The Keeling Curve Prize just announced its twenty finalists across five categories for its second year run. Jacquelyn Francis, Director of the Board of the Keeling Curve Prize, joins the show to discuss the prize and the 2019 finalists in the Carbon Capture & Utilization category.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Jacquelyn Francis. She’s director of the board of the Keeling Curve Prize. Hi, Jackie. Thanks for being here with us.
Jacquelyn Francis: Hi, Ross. Thanks for having me.
Ross Kenyon: Of course. Well, we saw the Keeling Curve Prize and thought it was a really great thing to happen for the ecosystem. I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about what it is, what its name means for those who don’t know, and then we’ll dive into some of the finalists.
Jacquelyn Francis: Okay, great. The Keeling Curve Prize was named after an atmospheric scientist named Charles David Keeling. And he started doing some recordings of CO2 in the atmosphere back in 1958. And somehow he convinced someone to have him do some recordings up at the top of Mauna Loa in Hawaii. Where a station was developed that did ultra precise recordings for CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And his data set became known as the Keeling Curve Prize, which is that seesaw shaped graph that most people know that measures CO2 in the atmosphere.
And that is what we’ve named the Keeling Curve Prize after because it measures accurately the Great.
Ross Kenyon: And what is the prize and how is that going?
Jacquelyn Francis: The momentum behind the prize is incredible. We picked 10 winners in five different categories and they get $25,000 each. And we are in our second year of awarding the winners. We just a couple of weeks ago announced the 20 finalists and these finalists are in five different categories. Carbon capture and utilization is the one we’re talking about today. And then the others are transportation, energy access, climate finance, and social and cultural impacts.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s very exciting, very useful categories to have. It’s a nice partition between them. Yeah, we have some friends on this list. We know the folks at Opus 12 and Regen Network. We’re actually part of Regen Network’s consortium. Nori is a member of theirs. Bluefield and Wild Coast, Costa Salvaje, I imagine. We should talk about all of these. Could you introduce what they’re doing for carbon capture and utilization? And congratulations to all of them, by the way.
Jacquelyn Francis: Yeah, sure. Thanks. It’s a great list of finalists. We’re really proud of all the people that are on the list of finalists this year. But I’ll go through the CC&U category with you right now. Bluefield made it to the finalists last year as well. And they do methane detection. And they have these nanosatellites that are a more cost-effective way than the actual large satellites going up into space. And these nanosatellites are for detecting methane leakage everywhere on the planet, but specifically at the wellhead. And as some people will tell you, detecting CO2 in our atmosphere is like looking at heart failure and your cholesterol level.
And detecting methane is addressing the artery that you just cut in half that’s spewing blood everywhere. And we have to deal with the methane quite quickly because it’s... It will kill us first. So that’s the idea behind Bluefield and looking at methane in the atmosphere. As you know, Opus 12 is doing a lot on cost competitive CO2 fuels and making products out of the CO2 that’s been captured with direct air capture techniques. Wild Coast is so interesting because a lot of people don’t think of carbon capture and utilization as a Soil sequestration or a reforestation process, but it is.
And mangroves happen to be incredibly effective at sequestering CO2. So this group, Wild Coast, is off the coast of Mexico in the Baja Peninsula, and they’re doing reforestation techniques with mangroves to not only help the ecosystem, but also create a carbon sink. It’s very interesting stuff.
Ross Kenyon: And Regen Network. We haven’t had them on this show. They’ve been on our other show, Reversing Climate Change. But why don’t you give them a little introduction to what they’re doing?
Jacquelyn Francis: A little shout out because they’re using technology. They’re using software to track and monitor what I was just saying about how soil sequestration is becoming a really important piece of this puzzle because... There is so much lost in the ability for soil to actually sequester the carbon that it naturally holds. So Region Network is doing a lot on a software program on tracking and monitoring soil health and using this to go to governments and improve soil and agricultural processes all over the globe. It has huge potential.
Ross Kenyon: Well, excellent. Those are great companies to watch. We’ll definitely keep up with this. I like that there’s a bunch here that I wasn’t aware of, especially in the other categories too. Well worth checking out. I will put the link to the finalists in the show notes if you’re interested. You should definitely take a look. What’s the next step, Jackie? How is this going to play out?
Jacquelyn Francis: Well, right now the judges, if you go to the KeelingCurvePrize.org website and look at the judges, they’re the ones that have the power right now. So the folders of the finalists are in their hands and they’re going through the top 20 and deciding on their top 10. And as a public program of the Aspen Ideas Fest, we’ll be announcing the winners on June 28th at an event in Aspen, Colorado, that is open to the public event in Aspen. And then we’ll be announcing the winners. And those winners will be receiving the prize money and some visibility and our complete congratulations because of the excellence in the work that they’re doing.
Ross Kenyon: Very exciting. If you’re listening and you have a project or a company that’s working on carbon capture and utilization, there’s also a category in energy access, climate finance, social and cultural impacts, and then transportation. I get all those right, Jackie?
Jacquelyn Francis: You did get all those right. And I know it’s a really broad group, but one of the reasons that we made it so broad is because we really feel like there are solutions everywhere. And we want people all over the globe to not only feel like they’re a part of this, but to understand that we don’t have to be putting our heads in the sand. We have to wake up and look at all the solutions and start really implementing and... And getting behind the really innovative and low-tech ideas that are going on out there throughout the whole world.
It’s a really exciting time to be in this space.
Ross Kenyon: It sure is. It feels like it grows all the time. We were just talking before the show started that I have a hard time even keeping track of all the advances these days because it seems not a day goes by that some great article in a high-profile journal comes out or newspaper. Yeah. It’s nonstop. So if one of those categories describes you or you’re working on something that relates to climate change, you have a business that works on climate change, definitely apply next year. Keep your eyes peeled for further announcements.
When does it open again and you announce if any of the categories have changed or anything like that next year, Jackie?
Jacquelyn Francis: Well, our hope is the categories are going to stay the same next year, but we are going to have a meeting about that coming up right before we announce the winners. So I’ll let you know on that. But the next application period opens on December 1st of 2019, and it’s open for about two months. And we hope by that time we actually have some new announcements as to more awards that we might be offering or more ways that we can think about incentivizing and activating these solutions throughout the world.
Ross Kenyon: Terrific. Well, best of luck to Keeling Curve Prize in general and also to all these finalists. It’s an honor just to be nominated as the cliche goes. So great. Well, thanks so much for being here with us, Jackie. And could you tell us too, where might they keep up with the Keeling Curve Prize if they would like to?
Jacquelyn Francis: You can definitely get on our newsletter, which I encourage, but just go to our website, kcurveprize.org. And that’s where you can sign up for our newsletter. And you can also just keep an eye on what we’re doing. And before I leave Ross, I just want to congratulate everybody out there who’s working in this space and really continue to keep charging because we need it.
Ross Kenyon: Absolutely. I wish the same. We’re all on team reversing climate change. We have to move quickly. It’s not the time to be cloistered and black boxed. It’s the time to be working together and supporting each other’s efforts. So I’m grateful to see stuff like this happening. I think the spirit of it is totally on the mark. And thanks for all that you do to foster this ecosystem, Jackie.
Jacquelyn Francis: Yeah, thank you too, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, if you like the show, please rate and review it in iTunes, share it with your friends, subscribe to the podcast, check out Reversing Climate Change, which is our other long-form show, and thank you so much for joining us.
