This week on Carbon Removal Newsroom, we’re back with a policy-focused episode with panelists Dr. Holly Jean Buck of the University at Buffalo, Chris Barnard of the American Conservation Coalition and host Radhika Moolgavkar of Nori.
First up, we’re discussing an essay from Harvard professor David Keith in the New York Times titled, “What’s the Least Bad Way to Cool the Planet?” Keith compares Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) and geoengineering, pointing out that the two approaches operate on different timescales— CDR will take decades to build up, and longer still to have a significant impact due to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Solar Radiation Management, a type of geoengineering, could be done with today's technology and theoretically has an immediate cooling effect. There is a lot we don't know but his ‘hunch’ is that geoengineering would work more quickly, be cheaper, and benefit the world’s hotter regions more immediately. He calls for governments to fund more research into the topic so the two techniques can be more accurately compared.
We debate David Keith’s main points and Holly Buck describes the socio-technical systems that might be necessary to deploy geoengineering and larger-scale CDR most effectively.
Next, we’re looking at the Cement Decarbonization legislation passed in California that mandates the state’s cement industry to become net-zero by 2045. According to the Climateworks Foundation’s Rebecca Dell, this is the first time any US state has required an industry to eliminate its net greenhouse gas emissions. Cement production is the second-largest emitter of any industry in California, after only oil and gas production, and it also contributes to significant local air pollution. While the greenhouse gas mitigation from this move is notable, this law also has the potential to provide needed policy support to the carbon removal and carbon utilization industries.
We discuss the types of incentives that might be most successful in moving the needle on hard to abate emissions, then end the episode with a good news story of the week from Chris— Japan is restarting several aging nuclear reactors in an attempt to meet its carbon emissions 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: All right, welcome everybody back to our last of the new broad topic areas in our new format, policy. So happy to have Chris back with us. It’s tried and true. We know what we’re doing. So as always, I have Holly Jean Butt, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Buffalo. Hello, Holly.
Holly Jean Buck: Hello.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And I have Chris Barnard, Policy Director for the American Conservation Coalition. I spit it out again this time, Chris, how are you doing?
Chris Barnard: It’s good to be back.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, we’re happy to have you back and your two really cute kittens that you just adopted. Adorable. And as always, I’m Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. This week, we are going to start with the whole question of geoengineering and for Those of you who may not be following the New York Times very closely or geoengineering too closely, last week, a Harvard professor by the name of David Keith wrote an essay the New York Times titled, What is the Least Bad Way to Cool the Planet? Keith is a founder or was a founder of Carbon Engineering, one of the carbon removal’s most well-funded companies, but he’s also a huge proponent on the topic of geoengineering.
And he compared carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering for their abilities to rapidly bring down global temperature in a short timeframe. And he writes, it is impossible to compare the techniques without more research into geoengineering and that Specifically, the process of adding aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight known as solar radiation management needs more research and more funding and that geoengineering has a much more rapid timescale to bringing down the temperature in the atmosphere versus DDR. It’s not a straightforward issue and there are reasons why geoengineering may not be as impactful or as popular as you might think at the first glance.
And so Holly, I’m going to start with you because I know you have pretty strong opinions about geoengineering. We’ve talked on the show after the show a few times. And so first off, maybe you could compare for us carbon dioxide removal and solar radiation management And your thoughts on which of the two are more effective in your mind and cooling the planet.
Holly Jean Buck: So the first thing we need to understand is that we would not want to do solar geoengineering if we weren’t going to be serious about carbon removal, because then we would be stuck doing solar geoengineering indefinitely without any way out. I mean, so the ideal use case for solar geoengineering would be to buy time to scale up carbon removal. So when people think about These two approaches, carbon removal is considered slower to act. Solar geoengineering is something that could be used quickly. So, I mean, the ideal use case, as David Keith writes about in this op-ed, is to use them both.
