Carbon180 released a new report, "Zero, Then Negative: The Congressional Blueprint for Scaling Carbon Removal," and this week on Carbon Removal Newsroom, our panelists dive into some of the report's details! Nori's Head of Methodology, Radhika Moolgavkar, hosts guest panelists Ugbaad Kosar, Deputy Director of Policy at Carbon180, and Lucia Simonelli, Senior Policy Fellow specializing in Direct Air Capture at Carbon 180. Returning panelists Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo and Chris Barnard of the American Conservation Coalition also join in with questions and thoughts on the report.
The discussion covers how direct air capture facilities might scale up, how a federal land link program could solve succession problems in farming, the role that prizes have played in human history and how they can be advantageous in the climate space, and why not every climate solution is appropriate in every place. Our guest panelists also describe their ideal three-course meal of carbon removal solutions and explain how tech and land-based solutions can work together to help society reach its climate goals.
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 the May 27th Carbon Removal Newsroom. Today, we have a special episode. We are here with two guests from Carbon 180, and they’re going to be discussing their new report, Zero the Negative, the Congressional Blueprint for Scaling Carbon Removal. But before we get started, as usual, I’m going to introduce my fellow panelists. We have Holly Jean Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo in New York. Hi, Holly. How are you?
Holly Jean Buck: I’m great. How are you?
Radhika Moolgavkar: I’m hanging in there. I’m ready for the three-day weekend that’s coming up and hoping the weather will get a little better here in Seattle. And we also have Chris Barnard back after a brief hiatus last week, Policy Director at the American Conservation Coalition. How are you doing, Chris?
Chris Barnard: I’m doing great. Good to be back.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, nice to have you back. And joining us today from Carbon 180 is Ukbad Kosar, Deputy Director of Policy and Forestry and Environmental Justice. Hi, how are you today?
Ugbaad Kosar: I’m doing very well. Thank you so much for inviting us.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, we’re so happy to have you. And we also have Lucia Simonelli, Senior Policy Fellow and focused on direct air capture and a podcast rookie. So we’re so happy that you’re joining us today.
Lucia Simonelli: So excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. Like I was telling you guys before we got started, we’ve had some requests to get a little more in depth and learn more about this report from our listeners. So we’re super glad you could join us. I guess the first question is sort of big picture. What made you guys want to write this report? I’m assuming it started probably before the presidential transition, but maybe I’m wrong about that. So what was the impetuous to start? This report and publish it.
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, no, happy to. You’re definitely right. It happened well before we knew it was going to come out of the election and what Congress was going to look like. It actually started last fall. It was an idea from our executive director now, but then policy director Erin Burns. And part of it was we took stock of how many ideas were just being thrown around in conversations that we were having, whether it was with partner organizations or just internally with ourselves. Different memos that were being sent to the hill that we were creating, the senior policy fellowship that was entirely created to bring new voices to the carbon removal space and to pitch new policy ideas and approaches.
And the other part was Recognizing that there are a lot of really big pictures about carbon removal and seems to be pretty clear about what are the big R&D needs, but it became less and less clear of actions to take in the near term. And what does it look like from next year or one to three years time? And our team has been really expanding in agriculture and in facts and forestry and different technological approaches. And so if we want to reach those longer term targets, we were starting to think about what are the immediate steps that we can take.
And the last thing is we’ve been growing a lot with our justice and equity work. So not just scaling up carbon removal, but we’re having a lot of really big internal questions about how and where and with whom. All of that came together to brainstorm a number of different ideas and what came out of it was a report. And I will say there was a lot that didn’t make it solely because of hard prioritization questions and also the length of it, but it was honestly a really great process.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, that was gonna actually be a follow-up question for me is I was curious how you chose to prioritize what you put in the report. You know, for example, there wasn’t a ton on Ocean CDR, maybe understandably because it’s not a one to three year term, but is that how you guys were thinking about prioritization?
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, I mean, I’m curious to hear what Lucia thinks as well, but I think it was a really collaborative process and we tried to pull as many people into that prioritization question that we could. And so we were thinking of what are the big opportunities that we’re seeing right now? What are the levers that are being talked about and what do we think are going to have those really short term impacts, so those are sort of the conversations that we had different iterations. And ultimately we wanted to have a mix of land of tech, we don’t do a ton on oceans at carbon 180 to begin with, and so.
