This week's panelists are all Norinauts! We had on Nori's Director of Corporate Development Alexsandra Guerra, Director of Carbon Economics Aldyen Donnelly, and "moonlighting marketer" Mellina White.
We discussed four topics:
Climate justice: Mellina and Ross recorded a bonus episode of Reversing Climate Change earlier this week as a brief introduction to Black Lives Matter, climate justice, and carbon removal. Mellina is back to follow up and also share about the reform efforts of Campaign Zero.
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Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon, Lead Strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me multiple Nori colleagues. It’s been a tough week for everyone. Hard to schedule, lot on everyone’s mind. So thank you so much for being here today. I have Alexsandra Guerra, Director of Corporate Development at Nori. Hey Alexsandra. Mellina White, who I’ve been calling you what a moonlighting marketer. Is that okay for you, Mellina?
Mellina White: That sounds wonderful for me. Hi, Russ.
Ross Kenyon: Hi. And Aldyen Donnelly, Director of Carbon Economics at NORI.
Aldyen Donnelly: Hey, Russ. How are you?
Ross Kenyon: I am doing well. So let’s go through this outline and give listeners a chance to know what we’re going to talk about today. Mellina and I did a bonus episode of Reversing Climate Change about Black Lives Matter, Climate Justice and Carbon Removal. So we’re going to go back through some of that. Mellina has some updates she wanted to share. We want to talk about Climeworks. They just closed the 73 million Swiss francs financing round. The Savory Institute and Timberland have a new partnership around regenerative leather for a new line of boots.
The last thing we want to talk about, too, is there are new rules for 45Q or new guidance from the Treasury Department. So, Aldyen, we’re going to give you a chance to explain what exactly that means for the carbon removal industry at large. So, yeah, why don’t we just kick it off here at the top. Molina, I know you had some stuff you wanted to talk about with regard to Black Lives Matter and movement on that front.
Mellina White: Yes, Ross. So just kind of following up to what I thought was a really great constructive conversation we had the other day towards the end of the podcast. We shared some of the solutions that you and I have been reading about and they can deliver real change to some of the issues, key issues that the protests have been around here in the United States and really at this point globally, you know, daily peaceful protesting that’s happening. And so one thing I wanted to share with everyone was An organization that’s really starting to build momentum since the protests began, and that’s Campaign Zero.
So Campaign Zero is this nonpartisan organization that is trying to deliver what they describe as data-driven solutions to help, first off, first and most importantly, is reduce and in some ways eliminate violent interactions with police in the community. And bring community and bring policing back to a community type model where, again, police officers are living, working and relating to the people who they vow to protect and serve. And it’s pretty cool what they’ve come up with. Their main solutions are around these 10 things. And what’s great is you can take those 10 elements and compare it to your local police department and say, OK, is my local police department Practicing any of these 10 elements?
Is there something that I can do, you know, bring to my local city council, local city leaders, to see how we can get closer to that 10? So some of the things that they’ve mentioned, again, and they’ve got a lot of data on their website that helps to support how these methods produce results, is first off, ending the broken windows policy, policing, community oversight, limit use of force, independently investigate and prosecute cases, Involving police, community representation in the police force, body cams on police, training, and that’s a big part of training around de-escalation, which I mentioned the other day, and for-profit policing, demilitarization, and fair police union contracts.
So these are 10 things that you can help push in your local community, which again shows through their data to deliver really great results. And one campaign that’s a part of Campaign Zero that’s really been getting shared around social media this week is what they call hashtag eight can’t wait. And it’s eight elements that they’ve come up with that can help to greatly reduce police violence immediately. In fact, by their measure, it would decrease police violence by 72%. So if you look up hashtag eight can’t wait on social media, you can learn a little bit more about it.
Or to learn about the entire campaign, you can go to joincampaignzero.org. And again, I think they’ve got some great solutions. It’s a nonpartisan movement and very timely right now.
Ross Kenyon: Links to that is in the show notes or to both of those things are in the show notes right now. I’m curious what, especially Alexsandra and Aldyen, what you both think about what will happen to the carbon removal field in general. I’m not sure there’s been that many climate justice discussions always within carbon removal as an industry specifically. I imagine we’ll see quite a bit more of that. And I think there are also things that you can do as a company or an organization. I know we tend to think about this as we’re growing the team.
How do we do so in an equitable manner? And I watch pretty closely Carbon 180’s various internal policies for HR for how they are doing so in an equitable way. So I don’t know. How are you both thinking about this?
