How’s the CDR economic outlook for 2024?
Sightline Climate recently reported that investment for the entire climate tech industry dropped 30% in 2023. Similarly, Pitchdeck released a report specifically outlining carbon removal's recent dip in VC funding. However, Captura just announced a $21.5 million Series A raise.
So is CDR immune to the climate tech investing downturn?
In this episode of Carbon Removal Newsroom, we talk about market responses to uncertainty, the role of large offtake agreements as funding mechanisms, and what stage governments are currently at in their carbon removal journeys.
Tune in to hear about the latest CDR Market Outlook Survey, Kenya’s proposed 15-25% carbon credit export tax, and if what we really need are some experienced solar folks to jump into the CDR waters.
On This Episode
Resources
CDR Market Outlook SurveyCTVC market reportPitchdeck reportKenya’s proposed taxCarbon Removal Canada
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My other show, Reversing Climate Change
Books referenced in the podcasts, at Bookshop
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: Welcome to this week’s edition of Carbon Removal Newsroom. In today’s show, we’ll be discussing the economic outlook for carbon removal businesses in 2024. Sightline Climate recently put together a report on investment for the climate tech industry overall, which outlines a 30% decrease in 2023 funding compared to 2022, marking the first decline in total deal count since 2020. Meanwhile, Pitch Deck released a report showing that VC deals for voluntary carbon market companies grew steadily through 2022, but appears to have dipped in 2023. However, just today, Captura announced a $21. 5 million Series A raise.
So what’s going on in carbon removal? Are carbon removal enterprises relatively immune to the climate tech investing downturn, or are we poised to witness a contraction in growth throughout 2024? So joining me for the business panel, I have Susan Hsu, a partner focused on climate investing at Toba Capital, a board member at the Carbon Business Council, and a board advisor to the Environmental Voter Project. Hi, Susan.
Susan Su: Hi.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And I also have Na’im Merchant, the Executive Director of Carbon Removal Canada, an Elemental Accelerator Policy Fellow, and the author of The Carbon Curve, a newsletter about the policies and technologies needed to grow the carbon removal market. Hi, Naeem.
Na’im Merchant: Hi there, good to be with you.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right, Susan, let’s just dive into this. So from a macro level, how are investment conditions and what is preventing VC money from flowing? The stock market hit an all-time high just last Friday.
Susan Su: Yes, I keep getting notifications on some of the individual positions that I’m watching. Like, oh, all-time high, all-time high, all-time high. Yes, so very aware of that. Well, I think right now, as anyone can probably imagine, venture capital world is very focused on AI. And so that’s really just taking up a lot of the oxygen in the space that I think maybe two years ago was spread across a couple of different categories and was much more in so-called climate tech. I think it’s really important to keep in mind. You mentioned, Radhika, the sightline climate data, which I think is very high fidelity.
And just full disclosure, I am a small investor in that company. But I do think the data is very, very high quality compared to what else is available out there. That said, almost all funding data that’s public is based on announced raises. And those can sometimes demonstrate an up to six month lag from when the rounds were actually closed. Six months is very long. That means that potentially half of what was clocked in 2023 actually happened in 2022 and vice versa. And so that’s one thing to keep in mind is When we think about the trough that was 2022 and then 2023 was actually below that, it might be that some of those deals were misassigned by year.
So that’s the first thing. The other thing I would maybe just highlight is that VCs raised a ton of money in 2021. And all of that money is now burning holes in pockets, meaning we have lots of dry powder and we also have the clock ticking on deployment window. So I do think that’s very favorable for rounds getting done, both, of course, in AI, like there’s going to be tonnes and it’s almost like the crypto boom some years ago, but also in climate. And then likewise, a lot of companies also raised money in 2021.
And let’s just be honest here at valuations that were probably reflective of the market energy at the time rather than purely based on business fundamentals. So a lot of these companies are sitting on pretty high valuations and they’ve had two years to either build into those valuations or even, you know, surpass expectations. And some of them have done that, but not all. Those who haven’t been able to do that will be facing a valuation reset this year as many of them come to the end of their cash runway. A lot of founders haven’t wanted to raise in 2022 and 2023 because they haven’t wanted to accept down rounds.