Other than the round recommendation that we had about that we can get into later on, we felt that really focusing on the agriculture conversation that’s growing, the DAC conversation that’s growing, and the immediate geologic storage needs that we’re seeing. That’s sort of how the conversation started and grew grew up from there, but would love to hear what Lucia thinks on the tech side, especially.
Lucia Simonelli: Sure, yeah, thank you. I do think it is a reflection that there’s that carbon 180 is not yet so expanded into ocean CDR as much. I can speak mostly for the tech based approaches section. I think the one of the visions for this section was that You know, we hear a lot about the needs of innovation and innovation is used in this very abstract way. And recognizing that it’s a process, it has stages. I like to think of it in its, you know, as a cyclic and iterative. So when we say research, development, demonstration, deployment, RDD, D&D, we are talking about innovation.
And so we have to Really focus on each stage of that well and we’ve seen great momentum behind the research and development R&D and that’s still in these RECs and has to be sustained in the long term. But I think what we tried to do is complement that as well with the D&D and the demonstration and deployment that will be necessary and that it’s essential to tackle that in an anticipatory way and so What Congress does in the next one to three years to that end will really determine what the deployment landscape looks like.
So especially if we’re trying to ground these in principles of environmental and social and labor justice, we have to start asking those questions now about what policies are needed, not just to reach the scale of the market that we’re talking about, but the type of market that we want.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, that’s super helpful and I appreciate it because It’s a big, big topic sometimes, I think, and then sometimes I think it’s a really little topic. It’s so big, you can’t be an expert on everything, but it’s still pretty small in terms of the people and community that’s really heavily involved, but you can see that it’s growing. Holly, I was kind of wanting to throw this out over to you for a second, and Give you the opportunity to ask any questions you might have. I thought you might be particularly interested in the environmental social justice piece of it.
Holly Jean Buck: Well, I do have a few smaller questions, but I wanted to ask one big picture question, which is a lot of the recommendations seemed familiar from the various bits of legislation that have been introduced and reintroduced. In the past couple of years, and as well as stuff that’s been discussed in like the infrastructure plan and so on. And I was wondering if you could walk us through the recommendations that you see as really unique to this report.
Ugbaad Kosar: I think there were a few that I thought were really unique and that I hadn’t seen before, or at least hadn’t seen in the way that it was pitched. One recommendation was introduced by Vanessa on our team. And it was talking about a federal land link program for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. And what she was trying to get at is this idea of folks that are potentially no longer going to be using their lands, how to connect those people with land seekers. And sometimes it can be a bit of a small club in terms of who inherits land and how it’s done and the legalities of How you’re actually able to claim that land.
And what Vanessa was trying to do was figure out, one, can we pilot or just try out a program to see how to facilitate those conversations? Number two, can we also provide technical and financial assistance to those land seekers that they can actually get into the farming or the ranching community? And then three, I think the bigger picture piece that Vanessa was trying to get at is there is no federal program that’s like this, but the in that way, but the concept of it seemed really straightforward. So why hasn’t there been a program that’s been pitched that way?
And can it work in that way? So I found that the federal land like one was was a piece that really stood out to me that was very different and really appreciated Vanessa’s input on that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So quick follow up before maybe if Lucia wanted to talk about anything in the DAC side of the world. I love the land link idea because I liked the idea of letting people who wanted to be in this space enter into this space of agriculture. Wasn’t as clear to me how it was linked to carbon sequestration. So was the idea sort of that you could participate in the program If you were willing to implement certain practices, how does that link happen?
Ugbaad Kosar: I think it was open ended for that reason. And a lot of what you’re going to see from the roadmap is high level recommendations because we wanted to keep it high level so that we could build out what it could look like or what it should look like. And so Even though it’s not explicitly saying carbon storage practices, I think that would very much be a central part of it, which is the farmers and ranchers that would want to get into this would be ones that are also interested in implementing some of these practices, like no-till or conservation tillage and that sort of thing.
So I think open-ended for sure, and you’re right that it wasn’t explicitly included, but I think part of it is outside of just removal and carbon storage, we’re trying to just build that network. But also with the technical assistance, making sure that if they are interested in implementing those practices, that it’s available to them.
