Back in April of this year, Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey announced a joint project to invest $925 million into carbon removal by 2030.
Using an Advanced Market Commitment structure, the group aims to provide a source of stable demand and revenue to potential CDR companies to help the industry grow.
In November, Frontier offered a new resource to the CDR industry- a database of “Carbon Removal Knowledge Gaps.”
In a blog post announcing the release of the work, the authors said, “we’ve noticed a few areas that are underexplored relative to their potential. So, here we’re experimenting with a supply “push.” Our hypothesis is that we can more quickly shake the proverbial tree for the most promising ideas in CDR.”
To discuss the report this week and talk about what they see as big knowledge gaps for CDR are our regular science panel Shannon Valley and Jane Zelikova.
On This Episode
Jane Zelikova
Shannon Valley
Radhika Moolgavkar
Resources
Frontier blog post
Frontier database
Subscribe to Climate Workers Anonymous
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: Hello, everybody, and welcome to our December 1st edition of Carbon Removal Newsroom. This week, we will be focusing on some scientific aspects of carbon removal. So as always, I have with me Dr. Jane Zelikova, Executive Director of the Soil Carbon Solution Center and Joint Faculty in Crop and Soil Science at Colorado State University. Hi, Jane.
Jane Zelikova: Hello.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And Dr. Shannon Vallee. Paleocean Oceanography and Marine Biogeochemistry researcher who has served on Joe Biden’s NASA transition team and is currently a AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at USAID. Hello, Shannon.
Shannon Valley: Hey there.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Someday I will get your title to roll off my tongue much clearer than it usually does.
Shannon Valley: It’s a mouthful. We can shorten that up.
Unknown speaker: That’s so impressive. We don’t want to shorten it up.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And I am Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. So as everyone who listens to this podcast knows, back in April of this year, Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey announced a joint project to invest about $925 million into carbon removal by 2030. Now kind of known as the Frontier Group, it’s using an advanced market commitment structure, To provide a source of stable and secure demand and revenue to potential CDR companies to help the industry grow. So this November, Frontier offered a new resource to the CDR industry. It’s called a database of carbon removal knowledge gaps.
And in that blog post announcing the release of the work, the author said, we’ve noticed a few areas that are underexplored relative to their potential. I feel like that’s an understatement, but So here we’re experimenting with a supply push. Our hypothesis is that we can move quickly. We can more quickly share the proverbial tree for the most promising ideas in CDR. So to discuss this report this week, we have Shannon and Jane, and I guess really the database we’ll be discussing. So curious to hear from both of you. What are the scientific knowledge gaps you see that will Affect the ability of CDR to be successful, aside from what Frontier thinks, or you might agree with everything Frontier put in there.
Jane Zelikova: I mean, they put a lot in, so it certainly feels like it’s not fully comprehensive, but there’s a lot in there, and a lot of the really big gaps are already I think we can shake with this database, but I think the biggest thing in my mind is the integration piece. So integrating CDR into all of the lived environments and managed environments that currently exist, I think is a really huge opportunity and need. It would be really great for us to rebuild everything from scratch and do it with low emissions and low carbon footprint materials.
That just isn’t likely to happen. While we can’t completely restructure our lived environment, I think we have to figure out how to embed CDR into the structures that exist today. And sort of like, how do we make new materials to replace the old ones? And so the database has some of those, like sort of, there’s one particular entry for that activity, specifically integration of CDR into existing infrastructures. And there’s a lot in this database that’s focused on waste streams. So how to use various waste products for carbon removal purposes. And that’s all really great and needed, but I think we need to be Maybe dreaming a little bigger.
What does a city look like that’s completely integrating carbon management into its very function and infrastructure? What do buildings look like? How do they function? There’s this thing that Third Way just put out, which is a visual representation of what it would look like to have carbon management in urban systems and rural systems, with DAC integration, with hydrogen systems integrated. And I think just the... The visual representations of what we should be dreaming of, I think is really helpful. And I didn’t see that much of that in the database.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Shannon, what about you? Anything you would add or include in that database?
