This week on Carbon Removal Newsroom, we’re recapping a year of carbon removal— what went right, what went wrong, and what we’re expecting in 2022.
In 2021, terms like Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs) entered mainstream climate discourse, corporate plans, and government agendas.
The IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report was released in August and underscored the need for carbon removal by highlighting the likelihood of global overshooting of the Paris goals. The United States supported DAC and carbon storage like never before with the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill passed in November.
Climeworks launched its Orca facility in Iceland, which is making rocks underground out of our atmospheric carbon pollution as we speak. Nasdaq purchased a carbon removal marketplace. A growing share of the world’s economy was covered by ambitious net-zero commitments, which imply that maybe, at some point, corporations and governments might start removing a lot of co2 from the air.
Meanwhile, Exxon snapped up some prime carbon storage property in the Gulf of Mexico, United Airlines started assuaging travelers with advertisements of airline-sponsored DAC, and China said it might keep a few coal plants open down the line but cancel out the emissions by capturing atmospheric carbon. Those stories, plus so many more, made 2021 a landmark year for the field (and we didn’t even say the words Elon Musk). Let’s rundown the year that was and look ahead to 2022.
Panelists Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo and Chris Barnard of the American Conservation Coalition join host Radhika Moolgavkar of Nori for this episode.
Resources:
A Research Strategy for Ocean-based Carbon Dioxide Removal and Sequestration
The Climate Solution Actually Adding Millions of Tonnes of CO2 Into the Atmosphere
Climate Reparations (Intelligencer)
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal, from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Hello, all of our listeners and welcome to the December 9th edition of Carbon Removal Newsroom. It’ll be the last one of the year because I thought it was a great way to end this season or this year with the people I started with. So as always, I have Holly Jean Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo. Hello, Holly.
Holly Jean Buck: Hello.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And returning after quite a hiatus is Chris Barnard, Policy Director at the American Conservation Coalition. Hello, Chris.
Chris Barnard: Hello, it’s good to be back.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, we’re happy you’re back. And Radhika Moolgavkar, that’s me, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. Before we get too deep into anything, I wanted to give Holly an opportunity to talk about a new report that’s just come out that she was involved with. So Holly, you want to give our listeners a little update?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, well, I just want to let people know that this report is out there in the world. It was a committee consensus study. So lots of different experts and different ocean CDR technologies, as well as governance and policy coming together to recommend a research strategy for ocean-based carbon dioxide removal and sequestration. And so that looked at six different techniques, nutrient fertilization, artificial upwelling and downwelling, seaweed cultivation, Recovery of Ocean and Coastal Ecosystems as a CDR Technique, Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, and Electrochemical Approaches. And the report makes some recommendation into research in all of those and talks about some considerations for how it should be done.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So if anyone’s interested in reading it, where can they find it?
Holly Jean Buck: It’s free. You can download it from the National Academy’s website.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Cool. Can you also get a book? Do you know?
Holly Jean Buck: I think you can get like a hard copy, but you might have to pay for that one. Yeah.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s what I did with the other study they did. It’s a, it’s pretty dense. It’s a lot of pages. So sometimes having a book is nice. All right. Well, that’s great, Holly. I’m, I, for one, I’m looking forward to reading it. It’s, um, it’s always interesting to see where research needs to head and the recommendations of folks also really happy to see Ocean CDR getting a little bit more traction in the world. So A nice way to end 2021 and start 2022. With that, we will start with the year in carbon removal.
So today we’re going to, because I’m back with my old friends who we all started with back, I think in April, we’re gonna kind of maybe have a little overview of what happened in carbon removal this year. So, you know, it has entered the mainstream climate discourse probably in a way that it hasn’t in years past. You see it in corporate plans, government agendas, The IPCC sixth assessment report was released in August and also kind of underscored the need for carbon removal. We also have companies like Exxon, United talking about different types of carbon removal or maybe carbon storage.
Exxon took some prime property in that area. Anyway, all that to say is it’s everywhere. And so it made kind of 2021 an interesting room for a carbon removal perspective. So I’m going to kind of open it up to both of you. But with this first question, I’ll start with Chris. What do you think was the most significant event or development in the field of carbon removal for 2021?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, it’s a hard question, because as you say, so much did happen in the last year, I think. I was in Scotland a few weeks ago for COP26 and that was my first time really attending a COP and it did strike me and what I would say is kind of the most significant development in the field of carbon removal this year was really the agreement that was struck at the COP by the end of the conference on international carbon markets, on accounting rules, on making sure that there is kind of government support for These carbon credits being verifiable.