Chris Barnard: I had a quick question. And just for your reference, Uba and Lucia, the reason I was roped into this is because I sometimes provide the contrarian, more center-right perspective. And that’s the organization I work for. And I’m happy to provide that. And just kind of channeling that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And we really appreciate it, Chris. So I’m glad you do it.
Chris Barnard: You tolerate me, let’s put it that way. So my question channeling that would generally be that conservatives would look at the, at least the conservatives that embrace the need to do something about climate change, would look at this and say, well, we’re talking about a problem that is so urgent and so immense that we should be looking at the most effective ways to do that. And they would look at, for example, a proposal like this And just wonder why it’s there if we’re talking about specifically the need for carbon removal and totally understanding the need for kind of social equality and giving opportunities to people.
But I think kind of going off Radica’s question is like the actual link to carbon removal, because you were saying that it might be that these people might be interested and potentially could be interested. But surely if we’re talking about kind of reducing as much carbon as possible as quickly as possible, we should be focusing on who can do that the fastest and the best and that is really kind of the urgency of this matter and so kind of. I want to play devil’s advocate and ask for a little bit more explanation of to what extent do you feel that this would distract from kind of the pure climate focus and potentially make it less likely to pass politically because.
A republican in Congress might be like well I don’t feel like this would particularly set us in the right direction so. Just curious as to your thoughts on that.
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, I’m happy to dive into that. But I’m curious to hear what you mean by distract from the climate question in particular. Can you just dive into that a little bit more?
Chris Barnard: Sure. So, I mean, if you’re looking at kind of the best policies that we want to implement in Congress, and obviously understanding that there is very limited kind of political opportunity to pass climate policy, to what extent would policies that don’t directly talk about, for example, carbon capture or carbon removal in the context of agriculture and soils, to what extent would that kind of make it a harder political lift and not get some of the other ones, some of the other policies that we’re already talking about to be passed with bipartisan colors.
Does that make sense for my question?
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, I definitely see what you’re saying. And I think I think two things. One is what I really appreciate about the way that we approach this is offering a menu of options and seeing what folks are interested in. And I think we’re not necessarily saying that one recommendation is significantly more The whole purpose of this is we’re trying to see what are folks interested on the Hill? What are the recommendations that are touching to our own internal values as we’re thinking about scaling up carbon removal and how do we balance the two?
So that’s the first piece of it. The second is, as I was mentioning earlier, A lot of these are really high level for a reason. And it’s part of why we wanted to, the reason why we wanted to take that approach is to co-create what it would look like moving forward if there’s interest in it. So really making sure that If the federal land link program is of interest to folks who are interested in carbon removal, how can we tailor it and create a pilot program that then targets those carbon storage practices in particular?
So I think there is opportunity absolutely to center a little bit more into carbon removal, but it’s more so just seeing, does the program raise interest, the pilot program? Is there going to be momentum behind it? If so, then can we move forward and really figure out the details for it? But I don’t want to take away from the fact that there are other pieces of the roadmap that we’re pushing for soil carbon storage, but also we’re not trying to just focus on carbon removal. And I think that’s a really big point of the way that we approach this.
We’re really trying to figure out how can we address Climate. How can we remove carbon while also creating co-benefits and opportunities for folks?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I totally appreciate you saying that, especially the kind of idea of this is a menu of things that people can kind of choose depending on the interest. I think the issue from the conservative side sometimes is that tend to be sweeping packages and it’s either all or nothing. And I like this idea of you can choose and maybe potentially trade if this is something that People on the Democratic side really want, then they can trade it for something that Republicans could really want. And I feel that would probably work better with the kind of political reality we live in rather than just like we have to do every single one of these recommendations or none of them are going to pass.
So I appreciate you saying that.
Holly Jean Buck: I just want to add with the land link before we leave that. I actually see that as something that could really have bipartisan support because the problem that it’s seeking to answer is this problem of Succession, which I was interviewing farmers in Iowa. It’s a really challenging thing. A lot of these farms, maybe they’re century farms. They’ve been in the family. The people are getting older. They want to pass it down to somebody who will take care of it. So do they put it in a trust? What will happen? It’s kind of a big dilemma.