Shannon Valley: Yeah, I mean, I think, well, the database has a lot of MRV coverage, and I think that’s right on for sure. At least what I spend more time thinking about in the kind of natural solution space. Again, it’s kind of going back to that signal to noise ratio and understanding what what kind of a localized intervention is doing within a much larger system cycling background. So getting that kind of getting that level of measurement down.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Jane, as you were, you know, perusing the database, I’m curious what your initial impressions were of it and how did you like just, you know, how the information was presented? Because I think it’s important that valuable information is presented in an accessible way.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I mean, I think It’s fine. It’s good. I like the ability to sort of filter things by things you’re really interested in. That’s pretty easy. And I like that there are tags. Everything is really well tagged. So you can sort of move between things pretty easily just using the tagging system by categories and skill sets. You know, visually, like when you click on a particular thing, it opens in a new tab. You know, that’s good. So you’re not like having to use back to find your way back. I think the recommendations are a little slim and I’m assuming that they’re going to get built over time.
They’re just like a little, they’re not really detailed enough and there aren’t enough examples of like, what does the thing look like? So for example, like if I clicked on, let me think of something that I have clicked on. I’ve clicked on a lot of stuff. Nutrient removal via biomass. So there’s a category for nutrient removal. So when you’re taking biomass out of an ecosystem and storing it for carbon storage, you’re also removing the nutrients, other nitrogen, phosphorus, other things that would have potentially been like returned into the ecosystem and serve the nutrients for other plants.
And so we need to understand what that nutrient loss actually means for ecosystem function in the future. And so when you click on it, it would be really good to have a specific example of an issue where this is actually happening. But I mean, I like it. I think it’s a really great, just as a first thing to put out into the world, this is pretty comprehensive. There are a few little typos here and there that Annoying people like me will find and then just like, it’ll pester me, but I’m trying to let that go.
It’s a really great first stab.
Shannon Valley: Can I just add, I also really liked the additional resources and key experts component to kind of each key area. It gives you, obviously they’re not comprehensive, but the ability to kind of have the receipts to look at some citations of existing work that’s already looking to answer some of these gaps is really cool, especially if you’re, you know, generally interested in learning more about a sector, but you’re not expert yourself. The key experts, it also kind of gives you more opportunity because they’re not always academic researchers. Some of them are companies or other folks who are involved in this space.
NGOs, people who are working in NGOs, it kind of gives you an idea if you’re just getting started or just need additional information, kind of where to go to start talking to folks.
Jane Zelikova: 100%. Although in terms of receipts, I was really curious about who put this together. I wanted to know what sort of work they’re doing, the main people. You know, they mentioned folks from RMI, et cetera, but then they basically said there are more than 30 independent scientists, CDR companies, funders, and other ecosystem actors whose expertise and input helped develop the database. And I’m assuming if it wasn’t just Daniel Pike and Kara Massano that actually did it, like who those people were, it would have been good to see those receipts. And why, like, why be all mysterious about it, you know?
Why not be transparent?
Radhika Moolgavkar: Shannon is one of our technical reviewers, at least she’s listed as one. So kind of curious what the experience was and to the extent you can talk about it, would love to learn more.
Shannon Valley: Yeah. So in the past, I’ve worked as a reviewer for some of Stripe’s climate investments. And so without going into like details of any one project, I would say that at least in the area that I reviewed kind of ocean CDR activity proposals, Which is more nascent than a lot of other kind of technical interventions. There was a lot of kind of estimation of sequestration benefits kind of based on back of the envelope calculations, but they lacked information about, you know, potential biological interactions, ocean circulation complications and so on. And so I realized for sure that in-situ monitoring of ocean geochemistry is costly.
