This is CDR

In this episode of This Is CDR we are pleased to welcome Eion Carbon Co-Founders CEO Adam Wolf and CTO Elliot Chang to discuss how the company seeks to drive innovation in the science, measurement, and operations of enhanced weathering (EW) in agriculture.

About Eion: https://eioncarbon.com/

Eion is a leader in enhanced rock weathering and patented the first direct measurement methodology to unlock this highly scalable removal pathway. Working with farmers and existing agricultural systems, Eion's process of applying olivine to working lands rapidly, efficiently, and safely removes carbon while generating tangible environmental and social benefits.

About Adam:

Adam Wolf is co-founder and CEO of Eion. Previously he founded and led the digital ag company Arable. He holds a BSc and Msc in Agronomy from UC Davis, and a PhD in Biology from Stanford, and currently resides in Princeton NJ.

About Elliot:

Elliot Chang is co-founder and CTO of Eion. He previously held researcher positions at LBL and LLNL investigating metal-mineral interactions. He holds a BSE from Princeton University, and a PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from UC Berkeley. His Technology & Innovation group is located in Oakland, CA.

In this episode of This Is CDR we welcome Noya CEO Josh Santos back to the program to update us on the company's evolved approach to direct air capture (DAC), their recent funding round, and plans to deploy and scale in 2023 and beyond.

Links:

Noya - https://www.noya.co/

Josh's LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshisantos/

About Josh:

Josh Santos is the co-founder and CEO of Noya, a company that’s reversing climate change by capturing CO2 from the sky via a novel modular direct air capture process. Before starting Noya, he took the technical skills he learned during his time studying chemical engineering at MIT and applied them in the business world. After graduating, Josh was the Chief of Staff at Labdoor, a startup that tests dietary supplements on behalf of consumers, where he built B2B products and services from scratch. He then went on to become a Project Manager on the Model 3 program at Tesla, where he helped to scale the production rate of the Model 3 after it launched, and then on to become the first EV Program Manager in Harley-Davidson’s new electric vehicle division, where he helped the team scale from 6 to 30 people in the newly-opened Mountain View office. Outside of the office, you can find Josh reading or sailing in the San Francisco Bay.

On this episode of This Is CDR we are pleased to welcome ecoLocked Co-Founder and CEO Dr. Mario Schmitt who will present and discuss the company's innovative solution for climate positive concrete via the incorporation of biochar.

Company - https://www.ecolocked.com/

About Mario:

Mario is a co-founder of ecoLocked, a German startup working to turn biochar into a functional concrete additive to enable carbon removal and long-term storage at scale. He holds a PhD in Corporate Finance and has spent multiple years developing sustainable and climate-friendly business models with industry players and startups. Prior to founding ecoLocked, Mario worked at the Boston Consulting Group, where he helped build up the Group’s Nature and Biodiversity function and published several keystone reports, including The Biodiversity Crisis is a Business Crisis. In 2022, he was recognized as one of 30 Vordenker (“Thought leaders”) in the area of green business by BCG and Handelsblatt.

This week on This Is CDR we are pleased to welcome XPRIZE Carbon Removal Executive Director Nikki Batchelor who will provide an update on the contest's current status and next phase; give an overview of the recently released Circular Carbon Network 2022 Market Report; and discuss XPRIZE's excellent recent collaboration with Carbon180 "From the Ground Up."

About Nikki:

Nikki Batchelor leads the $100M XPRIZE Carbon Removal, a competition supported by the Musk Foundation to drive innovation, market adoption, and the equitable and just scaling of carbon removal solutions. In this capacity she oversees program operations, develops partnerships, and designs strategic initiatives on topics such as environmental justice and investor engagement. Nikki also supports XPRIZE’s work across the energy and climate domain and previously managed operations and impact programs for the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, including the Circular Carbon Network, which aims to catalyze commercial activity and provide market insights for the growing carbontech and carbon removal sectors. Nikki also serves on the Carbon Business Council Board of Directors and Puro.Earth Advisory Board.

Prior to that, she served as an Innovation Advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, designing and executing challenge programs and impact frameworks, as well as managing operations for grant programs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, she has worked as a Strategist for NationBuilder, a software start-up developing product and communication strategies and expansion into new markets. Nikki holds an MBA from George Washington University.This week on This Is CDR we are pleased to welcome XPRIZE Carbon Removal Executive Director Nikki Batchelor who will provide an update on the contest's current status and next phase; give an overview of the recently released Circular Carbon Network 2022 Market Report; and discuss XPRIZE's excellent recent collaboration with Carbon180 "From the Ground Up."