And if something like a land link program could be formed, I think it would really serve all sorts of people.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Lucia, I wanted to give you an opportunity to maybe talk to us about what you thought was the most unique proposal that you had in the industrial or DAC side of the world.
Lucia Simonelli: Yeah, I’m wondering if I could give two answers to Holly’s question. One, because I think I would like to highlight a REC that does something quite new, proposes a new program, as well as one that I think redefines an existing political lever. So maybe novel in different ways. So thank you. I see you’re nodding. So I’ll give two answers. So the first is a recommendation written by Courtney Holness about a cross-agency research initiative on how to site direct air capture DAC facilities. So we know that To reach the gigatonne scale we’re talking about, many of these facilities are going to be sizable and we need to determine where they’re going to be located.
And there’s been great work done in the research space in the carbon dioxide removal primer that co-locates geologic storage with energy sources. What we’re not seeing and what we think is important, not just as a value, but also in terms of Getting projects to the finish line is overlaying social considerations. And so what this recommendation calls for is a task force that is a cross agency task force that really leverages the power that the federal government has through the resources of these agencies and the federal lands. And perform some siting assessments.
That includes a lot of this local nuance that will go into the decisions that developers will have to make. And it will take into consideration, you know, here might be a geologic storage site. Here’s an energy source. Here’s a community that’s amenable to having a DAC plant. Or here’s a community that perceives this as a risk. So how do we think about enhancing co-benefits? And so In addition to this, the recommendation suggests having this report and be public facing in a database that compiles this information can serve as a guidepost for developers moving forward, even citing plants outside of federal lands, has a public input interface.
It tracks stack projects and also even has an FAQ page, you know, like What are the questions about this technology? What are the common concerns? So I think that ultimately when you take that step back and start thinking, how do we do this in a comprehensive way? It actually means we can do it faster and better in the longer term. So that’s the first trick.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So I just wanted to comment on a couple of things. There aren’t really questions, but what I Love about this idea is I’m always concerned when we talk about new jobs, new jobs, new jobs, and that we forget that communities are actually invested in their old jobs. And so I kind of like the idea that you’re trying to build the investment in the actual thing before you build the thing. And so I used to live in Kentucky and You know, coal meant more than just being coal. It was more than an economic resource.
It was an identity. And so this idea of trying to build identity around environmentally important assets, I think that’s great. The other thing that I was, I think you answered, but I just wanted to be clear on is this would only apply to federal lands. You’re kind of thinking it would be a model that states could use, but really the recommendation would be around federal properties and lands, correct?
Lucia Simonelli: Yes, the assessment would happen on federal lands and just it would serve kind of as a guideline. I think that the problem is we have very few projects to point to as of yet. So building this as kind of a model that not just states, but even private developers on potentially private lands can use.
Unknown speaker: Thank you. And then your second one.
Lucia Simonelli: Thank you. I’ll be brief. The second one is a rec written with Chris Neidl. And it has to do with prizes. So it comes with a bit of a prelude. Prizes run deep in human history. I have a background in mathematics. And so we have our own folklore about prizes that kings would offer gold or prestige in exchange for solving some engineering problem or some thought piece. And unexpectedly, the mathematician comes in and wins. And who knows if that’s true in these stories. But I think what is true Is that prizes have the opportunity to tap into a very broad pool of talent that other avenues might not, especially if the eligibility criteria is broad and if they’re, you know, the prize solicitations are written well.
It’s a means of getting new perspectives and new ideas. So I think that’s one thing that we like about the idea of prizes. They’re also gaining traction. I mean, we’ve seen from the private sector, we have Elon Musk’s XPRIZE in the Energy Act that passed at the end of last year, there was the DAC Prize. Those are very focused on technological development. Which is awesome. But I think we see that prizes can go beyond this. And so it’s not just about the technology. It’s about where this technology is going to be.
It’s about the markets that are going to be needed to sustain it. And it’s about the people that are going to live with it and interact with it. So we envision prizes as levers that can also address these issues and go beyond just the technological aspects.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Chris, I’m going to put you on the spot and ask you what you think of that idea. Is that perfectly in line with conservative values, not in line at all? Where would you say that fits?