And I think it really showed that there is movement on where there’s so much gridlock on other things climate related on kind of carbon markets and carbon removal. There is a lot of movement around the world. And that’s especially somewhere that developing and developed countries can come together. And there were people from developing countries at COP26 saying how important this is for their country specifically. It will help them kind of protect their environment, but at the same time being economically incentivized to do so. So I really think kind of that global recognition and now these new steps that have been put in place to enhance such a global carbon market really is, to me, the biggest development of the year.
Radhika Moolgavkar: What about you, Holly? Where are you focused?
Holly Jean Buck: The answer is somewhat similar. I think that the net zero targets we’ve seen, obviously some before this year, but really many more this year that were important and some correspondent recognition of the need for carbon removal along with those. Those also brought along some amount of important criticism of the idea of net zero and sometimes carbon removal. But I think these net zero targets just really advance the conversation.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I think, you know, from my perspective, and I’m going to go a little more narrow than you guys did, is in my world, soil has just exploded. So as many of you know, if you listen regularly, Nori started in U. S. cropland. So we’re doing soil carbon removal. And it has been a whirlwind year watching all of these other marketplaces, other actors enter all the way from big ag to startups. Which maybe kind of echoes what Chris was talking about in the sense that there seems to be buy-in across a whole host of communities in this area, which I think is really heartening in many ways.
And to see farmers embracing it, you know, a group not traditionally known to like the idea of climate change, to see companies like John Deere, Looking to improve their footprint and looking to engage their farmers in carbon removal. And then, you know, obviously there are a whole host of startups also in the area, I think really reflects that this is an ethos and an idea that’s not going anywhere anytime soon and also could play a really important role in helping these various communities transition to better strategies and better environmentally friendly policy choices and decision making.
So that While a little bit more narrow than you, what you guys were both time out, I think kind of encapsulates the broader picture of what you were both saying. So on the flip side, was there something about carbon removal this year that surprised you or maybe was unexpected? I’ll start with you, Holly, to give you the first track at it this time.
Holly Jean Buck: So I was surprised by... The money going into climate tech generally, and especially enthusiasm from the tech community for a whole bunch of new software platforms, you know, a whole bunch of new blockchain type solutions for removals. Maybe it’s dumb to be surprised by that, but, you know, I came into this field when it was just kind of this wonky scientific thing, and I didn’t realize that we’d see that level of enthusiasm so quickly. Perhaps, and the ways in which there’s a cultural enthusiasm that comes with these tech people because they’re early adopters of a lot of cultural trends too.
So now I have a box of Kernza cereal in my pantry. I resisted the urge to buy a regenerative wool sweater. There’s a bunch of products now. There’s a bunch of memes, images, conversation that Really, it’s just been the last year that’s sprouted up on my radar anyway.
Radhika Moolgavkar: What about you, Chris?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I think from my side, a little bit similar to Holly, it was just typically when we talk about climate change, it’s clean energy, it’s renewables, it’s energy efficiency, it’s electric vehicles, it’s kind of those kind of big ideas there. And what really kind of took me by surprise is how Natural climate solutions and obviously carbon markets are a big part of that really kind of became the solution of choice for 2021 that people could rally around from both sides of the aisle. And so we saw a lot of that kind of in Congress.
There’s a lot of bills working specifically on this on funding research into this, but also Like specific bills on helping carbon markets develop, etc. And also simply, obviously, from my side of the aisle, seeing Republicans really engage on this issue, and it being explicitly climate related, but at the same time, them just really leaning into it and saying this is good for farmers, this is good for our rural communities. I think that was both surprising, but also very encouraging, and I think sets us up well for 2022, as well as the midterms.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, you two can’t agree on everything. You’re supposed to be my left and right and I’m supposed to be the center, but it’s heartwarming to know that we all love carbon removal so much. I think what surprised me, and this is a very recent development, is the huge engagement of the crypto community into the carbon removal space. There’s been a lot of talk of these different DAOs and they’re tokenizing carbon credits. There’s also a lot of interest in the NFT space around carbon removal and how to offset their footprints. And so to me, I thought that it would take a little bit longer for us to get to that next evolution within the crypto world.
So I’m really excited to see that. And I’m also was a little surprised with how quickly All of that took off within that community. I mean, it seems like it’s only been the last three months and it’s just exploding like crazy. So pretty amazing. All right. So next question, what makes you happy about the current CDR situation and what might be something that’s disappointing to you? Chris, I’ll pitch it to you first.