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, I think it’s a whole new time for how we do business. And before, I mean, we saw a growing an increase of people or companies making commitments to the environment. And I also expect that they’ll be making more increased commitments to, I don’t know, having good business, having more justice in their supply chain, being more equitable and fair. And I think it’s a completely new way of doing business. That makes me somewhat hopeful for the future because if we don’t, then everything’s just going to be siloed and we’re going to be forgetting that there are actual impacts to everything, the way that we’re operating, the way that we’re procuring our supplies, et cetera.
Aldyen Donnelly: I share Alexsandra’s optimism, but with a little more caution. I am worried because I think we can see in this crisis what the value of education is. And in this new economy that’s going to emerge out of this crisis, I think it’s going to be as hard as ever for people who haven’t enjoyed the benefits of a great education to succeed. So I’m hoping that we find a way To bridge that gap, I hope we start seeing all sorts of training programs being launched and it’s going to have to be by corporations because government’s not going to have the money.
But I’m an old lady, I’m 65 and when I was in my 20s and first going to work, corporations had Very well developed and intensive training programs. And that fell away over the decades. And I really hope to see that coming back because I think that’s going to be essential.
Alexsandra Guerra: Why do you think that fell away, Aldyen? Because I’m very curious. It seems like with this impact zero, or I might have called it the wrong name. That it’s about community involvement. And so if we had that before with corporations, why don’t we now?
Aldyen Donnelly: I don’t really know the answer to that question, though, for many decades after the Second World War, a lot more, a much higher proportion of the cities and towns in North America, not just North America, were what we used to call company towns. So there was a time when companies were more identified with the communities in which they had their principal operations and there was much more of a connection. Back in those days, if you were racing sailboats on the weekend, the local Lumber company probably lent all their radios to you.
And that sort of thing just doesn’t happen anymore. And the training, the commitment to employee training and continuing education, I think was part of that. We’ve got to get it back.
Ross Kenyon: Well, fair enough. That sounds like a bigger conversation too. In other news, as one says, when one is hosting a news program, Climework seemingly will not stop getting news since we talked about them last week with regard to Stripe’s negative emissions purchases. They’re doing interesting work with Lutonza in producing jet fuel from captured carbon. And now we see that they just did a 93 million Swiss franc financing round. So big stuff coming out of Switzerland, it looks like.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, was it 93 million? I thought it was 73 million.
Ross Kenyon: I said 73, didn’t I?
Alexsandra Guerra: You said 93. Oh, okay.
Aldyen Donnelly: So just go with it.
Ross Kenyon: Sorry. Yeah, I’m just staring right at it. I don’t know how that happened. Yeah, 73 million Swiss francs.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, I think that’s and it’s the biggest private investment they’ve ever that’s ever gone or private round ever raised for direct air capture 75 million, 73 million. So spring 75 million dollars get that conversion right? Yeah.
Aldyen Donnelly: I got to say good on them and when it comes to direct air capture I’m a fan of their technology. I am a little bit cautious about all of this though because for the most part the CO2 that’s going to be drawn down with that technology is going to be processed and then almost immediately re-released to the atmosphere in modern fuels. So on the one hand, it’s a really good story in that they’re displacing a certain amount of fossil fuel use. On the other hand, it’s not permanent CO2 drawdown for the most part.
It’s technology that can be used for that purpose. The investment that is flowing to direct air capture is primarily interested in recycling the CO2 into next generation liquid fuels. So it’s a good story, but the incremental emission impact isn’t going to be as large as the potential for that technology is.
Ross Kenyon: The classic counter argument to this too, or maybe it’s just if you zoom out a little bit, that this technology may port over very nicely to more carbon removal specific activities that would appeal to you in their storage capabilities. So it might start with something that’s closer to carbon neutral or fuels that are less damaging to the environment. But it won’t always just be that, right? Some of this technology will accelerate carbon removal in general, even if it’s not being applied for something that is truly storing the carbon dioxide that is captured, right?
Aldyen Donnelly: Yeah, I totally agree with that. I also think the innovation that the direct air capture industry is bringing to us will end up getting incorporated in carbon capture and storage, and there will be a new generation of technology That will be way more cost effective and better over time because of the innovation we’re seeing coming out of companies like Climeworks. So there’s a future there that I’m really excited about. I just want to get there faster.