Chris Barnard: I mean, conservatives, or to kind of put it less partisan, market-based environmental advocates fully understand the value of incentives. And I think that’s what you’re talking about here, is that incentives matter. They’re incredibly valuable. And actually, this past week, a few days ago, I was in California interviewing former climate scientist Richard Muller, and he was saying, if it’s not profitable, it’s not sustainable. And the kind of idea being that these things will scale up once people realize that there is some kind of financial incentive to it or a cultural incentive.
I mean, profit doesn’t necessarily have to be financial. It can also be they feel like it’s enriching their local environment or their families or their communities or whatever it is. So I think that the idea of prizes and the idea of kind of aligning incentives for people to be able to pursue this is incredibly valuable. But since you gave me the floor, I do have a question. Because the other thing that this climate scientist Richard Muller was telling me, which I found very interesting, and he’s a huge fan of nuclear and kind of those innovations.
And I was asking him his opinion on carbon capture and storage, DAC, those kinds of technological innovations. And he said that kind of with this mantra of if it’s not profitable, it’s not sustainable, he says that it will never be Cost effective enough to kind of do that projects or carbon capture projects and honestly I am not an expert and I don’t know I don’t know if I agree or disagree. My inclination would be that the market would suss that out, but I’m just curious because you guys are the experts what you think of that can can we get the technology costs down to the extent that this will happen or will it just kind of have to be at some point that.
Just this needs to happen and there’ll be federal money pumped into this because we need to reduce the carbon or do you think that it’ll happen because it’s profitable? I’m just kind of curious your thoughts as to that and then I have a quick follow up to that as well.
Lucia Simonelli: I think it’s going to need a combination of both. I think this question also is hard to answer in isolation in that It also depends on how we decide going forward how to put a price on externalities that we have been ignoring or not valuing in the way that I think we should. I do think we have a way of creating profit from this. I think that Carbon 180 really thinks about how to value carbon in a variety of ways. So how do we make this a useful product? There are studies that point to trillion-dollar market opportunities for carbon utilization.
So I think there is optimism. But you’re right, a lot of this right now is very expensive and it’s going to take a lot of initial investment and a lot of that initial investment will be through incentives that are subsidized by the government.
Chris Barnard: I guess my follow up to that would be, and thank you for your answer, I would probably agree and I can imagine that the technology costs will fall in the same way that they did for wind and solar and battery and electric cars and all that. But so my follow up question would be kind of bearing in mind the fact that the UN says and kind of all the major international agencies involved in this say that we cannot reach our climate targets without removing carbon from the atmosphere. So we have to become not only net zero, but also net negative.
I’m just curious if you know or have done yourself any calculations of to what extent could this be done without the technological carbon capture methods and could it be done with just nature, for example, Planning more trees, having better agricultural practices, restoring wetlands, things like that. I mean, obviously, if we were to go to net zero in terms of not polluting any more fossil fuels and not having any more emissions, then the nature we have would still reduce emissions. So we would become net negative. But would we be net negative enough is my question.
And you might not have a specific answer for that. I’m just curious about that in general.
Lucia Simonelli: I will try to start answering and then I will pass it off to that here, maybe for some help. But I think that what we’re seeing is that it’s hard to make a global assessment of this. And I think it’s really important to talk about this regionally and locally as much as possible. Not every carbon solution is appropriate for every place and each comes with its benefits and its disadvantages. Relying completely on terrestrial solutions It’s a huge burden and also will displace a lot of other functions that we use the land for and can have adverse effects as well.
So I think we see it as not one thing over the other, but a combination of everything. And we’re going to really need that combination.
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, I agree. I also think it really depends on, one, how much How we define how much carbon we need to remove. What is that actual amount? How much emissions reductions are we doing? How much are we relying on maximizing that first? And what are we defining as what needs to be removed from the atmosphere? So I think that’s the first piece of it to determine whether or not we’re going to need all these different approaches. But the second thing is, and as someone who works on forestry and trees, I mean, I love them.