But I think those down rounds are still waiting for them. And actually, even those who have grown into those high valuations from their previous rounds might still be facing a valuation reset simply because the entire market has reset in the interim. Now, a lot of this overall is based on the interest environment, and everybody has heard that before. Where higher interest rates create lower demand in technology in the public markets. But that also applies all the way down to early stage venture. And while it looks like the Fed is planning to ease interest rates this year in 2024, it’s still going to take a while for all of that change to trickle all the way back down to early stage venture.
And I also think if we’re being honest, going back to the valuation point, a lot of companies have been dramatically overvalued over the past couple of years. And VCs are simply waiting for those valuations to come back down to earth, waiting for companies to get really hungry before they jump in. That might seem sharky, but remember, this is just investors doing the best job they can for their customers who are LPs, many of whom might themselves still be recovering from being a little bit overweight on venture and are now looking for a calmer period.
So I’ll stop there. But there’s a lot of things going on here.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, obviously we covered you covered a huge amount, but curious about one thing that you didn’t mention. And if you think it’s playing any role in this, you know, back in the fall, we talked about the CDR industry responding to increased scrutiny. There continues to be a few reports coming out about at least the voluntary carbon markets. So do you think the uncertainty within voluntary carbon markets has made investors more hesitant?
Susan Su: Oh, absolutely. And of course, uncertainty is the enemy of liquidity. You’ve heard me say it here on this podcast many times, and I’ll say it again. And we are seeing uncertainty on all sides. There’s not only uncertainty around the quality and validity of credits, since there’s no global standard that we all feel we can trust, especially now. But also, and I think this is maybe something that’s less popular to say, but there’s also uncertainty around demand. And I know we’ll talk about that in a bit. We have some really awesome new survey data from CDRFYI, but I think there are multiple layers of uncertainty and that just makes people sit on their hands.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right, Naeem, so over to you. We’ve talked about several significant carbon removal purchases on the show, including $57 million from Lithos or for Lithos at the end of last year. How important do you think VC investment is in the face of those large purchases? Or can CDR swim alone just through, you know, demand?
Na’im Merchant: Well, I know. I don’t think you can swim alone just based on demand. I think that VC investment... In a face of something as large as the Lithos purchase, that was a large off-take agreement. It was really great to see that, especially outside of the normal carbon removal approaches around direct air capture, similar, more incumbent technologies. What Lithos is doing is still, in the grand scheme of things, relatively early stage. That was great to see. I don’t think it, it means that companies like Lithos are just kind of swimming alone, but more just like they’re able to unlock a different types of capital that I didn’t mean necessary to scale.
So, you know, what I hope ends up happening is that there are now new Kind of project financing and similar financing arrangements outside of traditional VC that makes sense for companies like Glittos going forward. Like I’d hope that’s what is an outcome of this in terms of financing carbon removal and that VC investment maybe has a role to play at a different stage of a company’s evolution. But, you know, when we start talking about carbon removal purchases at the volumes and scales that we’re talking about with a longer term offtake agreement than we’ve seen versus some smaller spot purchases.
I hope that VC is less important in the face of that relative to other financing options and that we’re able to actually unlock the kind of financing that we needed to get really, really big projects off the ground.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Susan, you’ve teased at this a little bit, but you know, demand is a concern and whatever type of capital you’re talking about, except maybe outside of philanthropic, demand is going to be key to creating a voluntary carbon market because you need supply and demand, obviously. So as you mentioned, there’s a new market outlook survey from CDR. FYI. In 2024, they’re predicting 76% of purchasers will buy 10,000 tonnes. And they’re thinking by 2050, over 55% of purchasers project to buy over 25,000 tonnes and 17% over 1 million tonnes. So what do you think of that trajectory?
And is that enough certainty for VCs or the market in general?