Mellina White: So I’m curious, what do you think it’s going to take for a company that’s truly doing A carbon capture method, a truly carbon negative method to get that $75 million private equity investment to really accelerate their ability to scale in the world.
Aldyen Donnelly: I can’t speak for the investors. I’m struggling here because one of the things we’re not talking about while we’re repeatedly talking about Climeworks is Enhance in Canada. And so just two months ago, a project went operational that has attracted about $800 million in private investment, so significantly more than Climeworks. And as of March 2020, the emissions from Nutrien’s big fertilizer plant in Alberta and the emissions from a big diesel refinery are being captured and injected back into the ground to enhance oil recovery rates, so there’s still Not even a carbon neutrality there, but that project is starting injecting 1.
6 million tonnes a year and has the full build-out capacity to be injecting 14 million tonnes a year. So it’s attracted 10 times the capital investment that Climeworks has attracted and has a much larger significant, more significant sequestration potential. So I’m, I’m saying that I love to see the capital running in both directions. I think all of the investors again are not just attracted to what the technology can do today but what they think the next iterations of both technologies looks like and I think it’s that investment in innovation that’s going to pay out for us more than what either of those projects are doing right now.
Alexsandra Guerra: I think there’s something at the heart of all of the questions of, you know, where do we invest our money when it comes to carbon removal, whether it’s ecological or industrial, which is permanent. You said the word permanent all under my ears just perked and it just reminded me of, you know, what happened with Stripe and I won’t go too much into because I know you’ve already done an episode on this, Ross, but Stripe’s main motivation and let’s start back. They started off wanting to, you know, give a million dollars to carbon dioxide removal initiatives.
And they were looking across the board from natural to industrial. And then in the end, they decided, OK, we’re only going to invest in industrial because they wanted to have permanence of over a thousand years of storage. So what’s interesting is like, yes, direct air capture can can sequester and store carbon over long periods of time. But if you’re using it for enhanced oil recovery or if you’re putting it into fuels like that, permanence becomes like an issue. It’s not necessarily permanent because you’re going to be emitting CO2 ultimately at the end of the process.
And that’s not to be like, oh, this is not a good thing. It’s not helpful. That’s not at all what I’m trying to say. It’s the trickiest issue I see in the space of carbon removal is the issue of permanence and coming up with a standard, like an index of what exactly is permanent because something that’s permanent for regenerative grazing or regenerative agriculture or afforestation is going to be different than Direct air capture for synthetic fuels or direct air capture that goes into carbonates. And so having a standard to talk about permanence, I think is the most useful thing for us to start to compare apples and oranges.
Aldyen Donnelly: I think you make very good points, Alexsandra. And permanence is a bit of a sticky issue from my perspective. And I actually don’t want to make this too much Nori promotion, but I think Nori so far has got that question right. I’ll tell you where my issue is with the concept of permanence. Totally agree that if we’re giving enterprises credit for pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, the objective is that carbon removal be permanent. But we also live in a world where every oil company that gets a license to drill oil signs a contract that commits that company when they stop producing oil.
To cap that oil well so that it’s not releasing pollution or emissions after it stops producing oil. And a very large share or significant share of those oil wells end up being owned by corporate entities that declare bankruptcy when they stop producing oil and they become abandoned wells. And that’s our current long-term version of, so we have a long history of corporate commitments to deliver on the environment. And I would consider that sort of an analogy to permanence. And I’m not confident, even if permanent agreements are being signed today by corporations who are perfectly well-intended and are doing everything right, I’m not confident 30 years from now When the third generation of owner of that obligation declares bankruptcy and the permanence commitment is gone, that we’re going to be happy with how we approach that question right now.
In NORI, what we’ve said is one NRT is an incremental tonne of CO2 drawn out of the atmosphere and retained under a contractual arrangement for at least 10 years. And we did that on purpose because if someone wants To buy reductions that are equivalent to permanent, which is 100 years worth of CO2. Then we’re trying to communicate by 10 nori NRTs, 10 times 10 years. And don’t assume that for a payment of, for a series of payments over 10 years, a landowner of any sort is actually going to find They have the capacity to guarantee that carbon stock will be maintained for 100 years.
Unless that carbon that’s drawn out of the atmosphere is almost immediately mineralized, that’s not a commitment we can place confidence in. I don’t think we should be building our business model around commitments that we can’t place confidence in.