Studying biological impacts is outside of the purview of a lot of these projects. So it’s kind of a lack of holistic and systems thinking that you realistically can’t capture in-house with a lot of these projects and a lot of these kind of startups. So even when a lot of these companies are starting to bring on board really smart technical folks, you’re just not going to get all of that systems level expertise that you need all in-house. So what I was looking for in these applications were just thoughtful and detailed discussions of kind of if you had more resources, Funding and research capacity, like what kinds of instruments, what kinds of modeling techniques, what kind of data would you want to apply towards better understanding both the sequestration value and some of the impacts.
And so I think that’s where, of course, like key collaborations come in and why I think having an open database like this where folks with expertise can plug in and also showing where People like students, entrepreneurs, people who are just interested in getting into this field, ideas of where they could contribute if their interest is really important.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So, Jane, we were talking about the database, which currently includes 110 gaps that need to be explored. And eight attributes can be applied to view the different categories. And listeners, I think you just have to go out there and look at the database, which is available and will be in our show notes to picture this potentially. Some of the categories are skill set and developmental stage. Curious if there were particular areas that were most interesting to you, or did you think were more relevant to pushing CDR forward versus others?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, well, I straight up went for MRV because that’s what I work on. So that was like the first kind of category I searched based on. And I was also really, and so for MRV, again, the work that I do is on soils. The only way soils are really represented in this database because they don’t consider soil to be a durable carbon storage solution, which is debatable, but fair. The only way soils are represented is sort of understanding the mineral interactions and microbial sort of roles of microbes and soils for mineralizing long term carbon interactions with biochar and enhanced mineralization, etc.
So that’s the only way soil was represented. But then for MRV, I did think it was really interesting because MRV is like a kind of near it’s a critical like linchpin solution or set of questions and knowledge gaps that need to be filled With quite a lot of research already done. So we’re not really starting from scratch conceptually. So there’s like a lot of progress that can be made really quickly and it’s really high impact. So that was like good to see because that’s kind of the kind of thing that I want to know if I’m working on something that actually has impact.
So that was a personal thing. And then the other thing I started looking at is I’ve just, I’ve been like thinking about this a lot lately in general, the idea that While we focus so much on technical solutions, we often overlook the people aspect. And I didn’t see people really represented here. And by people, I mean sort of like social sciences and understanding how solutions are actually deployed in the real world. And this is a problem that I see over and over and over again with all of like in CDR in general.
And in other sort of technocratic systems where we just focus on technology and ignore the people. And so I looked for any sort of disciplines that touch social science and they have sociology and they had economics, very, very few No projects had any social sciences in them at all. No sociology was represented when you just do that category. And so that’s kind of an interesting thing, because if we don’t understand how people are interacting with these solutions and how they’re deployed in the real world, then nothing actually happens. And so social science, today, it becomes an afterthought.
At some point, people are like, oh, we should ask someone who works in social science how to do this once we’ve already Design the research project, maybe like sought out funding, et cetera. And I think we have to really flip that and really think, start with social science, start with, and not just social scientists, but also like stakeholders that aren’t academics, and then come up with questions together and like seek ways to answer those questions together, not as an app thought. So that was an interesting thing. They did kind of mention that they saw that weakness themselves.
So I’m glad to see that they had self-reflection on that. But it’s probably the biggest area where folks can come in and because it’s open and transparent, people can add other categories and make suggestions. I think this could be a really big area for folks to really expand the database and make it even more useful.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. And Jane, you’ve been talking about that since I’ve known you, the need to flip the narrative about social science and where it comes in study design and more broadly, probably in CDR adoption across From science all the way to commercialization. I think it’s an important conversation that still continues to be needed to have.
Jane Zelikova: I mean, if Holly Buck was here, what would she say? What would Holly Buck say should be a t-shirt?
Radhika Moolgavkar: I don’t know, but she’ll be back.
Unknown speaker: Ooh, good. I would never trade him. I’m speaking for Holly.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Shannon, Jane mentioned this and, you know, the database has this participatory element, which is very cool. And it means that people can come in and add new gaps, edit posts, upvote gaps. So curious what you think of this sort of like Wikipedia GitHub-like structure and if there was something that particularly you upvoted.