Susan Su: I think venture world right now is very focused on actuals versus projections. And I see this across every category of company, whether that’s, you know, CDR or some other type of climate company or a pure play software company. And I think that completely makes sense, given how some of the best performing software companies of the recent generation have been doing on the public markets and how they’ve been valued by public and institutional investors, which is very much focused on cash flow and revenue. And so it’s great to see these projections that are based on promises, essentially, but they are based on promises.
And they’re projections and they’re not actuals. They’re not realized revenue. And in fact, we know that there can be big deltas even between like booked revenue and realized revenue, which is why we need gap accounting and all those kind of things. And so I think that’s like very much in play here. Somebody like me would look at this market outlook survey and say, Okay, that’s nice. But we’ve heard that before. And we’ve heard a lot of these big companies say really big things. By the way, have you noticed, and it’s very convenient that all of these things are future dated.
None of them are, well, I’m going to buy that million tonnes tomorrow. And you watch me and then by 5pm, we’ll see the cash registers close. No, they’re all Future dated, which is a convenient, in my opinion, convenient way to sort of pass it to whether that’s a future leadership team within the corporate or whatever, a future board or a future set of other even institutional stakeholders that are part of that company’s decision making process. And I do think it’s, it might sound boring, but it’s very important to get into the nitty gritty of how these decisions are made.
And it’s different by every single organization. But I can tell you that for at least some of them, it’s certainly not just whoever is in charge of climate or whoever is the CSO, the Chief Sustainability Officer. It may not even just be the CFO. It could also involve the rest of the C-suite. It could involve It could involve independent board members. It could involve a vote. And so not all of those people are going to be as easy to corral as just one person who is the CSO. And so it’s actually great to say one thing, but the doing is going to take a lot more steps.
And yeah, so that’s kind of what I think. I think it’s great to have this data out there because then we have something to hold folks to. But I wouldn’t say that this is something that investors could underwrite to.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Susan, we’ve talked about this in... A lot. But I’m just still puzzled by how you balance the technical readiness of this industry with the VC’s desire for sort of solid projections. You know, there’s no historical data. Obviously, technically, many of these pathways are early days. This isn’t like a direct compare to AI or software. So how do suppliers work? Present something to VCs that they like to hear. But on the other hand, how do VCs get comfortable with the fact that CDR is just a bit different than maybe what they’re used to funding?
Susan Su: It’s super different. And I’ve often wondered if venture is a good instrument for this at all. It feels like a really ill fit in many ways. I think where it does make sense is where there’s a very clear technical and R&D pathway that can be funded through equity finance, which is what venture capital is. And then, and actually Naeem kind of hinted at this in the previous question, but, you know, as some of these companies get really solid and pretty large offtake agreements in place, that’s when other types of financing such as debt or, and I know we’ll talk about this in a bit, project finance can really come into play.
So I think it’s a question of where are you using those VC dollars or what are you using them for? And can you really clearly demonstrate that they’re earmarked for one And then the part about investors getting comfortable, well, I think you’re right. And I think a lot of what is happening in terms of the activity we’ve already seen in the space is that there are VCs and even LPs to a certain extent that are like, hey, I’m not sure what’s going to happen here. But on the off chance that this becomes really big, I can’t not have a horse in this race.
And so let me look around and pick the best looking one that I can find and like throw a few bucks that way and make a bet. And I don’t want to I don’t want it to sound cavalier, but it is sort of a question of let’s make sure we have some exposure to the category that And even if it’s a zero in the portfolio, the rest of my portfolio is going to be on things that I know are going to happen, such as like this certain corner of the energy transition.
And then I think that even at a higher level amongst LPs who are investing, for example, in carbon removal only funds, they also are applying that same thinking, which is, hey, this is a diversification and exposure play. And I think that’s OK. We can still discuss all of these questions and we can still have this uncertainty and have these sort of like criticisms of the market. But then we can also say, hey, we still want to get involved with it. I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time and companies will be the beneficiaries of that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Naeem, there’s always a tension, right, between businesses, regulation. But one thing that Susan mentioned, and I think it’s really important to highlight, is the uncertainty around the definitional standards and all of that really has pushed additional uncertainty, to use that word again, within the broader industry. So I’m wondering, when you talk to government agencies, which I know you’re doing all the time in Canada, Do they have an understanding of this? How do they think about CDR? Because it’s a very technically uncertain thing. However, the definitional part could be made very certain if governments came in and provided sort of a floor.