Ross Kenyon: This is exactly the kind of carbon removal banter I think our listeners want to geek out on. Thanks for doing that. All right, I’m going to use my prerogative as the host here to scoot us along. I’m not sure how long these episodes will be in the future. That’s something that we should look into what people want, but let’s scoot it along and see how it goes. One of the other stories that we singled out this week is that the Savory Institute and Timberland have a new partnership around regenerative leather.
For a new line of boots. First question, when can I get a pair? Second question, how exactly does this work? What is happening right now with regenerative grazing? And it looks like procurement is happening with some products that are coming out of this specific approach.
Aldyen Donnelly: I’m, I’m, I’m hesitating to jump in.
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, maybe actually Aldyen before, maybe you jump in. I think it’s a, let’s start off with like, what exactly is regenerative grazing and how is it different from typical grazing?
Aldyen Donnelly: Regenerative grazing can involve a whole bunch of things, but it’s, it’s where the operator manages the grasslands. It’s really timing and movement. So the key part of regenerative grazing is instead of having livestock all in one place and delivering them feed and having them basically destroy a patch of ground, you rotate your livestock in cycles. You’re tracking what’s happening in the soil and you can actually turn Growing grazing livestock on the land from extractive or regenerative practice to an extractive practice to a regenerative practice by shifting the by as soon as as soon as they’re They’ve maximized the value of their excrement on a certain patch of land.
And before they’ve depleted the soil of its complete plant surface, looking for food, you move them. So just pure, very conscious rotation. Rotations of the livestock is really, really useful and also being very attentive to what kind of grasses are being grown on the land. And in many cases, when you’re looking at land that has been seriously dehydrated As often due to fires and pest infestations, not necessarily livestock impacts, opportunities to rebuild the carbon stocks and biomass and soil health and moisture retention in those grasslands can be huge, really, really huge.
Ross Kenyon: It’s a pretty good summation. Are you happy with that, Alexsandra?
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, it makes sense.
Ross Kenyon: Well, I know you’re doing it for the benefit of the listener, but I think that was fine.
Aldyen Donnelly: Yeah, exactly. Now, the other side of it, it’s difficult enough to develop verifiable estimates of changes in soil organic carbon stocks as they relate to cropping practice changes. It’s more difficult to really monitor and prove your outcomes in grasslands. There are point blue It has a group of scientists who are doing really great work in that area. I love what PastureMath is trying to do. And there’s a couple of large corporations, not just, and I like what Patagonia is doing, not just Patagonia, who are really working hard at getting the science of soil organic carbon estimation and grasslands right.
And I think we’re going to see some very, very interesting breakthroughs in the next 12 months. It’s going to be really exciting.
Unknown speaker: Breakthroughs like what?
Aldyen Donnelly: I think we’re going to see some very, very good combinations of uses of drone-borne sensors and satellite imaging that’s going to enable livestock producers to Be more responsive in real time to changes in the above ground biomass. And so carbon stocks, and they’re going to be able to very, very precisely work on livestock yield and rotations. And I think we’re very close to a really good place there.
Mellina White: Well, from a consumer point of view, learning about this partnership really gets me excited. Because I think over the last almost 20 years now, I think that businesses have been able to really educate people about food systems, where their food is coming from. 20 years ago, maybe 2% of the American population Had ever went and purchased organic food and now organic natural non GMO food is a really big part of a lot of people’s everyday diet, you know, and they seek out those products, but it hasn’t made its way to the fashion industry yet.
You know, we know that fast fashion is a huge issue and not only does it have an impact on communities on people, but it also has a huge negative impact on the planet. And so seeing companies like Timberland, that’s a huge fashion company and reaches people who maybe never once thought about how their clothing or shoe purchase impacts the climate, impacts the environment. This is a first step in really starting to educate people and making them aware that the clothing you choose Does make a difference, does have an impact. And also just educating people about regenerative agriculture, because I think most have never even heard of it before.
So overall, even if there are some flaws there, I think this is an excellent move forward for the industry.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, it reminds me a lot about Allbirds, where I think, yeah, well, Mellina and Ross have talked about Allbirds.
Ross Kenyon: Meanwhile, I was looking It’s like my regular sneaker.
Mellina White: I have to plug my friend Mike. I was on the phone with him last night and he works at Allbirds and he was talking about some great things that they’re doing over there right now.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. And I, and it’s so funny, like I was in the middle of looking for new running shoes and now, and now I bought Allbirds because I don’t know if Instagram heard me talking to you about Allbirds, but all of a sudden I’m getting like advertised and I can go to their website and I can see just, you know, if you scroll through the bottom of the product description for each shoe, you know, nine kilograms of CO2 was emitted for the shoe and we offset the rest. And we try to, you know, use renewable materials, they use wool, etc.