I think they’re great and they’ve got a lot of great benefits, but They also are really limited and they run on a different carbon cycle. They run on the shorter carbon cycle and it moves differently in these natural systems, the fluxes. And I think we need to talk about things like permanence, which is, or the durability, which is like, how long is that carbon going to be stored in these systems? How safe is it under changing climate? What is going to happen to forest moving forward? Can we even scale up reforestation or afforestation or these nature based natural solutions in a way that can also be sustainable and long term?
And I think the reason why we don’t have all of these answers is because it really depends on what we do today and what we do in the next five years and the next 10 years. But also, I think we really should not rely solely on land based solutions because of the uncertainty of how that carbon is going to be moving in that system and also The last thing is there’s something called like saturation, like the point of which how much carbon is actually going to stay in these systems and it’s going to reach a point where it can no longer absorb carbon and so what do we do then in that in that situation.
And what if we aren’t meeting those climate goals that we’ve set out for us by solely relying on land base, so I think it’s really important to make sure that we’re. Talking about tech, just because of all of the complexities of how carbon moves in these land based systems, but also because. Land use is going to be important, how we’re using the land today, land use competition is going to go up, and the permanence of it.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I did want to ask a question myself, and I mentioned it before we started the show. Really curious why you chose to put incentives in tax credits and highlight those in the industrial DAC space and not as much in the nature-based space, because I think we would all agree There are needs to help farmers scale and grow these types of practices. So wondering your insights into that.
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, the short answer is we’re trying to figure out how we want to discuss that, to be honest, and what it’s actually going to look like. It’s a really, really tricky conversation. And there are conversations about tax credits for things like planting trees, federal tax credits, and what that could potentially look like. Is it going to be practice based? Is it going to be performance based? How is it going to be measured? Those sort of questions are floating around. And so we are internally thinking about it and what it’s going to look like.
But I guess my short answer is we’re still trying to figure that out and how to navigate that. But I 100% agree with you in that incentives is incredibly important in our Leading with Soils report that we released a few years ago. Pointed at incentives as being one of the three key barriers to actually adopting soil carbon storage practices so we’re we’re trying to figure out what that looks like on the tax base side. But in the meantime we’re trying to prop up things like the farm bill programs, all we can on private lands at least and leveraging that or things like removing the reforestation the cap on the reforestation tax.
Trust Fund, sorry, as another way of just getting funding in. But yeah, I agree. I think it’s just something that’s ongoing for us internally.
Radhika Moolgavkar: There are lots of things to address. So yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Callie, you haven’t gotten a chance. So maybe I’ll give you a floor because I know you had a few questions.
Holly Jean Buck: Well, I was interested in the procurement of both high quality carbon removal offsets. So it recommends That ramp up to 9 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030. Is that just to kind of offset government emissions? Or I was just wondering a bit more about the context of that. And then the procurement of adaptive fuels and what adaptive fuels is even doing in a carbon removal report maybe. Because it’s interesting the way the report kind of frames it is that electrification is really important. It will take some years. Synthetic low carbon fuels as kind of like a bridge, and I was wondering if that’s the right way to think about it.
Lucia Simonelli: Sure. In terms of that 9 million tonnes, that was for a metric for DAC in particular, and that was because the Rhodium Report Capturing leadership that pointed to 9 million tonnes of DAC by 2030 as being a good goal in order to kind of reach those economies of scale and drive down the price. So I think that’s kind of why that was written there explicitly. In terms of DAC to fuels, that’s a great question. I think that the transportation sector is going to be one of the hardest to decarbonize. So thinking about our low carbon fuel options is, you know, might be necessary in the interim.
I think we are thinking about Elisabeth Buffer- Accelerating the technologies for carbon removal, which in the short to medium term might not be net negative completely. It might be that in order to reach the DAT capacity at a gigatonne scale, that eventually will do all of that carbon removal that we want to see address all of these legacy emissions, that tapping into utilization markets right now can benefit, can work to that end. And so we see adaptive fuels as a very viable avenue, not just for those net zero climate goals and the fuels we might need, but also for an acceleration of carbon removal technologies and utilization markets.
Radhika Moolgavkar: You know, I think we’re kind of coming to the end of our time. It’s been a really good discussion. We could go, I think, on and on and on, but I wanted to wrap it up with each of you telling me, as you mentioned, Akbar, this is a, you know, a menu. But if you were to choose, if this was your, like, Appetizer, Main Course, and Dessert. What are the top three? What would be your three? And Lucia, what would be your three that you would choose if you were given that terrible question, which I just did?