About Nikki:

Nikki Batchelor leads the $100M XPRIZE Carbon Removal, a competition supported by the Musk Foundation to drive innovation, market adoption, and the equitable and just scaling of carbon removal solutions. In this capacity she oversees program operations, develops partnerships, and designs strategic initiatives on topics such as environmental justice and investor engagement. Nikki also supports XPRIZE’s work across the energy and climate domain and previously managed operations and impact programs for the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, including the Circular Carbon Network, which aims to catalyze commercial activity and provide market insights for the growing carbontech and carbon removal sectors. Nikki also serves on the Carbon Business Council Board of Directors and Puro.Earth Advisory Board.

Prior to that, she served as an Innovation Advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, designing and executing challenge programs and impact frameworks, as well as managing operations for grant programs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, she has worked as a Strategist for NationBuilder, a software start-up developing product and communication strategies and expansion into new markets. Nikki holds an MBA from George Washington University.

The European policy landscape surrounding CDR is shifting rapidly, with developments at both the EU and national levels. OpenAir is excited to host Sebastian Manhart of Carbonfuture to discuss his analysis of:

- Carbon removal targets and policies at the national level across Europe including a discussion of best practices and opportunities.

- Developments and key open questions for the European Carbon Removal Certification Framework.

The future of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and what it means for CDR.

Following the presentation, we'll open the floor to audience Q&A moderated by OpenAir's Megha Raghavan.

About Sebastian:

- https://www.carbonfuture.earth/

- https://twitter.com/sebmanhart?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Sebastian Manhart is a climate advocate, leveraging his skills and experiences to support policy makers in making better decisions for our planet. He is the Senior Policy Advisor of Carbonfuture, the world´s leading platform for high-quality carbon dioxide removal (CDR), accounting for around a quarter of all deliveries of high durability CDR in 2022. He is a Cambridge and Harvard trained economist, who spent a decade as a tech entrepreneur and advised Angela Merkel´s Chancellery as well as the World Bank.

In this episode Toby and Megha welcome Kita Co-Founder and CEO Natalia Dorfman to discuss how insurance can help facilitate and accelerate the scaling of CDR.

Kita - https://www.kita.earth/

About Natalia:

Natalia Dorfman is the CEO and co-founder of Kita, the carbon insurance specialist. Kita’s purpose is accelerating investment in high quality carbon removal projects with insurance products that reduce transaction risk and safeguard the performance of carbon purchases. Kita’s flagship insurance product is Carbon Purchase Protection Cover, protecting buyers of forward purchased carbon removal credits against under-delivery. Prior to founding Kita, Natalia spent 15 years as a business development and strategy specialist within the legal sector, including leading the Climate Risk practice strategy as Global Head of New Business at Clyde & Co LLP. Her experience with large corporations on their climate change-related challenges inspired her to help accelerate positive change through entrepreneurship. She was named among the “Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs to Watch” by NatWest and the Telegraph in November 2022.

On this episode of This Is CDR Toby and Megha catch up with Carbonplan's Freya Chay and Frontier's Dr. Zeke Hausfather who present and discuss recent updates to the organizations' excellent CDR Verification Framework.

Presenter Links:

Frontier - https://frontierclimate.com/

Carbon Plan - https://carbonplan.org/

CDR Verification Framework - https://carbonplan.org/research/cdr-verification

About Freya:

Freya Chay is a Program Manager for Carbonplan. Freya has an interdisciplinary background in decarbonization. She’s particularly interested in how climate-forced transformations will impact culture and communities. She holds an MS in Earth Systems and a BS in Computer Science from Stanford University.

About Zeke:

Dr. Zeke Hausfather is Climate Research Lead for Stripe. He is a climate scientist whose research focuses on carbon removal, observational temperature records, climate models, and mitigation technologies. Zeke spent 10 years working as a data scientist and entrepreneur in the cleantech sector, where he was the lead data scientist at Essess, the chief scientist at C3.ai, and the cofounder and chief scientist of Efficiency 2.0. He also worked as a research scientist with Berkeley Earth, was the senior climate analyst at Project Drawdown, the US analyst for Carbon Brief, and the director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute. He has masters degrees in environmental science from Yale University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a PhD in climate science from the University of California, Berkeley.

In this episode of This Is CDR Toby and welcome Kodama Systems' Head of Biomass Utilization and Policy Jimmy Voorhis and Yale Carbon Containment Lab's Associate Director of Science Dr. Sinéad Crotty who will discuss their research collaboration on biomass burial of unmerchantable residues from fire thinning.