And the kind of strange thing about this op-ed is it positions carbon removal a Kind of distraction from solar geoengineering that, you know, we’re going to get so entranced with carbon removal that we won’t pursue the research on solar geoengineering and then we’ll be in a jam, you know, in a decade or two. I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that, but that’s the point of view of this particular op-ed.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And so how do you feel about his argument and maybe Chris, I’ll turn this over to you a little bit to Holly’s point that somehow carbon dioxide removal is Not allowing us to focus on solar geoengineering. But on the other hand, there is some evidence because there’s no funding really for solar geoengineering from the government, even though the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has recommended looking into it. So how do you think you kickstart that or should we be kickstarting that kind of effort?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, I think that it does make sense to kind of have basic scientific research on that. If anything, to know if it does have any negative kind of health consequences and environmental consequences. I don’t think that, again, it’s not an either or approach, I would say. There’s already kind of a lot of economic and market interest in carbon removal in a kind of traditional technological sense. And so I don’t think that just because you would fund research into solar geoengineering that all of a sudden that would entirely go away with the interest that we’re seeing in carbon dioxide removal.
So I do think they could be complimentary. And as Holly said, one could be kind of the short term solution and carbon dioxide removal could be kind of more of a longer term solution.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So. For either one of you, why don’t you think it’s getting the same sort of funding and interest from the Biden administration that other types like more traditional carbon dioxide removal has gotten recently?
Chris Barnard: I think part of the problem is when you think about even just kind the word solar geoengineering, I guess it’s two words. It just seems so out there. It seems like kind of like Star Trek fantasy, something that we would never be able to do ourselves, like the idea that we can Kind of manipulate the temperature of the earth using technology and chemicals and things like that just seems so far fetched and out there that I’m sure they’re trying to focus more on things that make more direct sense to people.
So I guess that would be like my direct answer to that, but I’m not sure that’s really a good answer.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Kali, what do you think?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I mean, there’s been an effort to cancel solar geoengineering. It’s politically toxic. However, I think that’s really short-sighted because it has the potential to possibly help a lot of people. So, I mean, we don’t know until we do the research, right? And the research program that the National Academies recommended is actually pretty modest in the scale of scientific research. So they recommended 100 to 200 million over five years. And a lot of that just goes to personnel, really. So I think that would be a really excellent first step to better understand what it can and can’t do.
Chris Barnard: I’ll also quickly offer kind of maybe somewhat somewhat more of a cynical perspective on why it’s not necessarily being pursued by politicians is because it is just basically scientific research and it is a long term thing. And like right now, Biden’s big thing is passing reconciliation and infrastructure before COP. It’s kind of in politics, you tend to think more in the short term. Right. And what is the direct climate benefit to Biden or anyone in the administration right now to pursue kind of basically Research that wouldn’t reduce emissions immediately, right?
Whereas if they pass an infrastructure bill or pass reconciliation, they can say, we’re immediately reducing emissions, we’re putting money into this, we’re building new roads and bridges, et cetera, et cetera. And there’s a tangible wins rather than who kind of really cares about just a hundred million for scientific research.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Right. No, I actually think that’s a pretty reasonable analysis because we do live in an immediate sort of culture and atmosphere. But I’m also curious whether you think either that this whole idea of putting gases into the earth after what we’ve done with other types of, you know, greenhouse gas emissions, obviously, might also just feel very similar to nuclear. It’s just a little bit icky, if you will. Like people just don’t feel comfortable with it because it is what we’re trying to prevent in a weird way. You know what I’m saying?
So curious if you guys think that might be also driving some of this apathy around it.
Holly Jean Buck: Definitely. I mean, people, you know, they know that sulfur causes acid rain. We have sulfur that we’re making important efforts to clean up from the troposphere where we breathe. So why would we want to intentionally introduce it into the stratosphere? I mean, that’s a reasonable question. The thing is that If it’s in the stratosphere, then those particles are up there for a year or so. So you don’t need to introduce as much of them as we have currently, but it’s basically the concept is, you know, an intentional layer of pollution up high.
Yeah. It’s not very likable, but nothing about our situation. Like we don’t have a perfect way out at this point.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. I mean, It is kind of weird, you know, when there’s wildfire smoke out, it is much cooler, even though there’s smoke in the, you know, and to me, it sounds like the same thing. Like there’s this thing up there preventing the sunlight and it just doesn’t feel good. It feels, it feels scary, honestly, even though I know there’s a lot, probably a lot of value in doing the research. My irrational mind doesn’t like to think about it like that. Something else you’ve talked about, Holly, is social technical systems and How far we are from the social technical systems that would be necessary to deploy carbon dioxide removal and geoengineering effectively.