Shannon Valley: Yeah, I like the participatory element. Like as Jane was saying, the key is making sure that you have a diverse set of eyes that gets on this that’s helping to set kind of what the research agenda is so that you have the input from diverse groups like social scientists, NGOs, researchers, interest groups, environmental practitioners, and so on and so forth. But I think the concern is that With Wikipedia, too, it all depends on who’s doing the authoring. And Wikipedia itself has had struggles in the past with authors of different subject areas coming from one specific demographic group.
So you got to make sure that you don’t have just one kind of group of motivated actors that are dominating the discussion, even on a database that’s open like this. So you got to get the word out to the interested, diverse groups. Of stakeholders that you want to see engaged in a platform like this. So I guess that’s part of what we’re doing here today is trying to get the word out. But as for me, what I found myself upvoting, a lot of stuff, surprise, surprise, given my background, MRV, gaps associated with understanding bio-based carbon storage impacts and nutrient cycling and governance and ethical issues.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, Jane also brought up another interesting, you know, you called it tech, you know, technocratic, I think is the word you use, but it does feel like the tech industry is very interested in CDR. I, you know, I hypothesize because tech likes tech, I don’t know, but how do you feel about that? There are parts of the tech industry that are so interested in the scientific side of The CDR creation and CDR in general.
Jane Zelikova: You know, I think the whole like tech likes tech and tech understands tech is like a thing. I find myself like as a person who works more with like agriculture and sort of more land based climate and land management in general, when you talk to people, especially tech people, and you sort of explain that even the most like well thought out and designed tech solution. Doesn’t mean anything if you don’t like engage with farmers and that the biggest thing is sort of understanding the challenges that farmers are facing, the sort of aging farming population, the confusing set of incentives they get from government programs.
All of those things are very like human things and they don’t, they just immediately sort of shut down. They want A simple tech solution, or they want something that they invested in that’s a technology. And it’s really hard for them to part with money that’s just going to squishy, like people talking to each other in a way that’s nice. So, I mean, I think it’s just, it’s kind of a problem. You also see people like Elon Musk, who sort of like, you know, what is it, the elephant in the China shop, sort of the bull in the China shop, just knocking everything over and ruining things that we really like.
And using their outsized, and my personal opinion, and come get me if you want Elon Musk fans, unearned privilege and unearned money to buy solutions and buy platforms. And then all of a sudden have an outsized opinion on what CDR, for example, should be doing and what we should be investing in. So I think we have to involve the corporate sector, obviously, but I think we can’t give them an outsized perspective. Role to play here because we’ve done this before, like history is full of sort of large corporations ruining all kinds of stuff.
That’s how we got into this mess in the first place. So while it’s nice to see corporate actors really putting a lot of effort and money into scaling CDR, you know, less than a billion dollars, still a worth effort. We need to like triple, quadruple times a hundred that to actually make progress, but it’s really good to start somewhere. It’s not surprising. Tech loves tech, but it is problematic and we have to be really careful about it.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, it always kind of boggles my mind when we talk about Frontier. Everybody’s like, it’s a billion dollars. But then I’m like, but the U. S. government just said $3 billion for DAC hubs alone, like three times as much for just one. And so there is this also problem of scale in publicity around... What you’re doing. So Shannon, you know, Jane talked a little bit about it, but I’m also curious your thoughts on some private corporations having such an outsized influence on a scientific database, you know, scientific research and how you think about that potential quandary.
Shannon Valley: Yeah, I think so. Obviously the main concern is not wanting to put the carpet before the horse and driving action in spaces that we don’t have good scientific basis on understanding like doing further geological, ecological, societal harm when we already have a big crisis that we’re dealing with. You don’t want companies that are driving kind of perverse incentives to continue bad action in climate spaces. But actually I think, In terms of driving like the research agenda, I think that a lot of the research questions that we’re looking at when you’re talking about getting at these kind of key knowledge gaps are stuff that folks are working on anyways, they want to work on more.
