This is CDR

In this episode of This Is CDR, OpenAir's Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan are pleased to welcome Soletair CEO Petri Laakso to tell us how the company’s DAC technology turns buildings into carbon sinks – and improve building occupants’ health, perception, and productivity – by integrating with HVAC systems to capture CO2 directly from the building’s internal air flow.

ABOUT OUR GUEST - https://www.soletairpower.fi/

Petri Laakso has been the CEO of Soletair Power since 2019. Prior to joining the company, Petri worked in the photovoltaic industry as Vice-President of Projects at Valoe Oyj. Before getting involved in cleantech, Petri worked at the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, where he focused on developing advanced manufacturing methods such as laser processing and 3D printing.

In this episode of This Is CDR OpenAir welcomes Dr. Zeke Hausfather, Climate Research Lead for Stripe to tell us about Frontier Climate and advance market commitments (AMCs), as well as to walk us through the underlying carbon math that both necessitates and constrains CDR.

Hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan

ABOUT OUR GUEST - https://stripe.com/climate

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, OpenAir is pleased to welcome Captura CEO Steve Oldham to tell us how the company employs established electrochemical concepts to remove CO2 from the atmosphere via direct ocean capture, using only seawater and renewable energy, producing no byproduct.

Hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan

ABOUT OUR GUEST - https://capturacorp.com/

Steve Oldham joined Captura as CEO on 11th April. Steve’s prior role was as CEO of Direct Air Capture (DAC) company Carbon Engineering (CE). Under Steve’s leadership, CE made significant progress in bringing DAC into commercial reality. Highlights include: raising over $100M in equity and non-dilutive funding, raising public awareness and advocating for DAC specific policies in North America and the UK, concluding a major strategic partnership with Oxy for DAC deployment, negotiating the largest carbon removal commercial contract yet announced with Airbus (via Oxy) and growing the CE team while building a dedicated R&D center for CE in British Columbia, Canada. CE was named North American CleanTech Company of the Year in 2021 under Steve’s leadership.

Prior to CE, Steve was a senior executive in Canadian aerospace company MDA (and its US parent Maxar). Steve led a variety of strategic files for MacDonald Dettwiler and also served as General Manager for the company’s robotics and satellite groups.

In this episode of This Is CDR OpenAir is pleased to welcome Carbin Minerals CEO Paul Needham and Chief Science Officer Dr. Greg Dipple to tell us how the X Prize Milestone Award-winning company’s science and technology accelerate natural mineralization processes to unlock the enormous carbon removal potential of mine tailings.

Hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS - https://carbinminerals.ca/

Paul Needham is CEO of Carbin Minerals. He's a cleantech serial entrepreneur with 20 years of experience as founder, CEO and board member. Paul also currently serves as board member and senior advisor to energy access companies, financing facilities and impact investment funds that are accelerating the energy transition in the developing world. Paul co-founded and led Simpa Networks, the leading rooftop solar leasing company in India. Simpa was acquired by ENGIE in November 2018. Paul has a MPhil in Economics & Politics from the University of Cambridge.

Greg Dipple is Carbin Minerals’ Chief Science Officer, and Professor of Geological Sciences at the University of British Columbia. Dr. Dipple studies the processes of and driving forces for mineral-fluid reactions, including those that modulate long-term climate through chemical weathering. He has published extensively on fluid-rock interactions from the deep Earth to its surface. Through field, experimental, and modeling studies, he and his students and postdocs have demonstrated that weathering of alkaline mine wastes are vastly accelerated over background weathering rates and impact the short term carbon cycle. Current work focuses on industrial control of these processes for carbon capture, utilization and storage. Dr. Dipple has worked at The University of British Columbia since 1992. He has served as a Department Head and Associate Dean, and in administrative roles for the Mineral Deposit Research Unit and the Bradshaw Research Institute for Minerals and Mining.

In this episode of This Is CDR, OpenAir is very pleased to welcome Puro.earth co-founders Antti Vihavainen and Marianne Tikkanen to tell us about the company’s carbon removal marketplace, standard, and registry, and discuss how the voluntary market for durable carbon removal can effectively scale in the coming decade. Puro.earth in partnership with Nasdaq recently released the Puro Registry, the first registry dedicated to carbon removals and the first carbon removal reference price indexes. The Puro Registry gives needed transparency to the carbon removal climate claims that corporations are making. The indexes give visibility of carbon removal pricing trends to climate finance stakeholders such as carbon removal suppliers, project developers, asset managers and investors, stimulating market growth and helping potential investors into these ventures make better informed decisions.

Hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan.

ABOUT OUR GUESTS - https://puro.earth/

Antti Vihavainen is CEO and Co-Founder of Puro.earth, the world’s first B2B marketplace, standard, and registry focused solely on carbon removals. Puro.earth's mission is to mobilize the world’s economy to reward carbon net-negative emissions. He leads the growth of the company by spearheading global adoption by corporate buyers of carbon removals verified with the Puro Standard. Antti decided to found Puro.earth when he realized that there was too much CO2 in the atmosphere and carbon net-negative technologies already existed, but there was no business model to incentivize them. He is a sought-after keynote speaker in the transformation needed to scale carbon removal globally. He holds a Master of Science in International Business from Helsinki School of Economics.

Marianne Tikkanen is Co-founder and Head of Carbon Removal Supply at Puro.earth, the world’s first B2B marketplace, standard and registry focused solely on carbon removal. Marianne believes CO2 can be removed at scale with the latest science-based methods and technology. She leads the team that identifies promising carbon removal suppliers and projects, and manages their certification under the Puro Standard, the first carbon removal standard for engineered carbon removal methods in the voluntary carbon market. She has a Masters in Telecom and Computer Science from LUT University. Read more about Marianne in Forbes.

