend the next decade reinventing the wheel, crashing it into a forest, and accidentally calling it carbon neutral.

👥 Featuring:

Guest insights from

• Sebastian Manhart (Carbonfuture)
• Eve Tamme (Climate Principles)
• Christoph Beuttler (Carbon Gap)
• Wil Burns (Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal)
• Robert Höglund (Milkywire)
• Bojana Bajzelj (BeZero)
• Christopher Neidl (OpenAir Collective)

• Hosts Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte
• Producer Ben Weaver-Hincks

Welcome back to The Carbon Removal Show! We’re kicking off Season 4 with a view from the top - checking in on the state of the carbon removal industry here in the dizzying heights of 2025.

In this episode:

🌍 Where are we now? Durable CDR purchases hit 8 million tonnes in 2024 (a 78% bump from 2023), but 64% of that was Microsoft flexing. Deliveries? Still catching up – and most of it’s biochar.

📉 Caveats, ahoy: Sales are booming, but actual removals are still lagging. The buyer pool is basically a tech giant party.

🚨 Bubble watch: Are we living in a beautifully optimistic carbon bubble? Is it about to pop? Will Tom’s optimism hat survive the bubble bath? We explore industry hype vs. hard truths, including the risks of undelivered credits and startup casualties.

📊 The vibe check: Emily’s on an emotional rollercoaster. Tom is backing the CDR horse. Ben’s beard is greyer. Collectively, we’re cautiously hopeful.

🛠️ What needs to happen?: Scaling isn’t just tech - it’s finance, policy, public understanding, and clear comms. We need to get the message out of the bubble and into the next layer of the onion. (Just… not into Emily’s bubble bath. Please.)

🚗 A history lesson you didn’t know you needed: Did you know the best-selling car in 1897 was electric? We could’ve been 100 years ahead… but markets are messy.

👥 Featuring:

• Guest insights from Robert Höglund and Sebastian Manhart
• Hosts Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte
• Producer Ben Weaver-Hincks

🔗 Links & Resources:

• CDR.fyi – The go-to source for up-to-date data on carbon removal purchases, deliveries, and market trends.
• CDRjobs – A live job board dedicated to carbon removal opportunities.
• "Public perception of carbon dioxide removal technologies in the United States and the United Kingdom" – Emily Cox, Elspeth Spence and Nick Pidgeon, Nature Climate Change, 2020
• This episode of Freakonomics Radio, all about the history of electric vehicles.

🎧 Featured Podcasts & Voices

• Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey – Hosted by Tom Previte - a climate startup podcast for fans of this show.
• CDR Policy Scoop – Hosted by Sebastian Manhart & Eve Tamme - deep dives into CDR policy.
• Milkywire – Robert Höglund's organization supporting impactful climate and CDR initiatives.

The Carbon Removal Show team are dusting off our mics, and we have some exciting news!

The biggest of welcomes and ‘thank you’s to our coalition partners: BeZero, Carbon Engineering, Carbonfuture, Carbon Gap, CarbonX, Klarna, MASH Makes, Milkywire, the Negative Emissions Platform, Opna, Patch, Pinwheel, Planboo, ReCarber, Standard Gas Technologies and Supercritical; and to our individual supporters: Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including how to support our mission, head to thecarbonremovalshow.com.

While you’re waiting for more episodes of The Carbon Removal Show, we wanted to introduce you to another project that our very own Tom Previte has been busy on…

Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey

This is the story of a startup that wants to remove carbon from the atmosphere and help reshape our relationship with the planet. Ideally without burning to the ground in the process.

It was a good few years back when Tom stumbled across biochar. That was during the first season of The Carbon Removal Show. And it turns out that this biochar stuff… it's not just an ancient technology but also a cutting-edge solution for today’s climate problems. 

Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey captures the highs and lows of a green startup - from sharp learning curves to unlikely breakthroughs. Listen in as Tom digs deep into the realities and complexities of setting up a carbon removal project, and gets to grips with the science, the money, and everything it takes to build an environmentally (and financially) sustainable business.

Because if we’re going to save the planet, we’re going to need a lot more businesses like this one.

Search for ‘Grounded: A Climate Startup Journey’ in your favourite podcast player, or click here for all the links.

What happens when an individual company bakes industry scale up into their business philosophy? In this episode, Jakob Andersen shares the “gigaton thinking” mindset that drives his company, MASH Makes, in their approach to business and biochar.

MASH Makes started as a project at the Technological University of Denmark focusing on technology that could convert various waste streams (mainly residue biomass) into different energy products. In short, MASH Makes use automated machines that are able to produce bio oil, hydrogen and electricity from agricultural waste, with the main byproduct of this process being biochar – a soil amendment that actively absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere.

Big thanks to MASH Makes for supporting this episode.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to thecarbonremovalshow.com.

And thanks to Cofruition for consulting on and producing the show.

With scaling up in mind, this episode dives into an innovative concept that could help the industry take big steps forward. Tom and Emily are joined by Jonny Gilson from Carbonaires and Professor Niall Mac Dowell from Imperial College London to discuss Carbonaires’ ideas for the future of the voluntary carbon market. 

Big thanks to Carbonaires for supporting this episode.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to thecarbonremovalshow.com.

And thanks to Cofruition for consulting on and producing the show.