And in the climate space, from the climate’s perspective, I think we know the what. We know very well the impacts of atmospheric carbon. Over several life and human lifespans. So we need to work more on the solution space. I think that’s a positive thing to have, you know, money talks. That’s just the world that we live in. So I think that’s a good thing. I don’t want to get roasted, but I’ll say, you know, maybe there is benefit to having some private sector efficiency to bite away at some of these chunks.
While you maintain public sector support for transformational but maybe not immediately profitable tech like this fusion industry that’s always 50 years away. Right. So I think the balance is like providing the regulatory frameworks and the transparency norms, I think, within the CDR community of practice so that you’re supporting private sector engagement, maybe even leadership or pushing or nudging or whatever. But it still allows for research and for other actors to uncover and disseminate results that industry may not like. So I think that the transparency is the main key.
Jane Zelikova: Another thing, though, I totally agree with everything Shannon was saying. I was like sitting here on mute, nodding. What would be really cool to see, and I don’t know how this would work with this kind of a fund, but there are some topics in this database and some topics in CDR that require sort of more patient investment. They need a longer runway and government obviously can play that role, but it would be really nice to have the private sector understand, like really, really fundamentally understand the longer runways that are required for things and rethink sort of the VC Model for how we scale solutions.
And I think this, this database could potentially shed light on that just because it like really does highlight the length of time it requires for some of these things and where they are currently in like conceptual or lab or sort of pilot stage.
Shannon Valley: Yeah. And like not all private sector is the same, right? So there’s, there’s VCs type stuff, but then there’s also, if you look at kind of more philanthropic type, philanthropic type funding, You do have people in that space that have longer term thinking, more systemic thinking, but it’s a matter of also doing outreach to those types of groups as well. I mean, there’s a whole debate about role of philanthropy and solutions and so on, but that can also be an opportunity to get away from just kind of quick make a buck thinking and longer term strategy.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right, to wrap it up, I have two final questions for you both to answer. So one, what did you think of Frontier’s attempt to take a stab at capturing kind of the known unknowns and generally creating sort of a scientific style database? And then of all the knowledge gaps in CDR, what is the one you are most interested in seeing solved? As soon as possible, MRV excluded, because we’ve already talked about that from both of you. So I’ll start with you, Shannon, and then I’ll end with Jane.
Shannon Valley: Okay. So about the known unknowns, I think the main issue that I had was still the framing of a lot of these knowledge gaps were just about, so how and when are these going to come online and scale? Like, assuming that it’s going to happen and that we just need to Adrienne Hodge, Drive the tech to do that, but not kind of coming from the framing of if they should so I’d still like to see some of the framing of. Adrienne Hodge, You know, addressing knowledge gaps about like what kind of information do we need to inform a decision tree so that’s that’s getting at you know where the opportunities to pivot if.
You know, ecosystem impacts of a given intervention, for example, are too bilaterious or if the sourcing of the material at scale is costly and not just financial costs, but energy costs, social costs and so on, if that’s prohibitive. So they’re like, for example, there was like a knowledge gap that was listed around like what are effective educational programs to increase awareness, acceptance and support for, you know, the responsible CDR. So responsible is doing a lot of work there. But, you know, if If there is a building public consensus that we don’t want to go down a certain road or if there’s some kind of finding, what’s the pivot?
What’s the decision tree that helps? What is the information that we need that helps us move on to the next thing and not just presuming that we’re going to go forward? So my favorite of the knowledge gaps, I was intrigued by the one that was about integration of CDR into existing processes and industries. So they listed things like including like discharge brines or waste streams into electrochemical CDR, other sources of alkalinity for like ocean alkalinity enhancement, for example. And they cited even an existing study of amino acids from bio-waste products that could be applied towards DAC.