Chris Barnard: Okay, this is where I think I can kind of feed a little bit more into your left right dichotomy here. So again, I was at COP and what really disappointed me there was a lot of the climate activists and kind of Greta being the poster image of that, saying that carbon removals and carbon offsets are fake climate solutions. And I think that was really disappointing because I think that they don’t really understand the opportunity here. And you had the environment minister of Rwanda responding directly to Greta saying, this is one of the only ways my country can currently tackle climate change and be a part of this conversation at the same time as kind of an economic opportunity for my people.
And so you had a developing country politician from Africa kind of telling off a climate activist from the rich Western world, which I think was kind of indicative of where we’re at with some of these conversations. And so that’s one thing that’s disappointing me is kind of a broader conversation around people kind of on the left side of environmental activism that typically really go against carbon offsets and it doesn’t go far enough. It’s not extreme enough, et cetera. And I think that really misunderstands a this kind of scientific opportunity here for actually reducing carbon, but also the political one.
And I think it’s really important we shouldn’t ignore the fact that we need to work with countries across the world. I think I read a study something that one third of the people in the world live under center right governance. And so if you if you don’t have anything that will appeal to them, then how are those countries going to be a part of the solution? I think carbon offsets is a really, really good place to start. So that would be my disappointment broadly. I think what made me happy again, I’ll just say kind of the fact that the right engaged a lot more on this.
I also think the crypto stuff is really cool. It’s like one of my other passions is crypto and blockchain stuff. And there was actually a bunch of people at COP that was talking about that and obviously the work that Nori does. And so I think broadly the technological development here and understanding that there’s climate benefits from technology that’s not directly meant for the climate, but it has co-benefits, I think is really cool. And I think engaging those communities is really important to the future of carbon removal.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Holly, what are you thinking about?
Holly Jean Buck: Now I’m trying to come up with a radically different answer. But, you know, okay, in terms of disappointment, yeah, I’m generally disappointed with cheap and boring discourse that uses straw man arguments, especially on platforms like Twitter. I think we need to critique carbon removal in its various forms. I think we need to critique the different policies, the actors involved, but that critique needs to be rigorous. It needs to be empirically based. You know, and it doesn’t lend itself to some of these platforms, which I think is where some of the difficulties come in.
So, you know, that’s a disappointment, but I’m happy about a few things. I’m happy that a lot of the organizations working on carbon removal have started thinking more seriously about environmental justice and engaging with environmental justice organizations. That seems pretty new. I also think that some of the companies that are trying to engage are doing a pretty thoughtful job. So thinking about Microsoft’s white paper that they wrote about how they made their purchases, thinking about the way Stripe’s gone about its commitments in terms of making that process pretty transparent. I mean, these people who are trying to start up this whole field are being More thoughtful about it than I might have expected, frankly.
And so that’s hardening.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I don’t have much to add to either one of what you two said. I would echo actually what Chris said. It’s always disappointing when you hear either side get caught up in the rhetoric. And I think, Holly, this was also your point, right? Get caught up in the rhetoric, not taking the time to be thoughtful. I don’t think anybody thinks we can get to where we need to get to without carbon removal. So just blowing off the whole area of science as if it’s not worthy, it seems short-sighted from people on the climate activism side of the world.
And I know that’s not all, just a subset, but there are significant people. And then what made me happy actually is... Honestly, we talked about it just very briefly with Holly at the beginning, but all of this new interest in Ocean CDR, when I started at Nori 14, 15 months ago, it felt like there wasn’t as much traction in that area and it’s really growing and I think it’s a hugely interesting and untapped potential and I’m Just a little bit biased because I live near a university and went to a university that’s very tapped into that area.
So I’m really looking forward to, and this goes to a later question, but looking forward to what the future holds in Ocean CDR in particular. All right. Well, we’re just going to keep going down these questions because that’s how this episode is rolling. We’re just getting thoughts. Um, Was there anything about carbon removal this year that changed an assumption, a thinking on either of your parts, or is it kind of opening up and playing out the way you anticipated it to? Holly, I’ll start with you.
Holly Jean Buck: Well, you know, I kind of assumed that ocean fertilization was dead in the water, so to speak, but it’s back, it’s still going, good or bad, I don’t know, but it’s with us.
Chris Barnard: I think the thing that I realized the most was to what extent there is kind of an economic incentive for this if you align the incentives and that you could really get markets to work for this. And before I kind of just thought, oh, well, We just have to spend a bunch of money on doing this from the government. And it might be worth doing, but it’s not very kind of sustainable from an economic perspective. But I kind of realized that there is huge demand for this. And especially like what I was talking about, the international carbon markets that kind of disagreement that came out of COP.