So do they understand that distinction and how are they thinking about those things?
Na’im Merchant: I think that there’s still so much work to do and just kind of Getting some basic definitions around carbon removal with policymakers. And I think, you know, we’ve been on this Carbon Removal Canada journey for almost a year now and spoken to, you know, a number of folks in government who are excited about carbon removal. And so we realized that there’s still a lot Storytelling and there’s still a lot of definition setting that needs to happen before we get into any of these other pieces. And so, so I think that there’s, you know, there’s a lot of uncertainty or technological uncertainty and MRV uncertainty.
All these other things associated with carbon removal that we do talk about with government, but we find ourselves coming just back to the real basics on carbon removal on what it is and what role it’s seeking to serve in the country’s climate plans and what potential it could, you know, has. What should be kind of counted as carbon removal and maybe what shouldn’t be at least insofar as getting towards our climate targets. Like that’s just stuff that’s still kind of a little up in the air for certain folks in government that I think we just need to get a baseline level of kind of understanding with everybody on so that we can start to have these other conversations around uncertainty that exists that drive some of these questions around investing and financing in the space.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So I have two follow up questions in sort of two different paths of the uncertainty world for you, Naeem. One, do you think the DOE and the U. S. setting some procurement guidelines helps your conversations in Canada because at least their neighbor to the south is struggling? Thank you. Thank you.
Na’im Merchant: Yeah. On the first one, you know, governments kind of talk to each other, especially Canadian and U. S. governments and are interested in learning, you know, what, what each other are doing. So in Canada, for example, our EPA equivalent is developing an, you know, a standards protocol for direct air capture. So I think that’s going to be valuable outside of the Canadian context. At the same time, I think that the DOE purchase price, especially as it focuses on non-DAC methods as well, I think will be really valuable in helping other governments, including the Canadian government, get more comfortable with some of these other methods.
And that’s why I think there’s Frankly, a lot of interest around the DOE purchase price, like compared to like DAC hubs and the RD&D proposals that have been made, like the dollar figure isn’t very high at 35 million US that I think that it is a very catalytic effort. It can be very powerful. For other people, other governments within the United States and outside the United States to take a very serious look at carbon removal. Like that’s $35 million is going to go a long way in getting more and more governments to take a second look at carbon removal.
So that’s to answer your first question. On your second one around kind of the piece of around the kind of use of, you know, these long-term voluntary market offtake purchases from groups like with those like That’s helpful. I think that there’s still a need to make sure that the questions that are getting answered around what it’s going to take to scale any one of these carbon removal methods, you know, they still need to be framed within the question that governments have about carbon removal, right? The big ticket purchase from Frontier into Lethous, for example, that’s great.
That’s awesome. I think that does a lot for the carbon removal market. But if governments still have questions about MRV as well as enhanced weathering, then they still have questions about MRV as well as enhanced weathering and whether that was a $5 million purchase or a $500 million purchase. That’s not going to change anything. And so there’s then an important piece around this, and I’m sure like the very smart people at Frontier are thinking about this, of being able to like align the questions and the research questions that relate to lethose.
Like how do we make sure that we are getting some real answers around how do we scale this method of carbon removal and make those answers available to other purchasers, including potentially governments in the future. So that we can get more people on board. So I think there’s a way to think about this in a way that’s catalytic for sure, but I just wouldn’t take it for granted that in fact it does get governments to feel more comfortable about, especially when we’re talking about emerging methods of carbon removal.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. So back to you, Susan. I mean, that’s one of those chicken and egg things, right? The government wants certainty. We’re in an uncertain and they could provide certainty and round and round we go. But I’m curious, you know, if coming back to just within the purely business area of financing, whether you’re seeing any signs that we are actually moving towards that holy grail of like traditional project financing. Is there anything that’s pointing you in 2024 to that?