Ugbaad Kosar: Can one of you go first to collect my thoughts? That’s tough.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I could go first, but I mean, I didn’t write the report, but I’m all about the right now, the nature-based solution. So I loved the farm link idea. That would be one of the ones I would like to do I actually also liked what Lucia highlighted, which was the DAC pre-siting or the pre-work. So I would take all the nature-based ones. But if I had to choose three, I’d also actually choose a third DAC, which is I like the idea of making permitting more expedited just because it is such an unnecessary barrier in so many ways.
And it To Chris’s point, efficiency is important right now. Being quick is important. Being nimble is important. And if we can demonstrate that in a new technology, if you can’t demonstrate it in a new technology, where else can you demonstrate it, right? So did I give you enough time to collect your thoughts?
Ugbaad Kosar: Thank you so much. That was great. And you absolutely did. I think one, I also really liked the DAC citing recommendation. I also really liked the task force for pipeline development and actually taking the time to talk about it because I find that at least conversations I’m in Pipelines don’t come up as often as it probably should, but it’s going to be incredibly important in the near term to start talking about it and figuring out what that’s actually going to look like, especially at the scale that we may need it.
So really appreciated Tim’s recommendation on that front. The last one was investing in social science research to better understand the barriers that producers and forest landowners are facing in terms of being able to access a lot of these farm bill programs. Actually talking about things like the geographic diversity, what are their interests, the racial or the demographic information as well, like all of that stuff, really trying to figure out how can we better hone in on those barriers because there are such discrepancies in enrollment and figuring out how to address that.
So those are probably the three that I would pick.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right, Lucia, you’re on the hot seat again.
Lucia Simonelli: Ah, my turn. Okay, well, I really enjoyed 12 course meals, more than three course meals, but I’ll limit to three here. So I’m going to cheat a little bit. I’m going to pick ones that might span everything. But first, I guess, federal procurement, I think. There is a big opportunity for federal procurement of carbon removal products and services to be a great launchpad for these markets. And also, the federal government isn’t necessarily beholden to economic metrics alone. So we can also determine how these markets are created through public purchases. And it has a lot of purchasing power.
And so I think as carbon removal solutions mature, We can see the entire portfolio represented in a federal procurement strategy. So that’s one. Two would be the CREATE Act. I think that when we’re talking about federal programs for carbon removal, they really need to address the diversity of the solutions, the technical variabilities, the maturity differences across the portfolio. And so having A committee or a body spanning agencies that are determining not only how to develop these solutions, but also how to deploy them moving forward is important. So I picked that one.
And then the last one would be expanding the public forests by improving some US Forest Service programs. I mean, trees are amazing. And I think that We need more of them, but we also need to, you know, there’s a lot of intricacy in forestry and how to do it right. And I’m speaking out of turn because Uwab here is definitely the expert, but I just think that it’s, you know, a great solution that we need to embrace, but we have to do it carefully. And so I think that’s also an extremely important one.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, thank you both for joining us today. I really appreciated the conversation and learning about it more. If anybody is interested in reading the report, they can find it on the Carbon 180 website, Zero, then Negative, the Congressional Blueprint for Scaling Carbon Removal. As everybody knows who listens to this show each week, one of us gets to talk about some good news in the environmental space or something we want to highlight. It’s my turn this week. Prior to joining Nori, I worked on battery electric buses, so I’m sort of interested in transportation and the electrification or greening of transportation.
And there was a great story out of the Wall Street Journal this week talking about hydrogen trains and how they are already up and running in France and What a great place to invest our transportation dollars because trains are long-term infrastructure assets. And if we can figure out how to replace diesel in them, that will be a huge step forward. So happy to see that there are lots of developments happening all across the sustainability space. And for all of us, all of those people listening, thanks so much. And we will talk to you next week.
Have a wonderful Memorial Day and a great long weekend.
Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom. If you like the show, the best way you can help us is by giving us a great rating and review in Apple Podcasts, following the show on Spotify, and by sharing the show on social media. Tell your friends and help us spread the word about what’s happening in the world of carbon removal.