There’s like billions, hundreds of billions of dollars that could potentially flow into this because there is that demand pent up. So I think that was kind of the biggest realization I had over the year.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So I’m just gonna punt on this one a little bit and say, I knew so little about carbon removal about a year ago that it’s all new to me and it’s all interesting to me. So I don’t think I had an assumption before I came in. I will say though, one of the assumptions, not assumptions, but one of the things that I have been more and more aware of is what net zero means, how easily it can be manipulated. How the consumer in particular is at such a disadvantage in these situations because I keep telling people like, just as a consumer of something, you know, Holly’s like, I went out and bought the cereal and I wanted that sweater.
But how do you know? Like, how do you trust? It feels like everything tries to simplify an overcomplicated program. Maybe my awareness is making me a little bit more cynical in some ways, but I do feel like a much stronger sense that the consumer needs to have a better understanding and a better way of analyzing these different net zero, regenerative ag, whatever claims to make it truly meaningful as we move forward. So that’s my cynical take on what I’ve learned this year, but If you guys were to pick one podcast besides ours, of course, YouTube video or some sort of media outlet that has the best single resource about carbon dioxide removal, can you choose one and let our listeners know what maybe they should be listening to or reading or watching?
Chris, you can take it away.
Chris Barnard: I mean, you stole my answer because I was going to say I heard of this really great podcast called Carbon Removal Newsroom that is really your one-stop shop for anything carbon removal related. I mean, honestly, I wouldn’t say there’s really, from my perspective, at least one resource. I tend to kind of look at a variety of resources and there’s, I mean, again, I tend to really look at a bunch of different ones. So maybe Holly’s better suited to answer in terms of like a very specific one.
Radhika Moolgavkar: How about two or three, Chris? You don’t have to stick to one, but is there a couple you want to highlight or too many to list?
Chris Barnard: I think just different websites have different sections. I think, for example, Carbon Brief does a really good job. So I think if I’ll say one, I’ll probably say that one.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Okay. I’ll let you off the hook. Holly?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah. So there’s three resources that I’ll point to. The first is the CDR Primer from the beginning of this year. Great technical resource. Second, some of the work Carbon Plan’s been doing, particularly the report that came out with ProPublica about forest carbon offsets, really helpful to the conversation. Third, David Wallace-Wells’ cover story in New York Magazine from November, The Guilty and the Damned, talks about climate justice, reparations, the role of carbon dioxide removal potentially in that, really important for how we think about carbon removal going forward.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right. Well, my current favorite right now is the Carbon 180 newsletter, the new and updated one, the policy perspective on that. And they have a lot of detail, which I find helpful. And it’s just... I think of particular interest to me, obviously, because I host the Carbon Removal Newsroom. I like to see the policy work that’s happening and they do a good job of distilling it, I think, for any any reader at any level. So finally, I am going to ask you guys a two part question. Looking ahead to 2022, what are a couple of things you see over the course of the next year as developing or changing?
And then just generally, what are you most optimistic about for the future of carbon removal? And what are you most nervous about the future of carbon removal? And I’ll start with you, Holly.
Holly Jean Buck: I am somewhat optimistic that we get to making removals the new standard instead of offsets, that organizations are going to move towards removals, both, you know, corporate buyers, maybe even some of these blockchain protocols like Klima DAO, like if they move from cheap offsets to I think that would be a great contribution. I hope they’ll do that. I hope everybody will get rid of these bad offsets forever. And in terms of what I’m pessimistic about, I’m still pessimistic that we won’t get beyond this discourse of false solutions and kind of these simple one-line solutions.
Twitter discussions for some time. I hope we do. I hope we get to a more nuanced and productive place, but I’m not holding my breath around that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Anything particular in 2022 you’re looking for?
Holly Jean Buck: I’m expecting more direct air capture. I’m expecting more discussion and controversy over CO2 pipelines. And I’m expecting even more consideration of the environmental justice implications of rolling out some of these approaches at scale.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Chris, how about you?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I think there’s huge political appetite as well as necessity for policies to support this kind of budding industry. Like Holly mentioned, CO2 pipelines, for example, and there’s some good bills that are currently kind of in the proposal stage in Congress that could address that. I think there’s also some regulatory stuff that needs to be cleared up around that. And there’s some really difficult permitting stuff specifically for building these types of direct air capture facilities or whatever it might be. Also, I know we’re going to talk about the Growing Climate Solutions Act a little bit later afterwards and kind of preempting that.