Susan Su: You know, I think I would have said no, but I do think that some of these bigger deals where there’s like a very, there’s a contractually inked kind of offtake agreement does provide some of what project finance would need in order to be able to sign off on something. The other things would be, you know, some stream of revenue, really good accounting and like being able to demonstrate that you can actually handle and I look around at a lot of the companies that I know that are doing CDR and they’re just very early.
And if it’s hard for you to... Satisfy your VC’s reporting requirements with your data room or with your cash flow statement and whatnot, then it’s going to be really hard to do that for project finance. So there’s a lot of like, there’s some hard factors like we need revenue in place and we need offtake agreements in place. But there are also surprisingly some softer factors around just business maturity and operational ability that I think, you know, we’re just like really in early stage startup land here. And I think we’re going to get there.
And it’s awesome to have leaders like Heirloom or Lithos or others kind of forging the path. But it’s going to be a while before the vast majority of CDR companies are going to even remotely qualify for project finance.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, it’s almost like you’re saying we need some very sophisticated investors to the founders of these CDR companies because they would have at least one of those boxes checked and you just don’t hear about it. Most of the founders, right, are very much on the tech side.
Susan Su: It would be interesting to see founders that come from or founding teams that come from solar, for example, or large scale renewables that have had experience seeing something from, okay, we’re going to take this technology and now we’re going to actually apply it and implement it across really large customer sets and we’re going to Have very sophisticated financing stacks that we can actually handle. I don’t see a lot. I could be wrong and please call me out on social media or wherever if I’m wrong. I don’t see a lot of crossover between those two categories.
And I think that’s kind of interesting because there could be so much benefit. Well, there would be benefit for CDR if some of the solar folks came over. I don’t know about for the solar folks. Maybe they’re happy where they are because they get plenty of work to do in their core domain. But, you know, that’s an area where we could see a lot of change if we just brought the talent in.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So, Naeem, I just want to follow up on one last piece of policy work and how you think it’s going to interact with the Startups and suppliers is obviously the EU is going through a very detailed certification process around CDR. Do you think that will help within the larger governmental context of providing the certainty that’s needed then for buyers to feel comfortable and financers to feel comfortable in this space?
Na’im Merchant: Processes like that are obviously helpful, but I don’t think, I don’t think that’s, I think it’s necessary, not sufficient. Let me put it that way. You know, there’s these certification processes that I think are going to be necessary for carbon removal to scale and the standards and protocols that need to be in place for us to get to, you know, a gigatonne scale carbon removal sector. But how are those certification standards, protocols, regulations, definitions, how do all of those interact with compliance markets? How are all of those used to actually convert into revenues for carbon removal companies?
That piece needs to be answered before we can really say how useful these certification processes are going to be in terms of scaling CDR. So I see the progress on the certification front in the EU and it’s encouraging, but it’s also kind of at the same time like What really matters is how this is integrated within, you know, the ETS or how similar efforts are integrated within compliance regimes and other parts of the world so that we can actually see carbon removal being part of compliance programs like that. That’s just not I wouldn’t take that for granted as something that happens just because like a very detailed kind of.
Let’s be honest, slow moving certification process is going underway in the EU. The question is, how does it convert? And I think that’s still, you know, there are kind of discussions around what happens with this and in the ETS in 2030 and all this. But like, it doesn’t mean very much in terms of unlocking new financing unless there’s, you know, a market mechanism for which carbon removal can benefit from.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Susan, turning to other governments, Kenya just proposed to take 15 to 25 percent of locally generated carbon credit income, which is interesting because we, as we all know, Kenya is really looking like it’s going to be quite a place to develop DAC with the right kind of storage, geothermal. So if I’m a supplier, that would be concerning to me because how do I go out and pitch my revenue statement and what it looks like? And if I’m a VC, I’d be concerned because, gosh, we don’t have control over the Kenyan government.