And they have this whole story about it. And this is what I’m imagining Timberland is now trying to do with their leather. It’s like, we’re not just like killing cows and making leather out of them. Like, we’re doing this holistic... We’re restoring the land, the soil, and drawing down CO2, treating cows properly, etc. And I’m like, okay, this is great. It’s so funny. My grandfather, I live with my grandparents right now, and he says to me, how much did you pay for those shoes? And I told him. And he goes, I don’t understand.
He’s like, normal people are not going to buy those shoes. And I was like, my generation is, because we care. We will pay the extra dime or the extra $100. For the story and for me to like, where am I choose?
Mellina White: One of my father’s favorite sayings is painting out or pay me later. And that’s how I look at things like that. You know, you can invest now or we can have the negative repercussions on society and on the planet later. No matter what we’re going to pay.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, exactly. Right.
Ross Kenyon: I wonder what it looks like to educate consumers about holistic management and regenerative grazing, because I don’t think that’s on most people’s radars yet. It seems like it just has less awareness than even regenerative agriculture, specifically croplands. But maybe that stuff happens faster than I think. I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about how long it takes to educate a consumer base about something like that, but maybe it happens relatively quick. Does anyone know?
Aldyen Donnelly: Sorry. I think the whole question of grazing or its livestock production is complicated. And I don’t think anybody’s done yet sort of painted a picture that helps. So there are so many different ways to consider this. And one extreme is don’t eat meat, don’t buy leather. And the other extreme is, gee, you know, if you think about it, if you raised a cow the right way and you made sure that every part of the cow was put to use, the leather, the meat, you know, every part of it, you could describe that whole area as either the worst thing in the world for the environment or the best thing in the world for the environment.
And I don’t think we’ve done a good job of Just looking at the picture and finding a middle ground and then communicating it to the consumer.
Ross Kenyon: Well, that sounds like a good place to leave it for now. Does anyone have anything else that they want to say about that?
Alexsandra Guerra: Well, I think the one thing I want to say about that is like we just need to continue to talk about it. I think everything starts small somewhere like and then more and more people will talk or care about something and it becomes more of the topic of conversation at, let’s say, the dinner table. So hopefully people will become more aware of how food is being grown. And impacting our overall climate and understand that if you bring up regenerative agriculture at the bar, hopefully more people will know what it is.
And you can start by just talking about regenerative agriculture the bar whenever bars open again. And that was really gloom, but yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. Well, I know this has already been a bit of the Aldyen show, but sorry, I guess this is going to be a trend that continues for this episode. Aldyen, what happened with 45Q and now there’s new guidance from the Treasury Department around it. Can you catch people up on what 45Q is? What’s happened since it’s been announced and what is happening now?
Aldyen Donnelly: So 45Q is a section In the US federal budget and 45Q was first introduced in 2008 and it allows there to be a regulation that creates a tax credit. Originally it was totally focused on a tax credit for projects for installing carbon capture and storage technology on power plants. And it’s been modified a number of times. And then it was significantly modified in 2018 and 19 under the Trump administration. And basically, as of 2018, if you install carbon capture and storage on a power plant, a gas-fired or coal-fired power plant, or you do what Climeworks is doing, this came in 2019, and directly draw CO2 out of the atmosphere, And do and inject it permanently into an underground reservoir or use it to enhance oil recovery rates or otherwise the word they use is utilize it.
You can get a tax credit and the tax credit on its face looks pretty big. It’s being phased in over time, but by 2026, There are two different values. If you permanently store the CO2 that you either captured from a gas plant or a power plant and injected in the ground, that tax credit start right now is around $22. 50 a tonne and goes up to $50 a tonne by 2026. And if you use that CO2 to inject in oil wells and increase the amount of oil you’re pulling out of any well, that’s called Enhanced Oil Recovery or EOR.
That tax credit is right now around just under $13 a tonne and by 2026 would be $35 a tonne. The tax credit when it was introduced has one set of rules for projects that were not built until after February 2018 and another set of rules for projects that were built before 2018 and I you know I get depressed by that sort of stuff so I made a point of trying not to pay too much attention to the details but the scandal was The auditor decided just in the last year that about $1.