I mean, what kind of a system, what might a system look like to you?
Holly Jean Buck: So I was on a TV broadcast, a Canadian show with David Keith. Marcus from XPRIZE talking about his op-ed. And so I went off on this kind of rant about socio-technical systems, which probably sounded pretty academic. But the basic concept here is that it’s not about the tech. It’s about this whole system that the tech is a part of. So if you can think about like sanitation and water and sewage, that’s a socio-technical system. You can think about the electric grid. The magic thing there, it’s not just like inventing the light bulb, it’s all the infrastructure and the institutions that regulate it and the knowledge and the expertise that goes into it and the people on all these different scales, the users that engage with it.
So if you think about carbon removal, not as here’s my direct air capture machine or whatever, you think about the whole system, you’re thinking about The infrastructure, the energy, the water, who’s profiting from it, the regulation, do people trust the monitoring of injection wells, like the whole package, right? And so I think we are pretty far from a mature sociotechnical system around either carbon removal or solar geoengineering, which is much farther away. I mean, solar geoengineering, as I might’ve said, is just kind of the An idea at this point. It might sound real if we hear a lot about it in the media, but it’s just like a thing in models.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, it’s kind of ironic, right? Because you also made the point a little bit earlier. It’s the thing we kind of need to do first in a way before we, as we scale up carbon dioxide removal, but really solar geoengineering is not even, is nowhere near ready to be deployed. So it’s just more of a twinkle in your eye than really a mechanism for helping with The climate crisis. Chris, yeah, what’s up?
Chris Barnard: I’ll just quickly add that beyond those concerns, there’s also just the political aspect of it, which might prove difficult. I mean, as much as climate change is in a sense, quite an abstract problem, right? And it’s a problem that requires cooperation from the entire world. This has a similar kind of international dimension, simply because if you’re talking about Pumping chemicals into the stratosphere that we all share, how would that be governed? Like, would that be kind of from the UN? Like, who would, like, what would you agree on? Like, would a panel of scientists do that?
Or would countries do that? Or what if the country decided that the others aren’t going fast enough and did it themselves? And for some reason, there were negative environmental health impacts because of this. How, like, would other countries react to it? It’s just like, there’s a lot of political questions around it that I think Are almost more difficult and thorny than the technological problem there. So I think that’s just something to consider as well.
Radhika Moolgavkar: It’s a little akin to the issue of Ocean CDR as well, right? Because you have this idea of who owns the middle of the ocean and how do you govern that? And I think there are similar problems that have yet to be addressed in any meaningful way. The other question I have for you, Chris, actually, is just generally speaking, you know, how... How is this being accepted within more of the conservative circles? Have you heard anything about it? Is it even on the radar in conversations you have?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, I’ve not heard a single conservative or Republican politician talk about this as a potential solution. So I know like people on kind of the progressive side of the aisle tend to go against carbon capture as like Perpetuating the fossil fuel industry and the right just likes it because it allows them to keep doing the same old same old. But I’ve never heard anyone on the right really talk about this kind of thing of geoengineering. And that’s probably just because it is so out there, as I was saying earlier, for most people, they have no clue what it really means and what it is.
So yeah, I’ve not heard anyone talk about it. And really the only ones like One organization called the Breakthrough Institute. They’re actually based in California. They’re kind of like talk about eco-modernism and their whole focus is on technological solutions. So they’d be the kind of people to talk about this, but I’ve not heard anything about it from the right.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Holly, yeah, what are you thinking?