Talk about uncertainty. So what do you think of announcements like this and how should suppliers navigate and how should VCs think about it?
Susan Su: This is such a fascinating development. It’s essentially an export tax on carbon credits. And the 15% is for land-based projects and the 25% is for ocean-based projects. So I think like mangrove reforestation and things like that. And actually Kenya does a lot in carbon credits. It’s not just DAC, but there’s, you know, cook stoves. There’s a lot of reforestation, coastal reforestation. And it’s actually the number one carbon credits provider in Africa. Africa itself is not that big yet, but I think they are really looking, governments across Africa are really looking to change that.
And I don’t know, I think this is like, if I’m Kenya, I totally want to do this because it makes so much sense. Everybody’s talking about Kenya’s, you know, Carbon Valley and all, you know, I’m already starting to build the brand. And so why not pull an app store move and take a cut of that? But because they feel that they can. But I think that’s what it really hinges on. Can they really, without impacting volume, without chasing development projects away to other global south areas that are, you know, even lower cost?
I think that’s TBD. I wonder if it may be a little bit early for them to be implementing something like this before they’ve really developed a stronghold on the market. You know, when it comes to marketplaces and take rates, you sort of either grow your volume or you grow your monetization. It’s really hard to do both at the same time, which is what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to become one of the number one hotspots in the world. Africa is trying to become continentally one of the number one carbon removal hotspots in the world.
But at the same time, now I want to actually deepen my monetization of that. I think that’s going to be really challenging because typically you have to choose one or the other in sequence. I think if I’m a developer here, you know, I have to just look at my unit economics and Like maybe it’s still actually a better deal, or maybe there are other things that the government can make available, such as reducing permitting velocity or making certain types of, I guess, projects more accessible where they would be very, very hard to access in other locales.
So maybe there are some other advantages that, you know, if we look at the so-called levelized cost of carbon removal, it’s still, all things considered, still better cost. Even with the take rate. I don’t know because I don’t know enough about the details of what that entire stack looks like. They may simply be able to fast track project approval. And that’s a big thing, too. But I think they have to think about the full package because if it’s, you know, no favorable changes anywhere else, but then we’re going to charge more than that does impact negatively impact economics for project developers.
And right now they still have other options in other places.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Naeem, as you’re talking, or if you were asked to advise the Canadian government, how would you tell them to approach both this idea of a take rate on carbon credits, which could potentially be a fairly nice monetary source for them, but also the competing accounting interests of Article 6 and other regulations where they have to do their own sort of emission counting against their own homegrown generated carbon removal?
Na’im Merchant: Yeah, that’s a tricky question. I think this whole, I love the app store reference. That’s so, that makes so much sense in the way that Kenya is thinking about this. I think for a country like Kenya, it’s very different in the sense that, you know, generally speaking, like low middle-income countries should be finding a way to increase their revenues generally. And this is one good way to do it. And for the government to have skin in the game as relates to the actual carbon markets in their country. If I’m a project developer, the math probably doesn’t look as good for me with this 15 to 25% take rate.
But it also means that the government is going to take this seriously and that they’re going to want to invest and grow this sector because it has an incentive to do so. So it has the potential benefit of reducing some of the uncertainty around the government’s commitment to So it’s an interesting kind of test to see what happens here. I think that I would and I do advise folks in the Canadian government to like Optimize around the need for innovation and just building the sector. I think it does, I think to Susan’s point, it does feel a little early for something like this to be put in place.
You know, we have so little capacity of carbon removal happening in the world and in Canada in particular. For us, the argument to the government is we need to just start building Like pre-commercial demonstration scale, carbon removal projects across the country. Like we just need to start building this space and we need to see what works in the Canadian context and what doesn’t work in the Canadian context. And we need to answer some critical questions that exist around. Community engagement or environmental impact or MRD or whatever the related kind of potential trade-off exists with a specific carbon removal method.