That’s kind of interesting, kind of some of it sounds a little freaky because they were talking about like bio-waste products as like feathers and fur. So yeah, concern of course is, are these industrial waste products gonna be clean properly for reuse? But anything that’s like multi-use or multi-benefit makes my ears perk up. And just like one last thing, if I can add my second, I’m not sure so much if it’s in the database, I was looking for it, but I’m a logistics geek is one of my other geekdoms, like other than otters and so on.
But I’m really interested in like, Understanding more about how CDR strategies are achieving strong net drawdown by reducing emissions along their operational life cycle. So if there’s any kind of like systems engineering management processes, research that kind of gets at identifying operational efficiencies, I’m super interested in that, too, because I think if you have the potential to spread that kind of That kind of knowledge beyond the CDR space, then you can really get into big carbon reduction.
Jane Zelikova: We’re just learning more and more nerd things about Shannon. I love it.
Shannon Valley: I’m a nerd of many layers.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah. Well, I’ll just, I’ll be really quick. For me, I agree with Shannon. I think the thing that I was really curious about, and it’s just, it’s not my favorite, it’s just the one that I’m most dumbfounded by is the biomass sinking. I just can’t help but be like, but why? And why? I like, it just, it’s just like mind boggling. So I want to, I want to like, keep an eye on that because Does it really have really like high potential for carbon removal? Is that really the best use for biomass?
It’s this whole question of like, just because we can do it, should we? And how do we stop ourselves from doing things just because we can? So I’m going to keep an eye on this whole biomass sinking thing because I’ve reviewed some proposals for Stripe that were related to that. And I was just like, but why? I don’t get it. So maybe we’ll find out why.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right, and then to wrap up the show today, Jane, I wanted to give you an opportunity to introduce our listeners to that really cool charity you introduced the CRM team to.
Jane Zelikova: Oh yeah, thank you so much. So I don’t know if folks are listening at home, if you know this or not, but I was born in Ukraine. I’m a Ukrainian. I’m from the eastern region called Kharkiv is the city that I was born in. It’s probably very famous now. Most people didn’t know where it was a year ago. And I’ve been, you know, heartbroken is not even doesn’t even cover the feelings about my home country right now. But one of the things I’ve been trying to do is I’m volunteering with an organization called Sunflower Seeds Ukraine, which is started by folks, Ukrainian folks in Colorado.
And what we do is we fundraise and then we buy tactical gear and medical supplies and equipment for frontline defenders in Ukraine and also some sort of civilians that are in harm’s way. And we have a network of volunteers across Europe who are delivering those supplies directly to Ukraine that are getting directly into the hands of the defenders themselves. Many of the defenders we work with are people that we are friends with or know personally. We’ve been doing a holiday fundraiser and we did a big fundraising push on Giving Tuesday and raised a bunch of money, which was really awesome to see.
So I guess the good news, not that there’s a lot of good news coming out of Ukraine right now, is that there are still a lot of people that really care about what’s happening in a really heartbroken situation. And want to help. And I just sent an email to some people I knew and posted in Slack, and then we raised over $10,000 in a day. So it was really heartwarming. And not that money is everything, but it was, you know, that money is really going to buy things that are going to help people.
Radhika Moolgavkar: What’s the name of the organization, Jane?
Jane Zelikova: The organization, again, is Sunflower Seeds Ukraine, and you can find them online and donate, and they have lots of different Campaigns for specific things like winter gear, or you can just donate to the general fund and we’ll buy things that the frontline people need.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So everybody who listens, please consider when you’re doing your end of the year giving that this charity that’s so near and dear to one of our panelists hearts. And with that, I want to thank both Shannon and Jane on our December episode, end of 2022 episode. So for science. So thank you both so much for your time and effort this year. And I look forward to continuing the conversation as we move into 2023.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah. Thank you, Radhika. And thank you, Asa, who we don’t hear from, but he’s in the background producing the magic. So thank you both for doing this show.
Shannon Valley: For sure. It’s been great joining you guys this year and I’m looking forward to the next one.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah!
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