Holly Jean Buck: Well, as Chris may be too young to remember some of this, but I got into this topic because I went to a meeting in 2009 held by the American Enterprise Institute on geoengineering. And so back in the day, like Newt Gingrich was talking about it, there was some conservative interest. And then I guess that kind of just faded out. Interesting.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, definitely before my time.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Oh, Chris, you just age us so much. So I think, Holly, I think one of the other pretty strong arguments made by folks particularly on the left is that geoengineering would have a disproportionate impact on the global south and not always in a positive manner, right? Because it’s a gigantic experiment that you can’t actually really do in a controlled environment. So it could have a disproportionate impact on People in greater poverty and in hotter climates. On the other hand, David Keith makes the exact opposite argument saying that, no, it is going to benefit them more because they’re obviously in the hotter climates and therefore we cool more quickly and it’s better for them.
So I’m wondering if either of those arguments resonate with you and if so, why?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, this is an interesting area of research. Modeling studies find different things. I think the answer is that we don’t know Yeah, totally about what the impacts would be in the global south. We do know that climate change has disproportionate impacts both on the global south and in vulnerable communities in the global north. So we’re comparing something we know versus something we’re not sure about yet because we haven’t done the research.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, and how, and the other question I think is fundamentally how do you do the research as Chris pointed out when The stratosphere is worldwide. I mean, you can’t control it in a certain subset or a certain geography before you unleash it, it seems.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I mean, I think that there’s a role for more modeling. There’s also a role for smaller scale process experiments that help you understand things like the chemistry of the stratosphere, where you’re not necessarily looking at the whole global climate impact, but you’re looking at, you know, What does the chemistry do if you put this substance at this level? And that’s really hard to know without doing an open air experiment because it’s hard to simulate the stratosphere inside a laboratory. Yeah.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And as we all know, with our just daily weather forecasts, we know how crazy the atmosphere can be. It’s just sort of an instinctive thing. So you can imagine messing up, messing around even higher, it would be even harder to figure out and model. But I’m going to turn now to our other topic for the day. Chris mentioned California, and we’re going to talk about California like we have more recently because they just passed a new law, which is Senate Bill 596 that mandates the concrete industry become net zero by 2045.
And we think that this is the first time that any US state has required an industry to eliminate its net greenhouse gas emissions. But it’s a pretty important industry in terms of the amount of emissions that it produces. It’s the second largest emitter of any industry in California. So obviously going net zero there would have a potentially gigantic impact. And it also produces a lot of local air pollution. So I guess, Chris, I’m curious from your perspective as a small government conservative, one, how do you feel about a state taking the lead on this?
What’s your perspective on this sort of stick approach versus maybe subsidies or some sort of carrot approach to getting an industry to net zero?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, as you can imagine, Instinctively kind of skeptical of kind of sweeping mandates like this, just because I generally take the approach that just because you mandate something doesn’t mean that it will be achieved or that it will be achieved efficiently or effectively. And so, I mean, it is kind of considered one of those hard to abate emissions industries. And so I do think that general government involvement, be it steak or carrots, it kind of makes sense. I guess I’m a little worried about Kind of how this would work in practice, because obviously this would push up costs for the cement and concrete industry in California.
And so what would stop them from just importing cement or concrete from other states or around the world? And so would you need a kind of cement border adjustment fee or something like that? And how would that work? And how much would it impact prices for average people in California? And whatnot. So, I mean, I understand the sentiment behind wanting to reduce emissions there, because as you said, it is a kind of a huge contributor to CO2 emissions. But I guess I’m skeptical of how it would work in practice and how it would impact just kind of everyday families in California.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. So just sticking on this a little bit, what if... One other, you know, one other argument or policy that’s been put forth is to use the government’s procurement might to sort of drive down carbon emissions in things like built materials by sort of mandating that they purchase materials, green materials, if you will. Do you think that’s a better strategy, Chris, than something like this?
Chris Barnard: I mean, I think that’s a lot more justifiable just because I think the government should put its money where its mouth is. And I think that in California, for example, 40% of concrete is directly purchased by the government for roads and bridges and things like that. And that’s pretty huge. And so I think the government could provide an incentive to the market by saying, hey, Compete for the most efficient kind of lower emission concrete and cement and will kind of award a contract to the best project there, I think would probably be a better approach and actually provide a huge boost to the market broadly.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And Holly, you know, touching on another point that Chris made that I think is pretty valid is it does potentially increase the cost of building. It likely will because these are novel technologies that aren’t fully developed. And what do you think of that potential impact on, again, the most vulnerable in California, which already has a huge affordable housing crisis, and then you add the cost of cement going up and, you know, how do you balance all that?