There’s so much other stuff that we need to figure out when it comes to building out a carbon removal industry. But to say that the questions around Article 6 and the regulations across countries, these things are important as well and something we keep in the back of our minds because it does impact in terms of How big we think the market can be for a country like Canada or in the case here, a country like Kenya, right? Attractive is Kenya as a destination for carbon removal projects. And how does this impact Kenya’s ability to export carbon credits?
Same thing with any country. So there’s a lot to figure out there. But at the end of the day, especially as it relates to engineered solutions or long duration carbon removal methods or whatever you want to call it, like we’re just... Right at the ground level right now. And there’s a need for innovation, research development and demonstration, you know, early stage procurements within the country, that kind of stuff. And some of these questions around, you know, how can the government generate additional income off of a thriving carbon removal market is a cool thought exercise, but it’s just not something that we really spend a lot of time talking about with government because we’re just so early in this process.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right, Susan, final question for you. As we look to 2024, you know, what do you think VC funders are looking for specifically within the context of carbon removal? And what are your predictions on how they will think about funding this year?
Susan Su: I don’t think 2024 is meaningfully different from any of the previous years in this regard. I think everybody’s looking for Really good unit economics and edge on cost in particular. You know, one thing from the CDR FYI report that we didn’t get to talk about, but this report or survey, however you want to call it, I think everybody should check that out for who’s interested in this space. Is that people are extremely cost conscious and it’s like, oh, so obvious, but it’s really great to just have the numbers around that.
I think it was something like 76% of respondents said that price was their number one through 10, like decision making criteria. And so, you know, I think it’ll be the same as in previous years, but even more so because we’re getting more clarity and data around it, which is just that investors want to see an edge on cost. And also that you are able to go after scalable volume and deliver in a very reliable, repeatable way. And that you’re not going to be at the center of some, you know, grist reporting scandal or something else similar.
So nothing too, too different from in the past, but I think just more of it with more of a critical eye because we’re not in 2021 anymore.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right. Well, with that note, we are not in 2021, but 2024 brings some exciting news for you, Susan. So do you want to let our listeners know what you’ve started?
Susan Su: Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much for that invitation. Well, I started a podcast, which fitting to announce on a podcast, it’s called Climate Money. I’ve ran a Substack called Climate Money for three and a half years now. I’ve run, I should say, a substack, but really decided that it was the time to Get back into the audio game. Way back in 2020, I had a clubhouse. Does anybody remember Clubhouse? I had a clubhouse room that I did every single day. It was quite a lot of work called Climate Headlines, where I invited anybody to come in and chime in with me and learn about and read together and dissect the headlines going on in climate.
And it’s still so salient today because actually it was a moment where I was talking to an entrepreneur in my portfolio. And they referenced a news happening that I had totally missed. And it was like a really big, obvious piece of news. And I felt super embarrassed in front of this entrepreneur that I was trying to impress. And I realized this was back in December. I realized, oh, my gosh, I’m totally behind. And I need a forcing function to help me stay up to date with what is going on in climate broadly and specifically climate business.
And it was really a lot inspired by our discussions that what we’ve had here on the Carbon Removal Newsroom, which is just focused on carbon removal. But then by the way, like there’s so much climate business happening right now. So the podcast is really dedicated to that. It’s very short. It’s only about 20 to 25 minutes once a week. I cover some cherry picked headlines that I think are interesting, do a little bit of analysis. And, you know, I see it as a good way to For to force myself to keep up with the news, but also for anybody else who wants to join me to look at what’s happening in all things energy transition, decarbonization and climate.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, congratulations, Susan. Now we’re all independent podcasters. So Naeem has one. You have one. I obviously have this. Very excited. And of course, remember Clubhouse because my understanding is that’s how Nori found you, Susan. So we are ever grateful for that failed attempt at whatever it was.
Susan Su: Thank you, Clubhouse.
Radhika Moolgavkar: With that, I’ll wrap up this week’s business edition. Thank you so much, Naeem and Susan, as always, for joining me. And listeners, we’ll be in your feed soon.
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