In this episode of This Is CDR OpenAir welcomes Dr. Greg Nemet of the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and author of How Solar Became Cheap, to teach us about low-carbon innovation and how we can push CDR down the cost curve.

Co-hosted by OpenAir members Jared Hunter and Chris Neidl

ABOUT OUR GUEST - https://www.howsolargotcheap.com/

Gregory Nemet, PhD is a Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the La Follette School of Public Affairs. He teaches courses in energy systems analysis, policy analysis, and international environmental policy. Nemet's research focuses on understanding the process of technological change and the ways in which public policy can affect it. He received his doctorate in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley. His A.B. is in geography and economics from Dartmouth College. He received an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2017 and used it to write a book on how solar PV provides a model for low carbon innovation. He was awarded the inaugural World Citizen Prize in Environmental Performance by APPAM in 2019. He is currently a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 6th Assessment Report.

In this episode of This Is CDR OpenAir welcomes Mission Zero CEO Dr. Nicholas Chadwick to tell us about the company’s modular, electrochemical, and low-cost DAC process, and plans for deployment and scale. Mission Zero’s technology can deploy rapidly using existing supply chains that exist globally today whilst consuming 3-5x less energy than other approaches. Dr. Chadwick will speak about the company's unique R&D process which focuses on constraint-based and outcome-driven research, leading to expedited timeframes to market for hardware, where traditionally DAC technologies have struggled to demonstrate or overcome scaling problems.

Hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan.

ABOUT OUR GUEST - www.missionzero.tech

Nicholas Chadwick is the CEO and Co-founder of Mission Zero Technologies. A chemist and materials scientist by training with a PhD from University College London, he has worked for many years in industries such as semiconductors, renewable energy and water security where materials science could play a pivotal role in innovation and new capabilities. Nicholas began managing a carbon capture project and became hooked and convinced that DAC was the one thing we needed and didn't have. Through the venture builder Deep Science Ventures, he founded Mission Zero in July 2020 with his co-founders Gael and Shil. The company raised investment from DSV, Anglo American, and other top tier climate tech investors, and has been pioneering a new form of DAC ever since.

In this episode of This Is CDR OpenAir welcomes Inherit Carbon Solutions co-founders Kaja Voss and Mike Carpenter to tell us about the company’s highly scalable CDR method of capture and geologic sequestration of biogenic CO2 from biogas, waste treatment, landfill, and other anaerobic digestion processes.

Hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan.

ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS - www.inheritcs.com

Kaja Voss is the co-founder and COO of Inherit Carbon Solutions. Prior to founding Inherit, Kaja worked on topics related to anaerobic digestion as a consultant in an Oslo-based consultancy called Carbon Limits. She worked closely with the industry and she saw that treatment of organic waste can drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions when done right and has the potential to be a source of carbon removal. Kaja initiated the first formal study of biogas + CCS potential in Norway together with the national Environment Agency in 2021. Kaja has a background in economics (University of Edinburgh).

Mike Carpenter is the co-founder and CEO of Inherit Carbon Solutions. Mike has a background in CO2 storage. He helped develop the Northern Lights CO2 transport and storage hub project as part of the Norwegian CCS Agency team (Gassnova) that supported the site selection and engineering studies. Mike switched from oil & gas to carbon capture and storage projects in 2007 and started working on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) applications in 2021. Mike is a geophysicist (Cambridge University) with a background in CO2 storage.

In this episode of This Is CDR, OpenAir is pleased to welcome Takachar Co-Founder and CTO Kevin Kung to tell us about the company’s Earthshot and CarbonX Prize-winning modular distributed thermochemical process for converting waste biomass to biochar and other valuable materials.

Hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan

ABOUT OUR SPEAKER - https://www.takachar.com/

Kevin Kung is the co-founder and CTO of Takachar. From 2012 to 2017, Kevin built Takachar’s initial technology as part of his Ph.D. research in the field of biofuels and renewable energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with the support of the Tata Trusts. Prior to that, Kevin had six years of experience conducting engineering design in resource-constrained settings, including borehole restoration in Uganda, interlocking stabilized construction materials in Ghana, and renewable energy systems in Kenya and India. In 2015, Kevin co-founded a company (Safi Organics) in Kenya that produces carbon-negative, high-yield biochar fertilizer from crop residues, improving smallholder farmers’ harvest yields by 30 percent. He helped grow the company to 25 full-time employees and 5,500 customers.

This Is CDR is pleased to welcome Verdox Co-Founder and Dr. Sahag Voskian and Head of Business Development Jonte Boysen to tell us how the company’s scalable, cost-effective electroswing adsorption (ESA) platform technology, originally developed at MIT, can remove CO2 from the air with 70% energy savings versus conventional approaches.

Brought to you by www.openaircollective.cc and hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan.

ABOUT THE PRESENTERS - www.verdox.com

Dr. Sahag Voskian is the inventor of Verdox’s Electro-Swing Adsorption (ESA) technology. He is also an inventor on over 20 patents and patent applications in the areas of electrochemically-mediated separations and catalysis. Dr. Voskian developed Verdox’s core technology during his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the Hatton Group as an MIT Energy Initiative fellow. Previously, he was also a post-bac research associate at Dartmouth College working on molecular machines and switches. Dr. Voskian received his Bachelor’s degree in both Chemical Engineering and Chemistry from WPI working on synthesis and applications of low symmetry Metal-Organic Frameworks.

Jonte Boysen is the Head of Business Development at Verdox. Jonte was a strategy consultant for financial institutions before pivoting into the carbon removal space. He advised some of the largest North American and Australian banks on corporate investment prioritization as well as marketing, sales, and distribution strategy. Jonte holds an MBA from The Wharton School and an MA in International Studies with a focus on Africa from the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor's degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Toronto.