I think we’re unlikely to see it pass this year, but hopefully it’ll pass next year. So that’s a 22 thing. In terms of kind of optimism versus pessimism, I mean, one thing I am worried about is to what extent we’ll be able to solve this issue with forest management and wildfires. Like we saw, like some of Microsoft’s carbon offsets got completely wiped out by the fires we saw in California. And the fires in California themselves emitted more CO2 than the entire state of California that year from its fossil fuel usage.
And so I think there’s a kind of a broader conversation there around like better forest management and Maybe conversations around how the federal government because obviously a lot of the land in the West is owned by the federal government, which Provides a little bit of the problem because they don’t have the resources to actively manage it. If there’s a way to tie that in with offsets to allow for kind of more private sector incentives to take care of that and reap the benefits, the economic benefits from the offset money or the removal money or whatever it might be.
So that’s one thing I’m worried about, but I am just broadly kind of optimistic about the technological innovation that’s happening, kind of direct air capture and some of the others, like the price will keep coming down, the efficiency will keep going up. And so I think, broadly speaking, that’s something to look forward to.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right. Well, for mine, I think I’m looking forward to 2020 to maybe helping bring forward some more nature-based solutions that we can credibly credit or credibly measure carbon removal around. I’m hoping that the science and the enthusiasm Move forward and lockstep, but I can’t predict where and which nature-based solution that’ll be. I think what I am most anxious about or pessimistic about is actually something going terribly wrong in one of these marketplaces and then causing us long-term damage in terms of carbon removals, viability and people’s faith in it. Like, you know, those forest articles that Holly wrote Mentioned were very important and very nuanced, but something that goes terribly wrong or causes a massive shaking of the confidence in carbon removal causes me a little bit of anxiety because there are a lot of underlying scientific questions that are still being answered as we sell these carbon removal credits and things like that.
And what am I most optimistic about? I think I’m most optimistic about the way we are looking forward and the Lots and lots of interest in this area. The fact that we have funding coming from the Biden administration in fairly regular chunks and that it’s funding for innovation rather than funding for potentially regulation all the time. I’m excited to see some of the work coming out of the DOE and the way they’re looking to fund DAC Solutions and other types of solutions. So overall, I’m pretty optimistic that next year is gonna be just a better year for carbon removal.
And we’re just gonna build on all the work that happened in 2021. So with that, I am gonna turn it back to you, Chris, because kind of where we started way back in April was the growing Climate Solutions Act. I mean, it wasn’t yet through the Senate, but there was a lot of excitement about this bipartisan work and what was coming and it got through the Senate. And then it sort of has lost at least its media attention. So I kind of felt like we needed to give our listeners an update.
And who better than you, Chris, because I know you are a huge fan and a huge advocate of the bill. So what’s going on there?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, so you’re entirely right. It was originally passed in the Senate, kind of overwhelmingly, 92 senators in favor, only eight against. And again, I’ll repeat this line until I die. More Republicans voted in More Democrats voted against than Republicans. So that was all really good. And we heavily supported that. I think as these things go with congressional politics, they kind of sometimes get bogged down and go behind the queue in terms of political priorities. And obviously the last six months has seen a lot in terms of infrastructure, kind of the Build Back Better plan that Biden’s been pushing, as well as that small thing called COP that happened in between.
So I think it will pass in probably in 2022. Unlikely at the end of this year, it’s just kind of really there’s a lot of political stuff that has happened since the original introduction in the Senate. So I’m optimistic about it passing, but we might just have to be patient for a little longer.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Do you think there are going to be any significant changes to the bill or is it seem like or is it just too soon to tell because it’s kind of dropped that far in priority?
Chris Barnard: I think it’s too soon to tell. Typically, something that passes that overwhelmingly in the Senate would not have to undergo too many changes in the House, so I don’t think so. Again, it’s politics, and I can’t really predict that, but I’m broadly optimistic.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right. Well, with that, that kind of wraps 2021 for us, unless, Holly, Chris, do you have anything else you want to add? I will take that. Yeah. Silence is a no. I want to thank you both for relaunching Carbon Removal Newsroom with Nori. It has been a real joy, a real pleasure and tonnes of learning from on my side from both of you. You’ve kind of stuck it out as we figured it out and I really appreciate it. And I wish you both a wonderful holiday and a happy new year.
And I will hopefully see you both in 2022. So thank you.
Chris Barnard: Sounds good. Have a good Christmas, everyone.
Holly Jean Buck: Thanks so much. Happy holidays.
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