1 billion worth of tax credits that had been claimed under 45Q, mostly with respect to projects that were constructed prior to 2018, were fraud. And I’m not exactly sure what the final number is. Last time I checked, The IRS had recovered 598 million of that 1. 1 billion, and I don’t know if their intent is to get the whole 1. 1 billion back, but they’ve recovered more than half of it already. And that’s kind of sad when that sort of stuff happens. Right now, and it’s really coincidental, it’s not as a result of the finding of fraud.
The IRS is in a new regulation proposing some changes to the rule to make it more accessible to different projects and they’re inviting the public to read the rule and make comment over the next about 50 days. And I like a lot of the signals in 45Q, but it still doesn’t go where those in the food and fiber industry need it to go. So basically the rule says distinguishes between your carbon capture technology or your industrial process and utilization of the CO2. So under the existing rule, even with the new changes that are supposed to make it more hospitable, If Climeworks, for example, draws CO2 out of the atmosphere and pumps that CO2 into a greenhouse and the greenhouse makes tomatoes and cucumbers, they qualify for the tax credit, the $35 version.
The CO2 is pulled out of the atmosphere with a whole bunch of fans that consume a whole bunch of electricity is piped to a greenhouse. It’s sequestered in tomatoes and cucumbers and then carbon in the tomatoes and the cucumbers is mostly released back to the environment after those tomatoes and cucumbers are eaten. But if a farmer adopts regenerative practices and pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere and grows tomatoes and cucumbers and sequesters incremental carbon in the soil permanently, they don’t qualify for the tax credit. So you get that I’m not a happy puppy.
So basically, IRS has said if you store the CO2 you’ve captured through the process of photosynthesis, you get the tax credit. But if you collect the CO2 you capture through the process of photosynthesis, you don’t get the tax credit. You have to build some big industrial plant to get the tax credit to collect the CO2. Now at 35 bucks a tonne, US crop producers could be drawing down 400 to 450 million tonnes a year and building up the soil organics carbon stocks and making a lot more tomatoes and cucumbers sustainably.
Ross Kenyon: Is the reason for that, I know it’s much easier to administer a program like this that deals with fewer recipients, especially ones that are much bigger, as opposed to many, many, many farmers or something like that. Or was it something that was more of a political deal that had to be cut in order for this to happen?
Aldyen Donnelly: Both, probably some other reasons too. You know, at the risk of attracting ire, I think it’s just that the big companies whose businesses are Big industrial manufacturing processes are much more astute and dedicated lobbyists than the farm community. Farmers are too busy making food, building, producing food. And I don’t think there’s a political opposition to rewarding food and fiber producers for what they can do in this regard. I don’t think their voice has been heard in Washington DC in a sort of a coherent way. I hope we can find ways to help that along because what food and fiber producers are doing with regenerative agriculture is exactly what is served the purpose that this tax credit was intended for.
That’s number one. And number two, We all admit that tracing and verifying that the carbon has been stored can be complicated, but in fact, if you read the regulation, It’s no less complicated for the projects that are approvable under this bill than it is for farmers. So complication isn’t the argument to not have food and fiber production in. They just, they distinguish between, there’s two, there’s three, but I’ll just focus on two steps in this process. One is how are you drawing the CO2 down? And the second is how is it being used?
And right now, If it’s being used in photosynthesis, you get the tax credit as long as photosynthesis wasn’t the process for drawing the CO2 down. In other words, right now, the most cost effective, best return on investment, carbon drawdown and sequestration strategy does not qualify for the U. S. tax credit under 45.
Ross Kenyon: Well, any concluding thoughts from anyone? Covered pretty good ground. Thanks for saving us on that topic, Aldyen, with your extreme erudition on tax policy. I think the rest of us are holding our breaths, right?
Aldyen Donnelly: Did everyone else just hang up on the podcast about 10 minutes ago?
Mellina White: No, you’re busy taking notes.
Ross Kenyon: No, this is why we asked you to be on. Yeah. Well, anything else anyone wants to bring up or are you feeling pretty good about wrapping it up here?
Mellina White: Feels okay to me.
Unknown speaker: Yep, feels okay to me. Thank you. Yeah, feels good.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, thanks for being here. Thanks for sharing all of your thoughts. Links to various things mentioned are in the show notes. And if you would like to follow up with any of the panelists, Thanks for listening. Also, if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, tell your friends. [Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.] The show, this format is new. We’re still experimenting with it. So if you have thoughts on it, you want us to change something or you like what you’re hearing, feel free to drop us a note.
And thank you so much for listening.