LInks:

- https://kodama.ai/

- https://carboncontainmentlab.yale.edu/who-we-are

About Jimmy:

Jimmy Voorhis leads biomass utilization and policy at Kodama Systems, where he develops solutions to create value from forestry residues based on their inherent carbon. Prior to Kodama, Jimmy was a consulting geochemist for international mining companies and built water + mass balance models of major mining systems across resource types. He is expert at developing methods to better constrain Earth processes, and has pioneered studies in sulfide mineral electrochemistry as well as characterization of pit lake water quality and dynamics utilizing aerial drones. Previously he was an ice climbing and mountain guide in Alaska and National Geographic Explorer studying the impacts of climate change on winter recreation. He holds a MS from Dartmouth and a BSE from Tufts.

About Sinéad:

Dr. Sinéad Crotty has ten years of experience in experimental community ecology, ecosystem restoration, and environmental engineering. Her previous work utilized primarily hypothesis-driven field experiments along with regional survey techniques, geospatial analyses, and modeling efforts to investigate the effects of climate change on biodiversity, stability and functionality of coastal ecosystems. Sinéad has conducted research across the many coastal systems of the eastern US, including salt marshes, sand dunes, mangroves, cobble beaches, and live oak savannas. Sinéad holds a Ph.D. from the University of Florida in Environmental Engineering Sciences (2019). Prior to her dissertation work, Sinéad received her Bachelor of Science in Biology (Honors) from Brown University in 2015.

In this episode of This Is CDR Toby and Megha welcome Carbon To Stone Founder Dr. Greeshma Gadikota of Cornell Engineering who will present the startup's novel DAC approach that replaces conventional solvent regeneration using heat or pressure changes with direct mineralization of low-cost alkaline wastes such as steel slag, significantly reducing the energy, and thus the cost, required. The captured CO₂ is durably stored as solid carbonate materials that can be used for building materials and other industrial purposes.

About Greeshma:

Dr. Greeshma Gadikota is an Assistant Professor and Croll Sesquicentennial Fellow in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering with an appointment in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Cornell University. She directs the Sustainable Energy and Resource Recovery Group. She held postdoctoral appointments at Princeton and Columbia University and a researcher appointment at NIST. Her PhD in Chemical Engineering and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering and Operations Research are from Columbia University. She is a recipient of the DOE, NSF and ARO CAREER Awards, Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award, Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Award, Inaugural Cornell Rising Women Innovator Award, and AICHE Sabic Award for Young Professionals.

Session Links:

https://www.cee.cornell.edu/faculty-directory/greeshma-gadikota

https://carbontostone.com/

https://twitter.com/carbontostone

https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1603414648732073984

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/07/research-focus-greeshma-gadikota-invents-technologies-capture-and-upcycle-carbon

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2022/12/cornell-startup-carbon-stone-enters-carbon-removal-pre-purchase-agreement-frontier

https://medium.com/@sgadikota/building-a-circular-carbon-economy-5caa90359218

In this episode of This Is CDR Toby and Megha welcome Robert Höglund who will present the excellent and insightful cdr.fyi 2022 Year in Review report what we can hope and expect in 2023 and beyond to get the long-duration CDR market on track for gigatonne scale by mid-century.

ABOUT CDR.FYI:

cdr.fyi is a community driven effort to bring transparency and accountability to the carbon removal market. We work with CDR participants to ensure accurate, trusted reporting for their purchases, deliveries, and verifications.

ABOUT ROBERT:

Robert is an independent advisor working with companies and organizations on carbon removal, climate contributions, and climate policy, through his company Marginal Carbon AB. He previously headed Oxfam Sweden's policy and communications team, where he authored the discussion paper Removing carbon now. He founded the Climate goal initiative, a network of organizations pushing Sweden to adopt a consumption-based climate target. Robert created and manages the Milkywire Climate Transformation Fund, sits on the board of Mistra sustainable consumption and was part of the Science-based Target Initiatives' Net-zero expert advisory group.

GUEST LINKS:

https://twitter.com/RobertHoglund

https://www.marginalcarbon.com/

https://marginalcarbon.substack.com/

https://www.cdr.fyi/

https://twitter.com/cdr_fyi

https://medium.com/cdr-fyi/cdr-fyi-2022-year-in-review-d095acd9a1a0

OPENAIR

https://www.openircollective.cc