Holly Jean Buck: That’s a great question. And I would like to see more engagement around that. I also think that People might not adopt low carbon cement as quickly as we would like because just because of standards need to be changed, people want to use products they’re familiar with in like things like bridges, right? And I also think that, you know, California needs to get moving with carbon capture and storage if they want this to work. So there are a lot of pieces that need to join in this effort. I think it’s interesting though.
I think that Targeting specific sectors is interesting and necessary and it might spur innovation.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Can you envision a future where cities are like a carbon sink or at least at the very least like net zero in the next, I mean we’re talking about in the next 25 years basically is what California is trying to do.
Holly Jean Buck: Well, I just think that, I mean, cement is like one of the largest industries producing emissions, but you can only productively use so much CO2 compared to the vast volumes we’re spewing up there. So I think there’s a lot that can be done with things like cement or wood, you know, and we should be doing that biochar in cities, et cetera. But the volumes that need to be dealt with are way beyond what cities can manage.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And so Chris, any other policies that you would recommend or want to see incentive to incentivize the deployment and kind of at what level of government do you think is the right place to put such incentives if the state is maybe too high or the federal government is too high of a level?
Chris Barnard: I mean, I’ll start by kind of mentioning some of the kind of regulatory hurdles that exist around this. So I was reading into how There’s actually a lot of prescriptive kind of cement content requirements that exist. And this is super niche, but basically there’s like an authority out there somewhere saying what exactly has to go into cement and how that works. And the problem with these kind of centralized bureaucratic systems is that they tend to be slow to react to new innovations. And so I think moving towards a more performance-based content strategy would be a lot better where it has to reach a certain level of performance and safety to be kind of unique.
Allowed for public use, but for the rest, companies can innovate with the best Most efficient and most environmentally friendly ways of creating cement. So I think that’s like one very basic regulatory tweak that we should make. Beyond that, I think generally kind of investment in R&D in ways that we could kind of scale this, especially carbon capture and storage in cement, like investing in R&D would probably be a good idea there. And then there’s also just some like general regulatory stuff around carbon capture and storage that would need to be addressed.
For example, CO2 is still classified as a waste, whereas in this case, it would be a net benefit. And so if there’s all kinds of different permitting requirements and whatnot that would have to be addressed around that, which I think would need to be overcome in order to make this as economically attractive as possible.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I totally agree with everything you said. And having, in a past life, kind of interacted with standards bodies, which is, I think, what you’re kind of alluding to in terms of that centralized bureaucracy They do exist for a good reason in many ways, because you want to standardize things to make sure they’re safe, right? And I think that’s what Holly was also alluding to in terms of building bridges and skyscrapers and all these things that have an element of engineering risk with a new type of cement would seem to, you know, that’s a harder risk benefit analysis than maybe other types of carbon dioxide removal would have.
But on the other hand, We’ve got to start implementing them somewhere. So I tend to be a proponent of having the government, like you said, change their permitting requirements and also do some of these incentives around their procurement because the federal government and the state and local governments purchase a lot of cement and they could really drive a lot of change that way, I think, in maybe in a safer manner than starting in bridges, but starting in like sidewalks or something like that, you know, which Won’t cause a lot of death if they crack, but can be a good testing ground for a lot of these things.
The irony is that during the same session, California failed to pass a law that would have codified strong emission targets across the whole economy, but they told the carbon industry, concrete industry to decarbonize. So I’d love both of your opinions on like why that happened and why they chose a single industry versus like a more broad emission based target. I guess I’ll start with you, Holly, since I let Chris go first the last time, I think.
Holly Jean Buck: I mean, one thing about picking a specific industry and one that may not have too many players compared to some other industries, it’s just easier to work with a smaller number of people.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s it. They could get compromised with like fewer people and maybe fewer politicians are as interested, huh? They don’t have as many.
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah. But also you just get more rewards for your effort, I think, because this really is a majorly polluting industry. So I would have started with industrial decarbonization too. Chris, what about you? What do you think?
Chris Barnard: I mean, beyond like what Holly said, which I think is correct, I also think that there’s There’s like a direct lobby group tied to this because it’s not just broad climate change and emissions reductions. There’s obviously a cement and concrete industry that’s tied to this. And from what I could tell, they’re actually quite supportive of this for several reasons I can imagine, like obviously typically The companies that are able to lobby the government tend to be the bigger ones. And so I can imagine that they see more potential for innovation in their businesses than the smaller players.
And so that gives them a comparative advantage in the economy when it comes to that. But also, if they’re also actively lobbying to have some kind of carbon border adjustment specifically for this industry, Compared to other states, but also internationally, which would put Californian cement and concrete producers at a huge advantage compared to producers in the rest of the world because they have kind of a leg up and they’ve been able to like build up this need to have cleaner techniques and all that kind of stuff. So I think they’re understanding the direction that this is going regardless and that they need to get with the times and they’re probably seeing kind of the best opportunity to do this and get behind it and rally behind it than trying to buck the system.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And Chris, do you think this is scalable? Do you think that this would work in other states or at the federal government? I mean, at the federal government level, probably less likely. But do you see states, particularly conservative states, maybe not taking on this exact mechanism, but some other mechanism that would encourage the built material world to go emission free?
Chris Barnard: I doubt it. I mean, it’s a similar kind of thing over like would they have electric vehicle mandates and whatnot. I think the answer would probably be the same, that they’re unwilling to make that and there’s just not the political will amongst the voters to make that happen either. So I think it would probably be a matter of supporting innovation more, especially at a federal level, investment in R&D and things like that, and then hope that trickles down to these states where they can kind of latch onto the innovation direction without having to kind of pursue these heavy handed mandates.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Chris, that’s your job, right? To convince all these states that they want to do this. Holly, you have something you want to add?
Holly Jean Buck: Yeah, I just think with the failure to make the net zero by 2045 into law, I mean, it was an executive order, but, you know, it shows what happens if you leave behind labor. I mean, they had opposition from labor and oil industry groups, but also, you know, They need to do more work to protect jobs in communities.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. And I’ve got to say, I would love to dive into labor a little bit more at some point. We don’t have time today, but they’re such a quandary in my head. They consistently seem to oppose these environmental bills because I understand why. Obviously, they’re worried about their workers. But on the other hand, their workers are being exposed to these things, and they should be wanting to make their industries better And figure out ways to keep the workers trained in these new industries. Like concrete seems like pretty easy to do, and maybe that’s why it passed, right?
Because the same folks could work in concrete, whether it’s got carbon dioxide capture or not. And so maybe that makes it an easier pill to swallow than other parts of the built material in net zero emission universe. And with that uplifting thought, I’m going to turn it to Chris to maybe give us some good news to go out on the week besides his two absolutely adorable kitties that I already mentioned early on. So Chris, what’s going on?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, well, for those of you that have been loyal listeners, you know that I’m a big fan of nuclear and apparently Japan is going to start restarting its nuclear plants because they are realizing that there’s really No real path to tackling climate change without including nuclear in the mix. So they’re going to be restarting those plants and kind of developing some new energy policies around that, which I think is really exciting.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s kind of amazing, Chris. How did they get over the whole fear after Fukushima? How were they able to pivot like that?
Chris Barnard: I mean, when they announced it, they talked about having rigorous safety standards. And so I presume they’re just paying lip service to High security around these plans that, yeah, I mean, maybe they’re just so interested in tackling climate change.
Holly Jean Buck: Maybe it’s the natural gas prices that are through the roof right now.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I love that Holly’s the business pragmatist here and Chris is the more of the idealist. What a role reversal. Well, with that, which I actually agree, Chris, is great news because I’m I have become much more of a fan of nuclear in the last few years as I’ve learned more. I’m glad to see a country like Japan being able to bring it back online. I will say goodbye to you both and thank you for your time and look forward to chatting with you again soon. This was a really fun episode, so thank you both.
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 an Apple podcast, 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 revolution.
