This week's panelists are Ugbaad Kosar, Senior Policy Advisor at Carbon180; Tito Jankowski, cofounder of Negative, a startup making jewelry from captured carbon dioxide, and host of the AirMiners community; and Aldyen Donnelly, Director of Carbon Economics at the Nori carbon removal marketplace.
This week's stories are:
Rhodium Group's new report: "Capturing New Jobs and New Business: Growth Opportunities from Direct Air Capture Scale-Up" details how direct air capture might create jobs, be supported by policy, etc. Ugbaad wrote up a short summary of it here.
The Growing Climate Solutions Act had a full committee hearing, and we learn more about what happens moving forward.
The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis released a new report, "Solving the Climate Crisis: The Congressional Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a Healthy, Just, and Resilient America" that has implications for carbon removal.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon. I am the lead strategist at the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me three panelists, one of whom is a Nori colleague of mine, Aldyen Donnelly, the Director of Carbon Economics. Hey, Aldyen.
Aldyen Donnelly: Hi, glad to be here.
Ross Kenyon: Hi, welcome back. And Tito Jankowski, co-founder of Negative, which is a startup turning captured CO2 into jewelry. Tito, hello. Oh, and also host of the Air Miners community, in case that is something that you’re interested in. And Ugbaad Kosar, Senior Policy Advisor at Carbon 180.
Ugbaad Kosar: Hello, everyone.
Ross Kenyon: First time being on this new format. Happy to have you. And we picked a good one to have you on, given that so much of today’s show is going to be about news coming out of DC or DC adjacent. Rhodium Group released a new report about the various economic impacts of direct air capture policy and the industry growing. We hinted at this last week, but we did not cover it primarily because I thought I would have you on this week to really give us the scoop on what is going on with the Growing Climate Solutions Act.
And also another big thing that happened is that the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis just released a new report called Solving the Climate Crisis, the Congressional Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a Healthy, Just and Resilient America. Do reports need long subtitles? That is something that we will be digging into. What do you think? Is that required?
Ugbaad Kosar: I think so, especially with the acronyms that they’ve got going on in the Hill, it’s necessary.
Ross Kenyon: This is why we need a strong podcast lobbyist organization to prevent that sort of thing because it makes my job harder. But no, enough cheekiness. Why don’t we dive right into this Rhodium Group report? What is going on with that?
Ugbaad Kosar: Yes. So the Rhodium Group, they released another report on direct air capture for those who maybe missed it last year. They released a report that was talking about capturing leadership policies for the US to advance direct air capture technology, where they just identified specific policy mechanisms and levers that the federal government could pull to help scale up direct air capture. And in this report, they’ve deepened their dive into direct air capture by looking at potential employment and market opportunities that are associated with Total scale up of direct air capture by 2050.
So I personally was very surprised at a number of findings from this report. First off, taking a step back at direct air capture, you see that it really touches on a number of different sectors. You know, cement is involved, steel is involved, equipment manufacturing. And this is both, you know, in the jobs perspective and then also market opportunities. But what they found in the report is that on average, one megatonne DAC plant would be able to create upwards of 3000 jobs across the supply chain, which is pretty astounding to me at least.
A big portion of these jobs are actually found in the construction phase. So really designing and constructing the plants. And then about 200, 300 of those would be dedicated to plant operations. And so that would be folks that may be in the communities that this technology could potentially be deployed in. They would be able to have the opportunity to help with some of that operations and management of the plant. And then if you look at the full scale up by 2050, then we’re seeing about 300,000 new jobs. And again, that’s across construction, engineering, equipment, manufacturing.
John Larson, who was the lead author of The Poor, really emphasized the fact that a lot of these employment opportunities would be high wage and really just wanted to drive that point home in particular. And then also, if you’re looking at specific industries, you’ll see that employment surges are seen in steel. So they showed that by 2050, The current steel manufacturing jobs would be close to double, which I don’t know what your immediate thoughts are of that. But to me, that was that was pretty surprising. And then on the market opportunity side.
There’s going to be definitely a growing demand for the equipment. Currently, the equipment scene or the market is at about $64 billion USD a year. And with equipment being needed, such as like air contactors or industrial furnaces, turbines, that sort of thing, the market could be increased to $259 billion. So all that to say that in addition to a lot of the climate Commitments that Director of Capture can help us meet and with the IPCC report that’s out and the idea of the role of negative emissions technologies and the role that they would play in future climate scenarios.
I think it’s also important to take a step back and figure out, all right, aside from climate, what are the other benefits of some of these technologies? And I think that this jobs piece in particular is really important. A lot of times when we look at things like natural solutions like agriculture, forestry, it’s really clear to see what the non-climate benefits would be like, whether it’s looking at water quality or food, crop yields or biodiversity. But when you’re looking at technology and you’re trying to figure out, all right, what else can you get out of this technology?
It’s a little more unclear. So I think that’s a really important piece to remember and something that I found particularly important. But I will mention that even though, you know, Director of Capture is very promising and commercial ready and something that can really help us meet these goals, I think we still need to take a step back and understand some of the social impacts and analyze some of this technology, not just through efficiency lens, but also through a justice and an equity lens. So I hope that kind of captured what the report touched on.
Ross Kenyon: I think so. The big takeaway that I noticed and I saw people latching onto was the potential for so many jobs to be created in fields or related fields to DAC. So I think that was good. I think DAC has had a little bit of a hard time competing on that co-benefit side just because Doesn’t seemingly have very many of them, except for potentially, this isn’t even kind of a co-benefit perhaps, but permanence is the thing that people tend to stress or people like the science fiction elements of it, but it isn’t like soil health, which has so many advantages.
I don’t know, Tito or Aldyen, what do y’all think about this?
Tito Jankowski: I mean, just at a high level, I’d love to see any report that’s really focused on director capture in particular, I think is always exciting. And yeah, it was great to see this kind of And stepping into this future scenario where we’ve scaled up to a bunch of these one million tonne a year plants and thinking about, yeah, like what are the like because of that, what happens? And it turns out we get a lot more steel manufacturing jobs and industrial repair kind of jobs. I thought it was really, yeah, really interesting to read into it.
Aldyen Donnelly: I’m confused about my reaction. I guess you’re kind of you.
Ross Kenyon: That’s why I let you go last, Aldyen. You can confuse the story for us a little bit now. Must it up.
Aldyen Donnelly: First of all, I’m sure probably more enthusiastic about the direction I think the technology is evolving into as to maybe the current state of affairs. But when I look at the report, and maybe the problem is I haven’t read too deep into it and have missed some of the answers to my questions, but the numbers seem kind of Interesting or weird to me. So at one point it says they’re forecasting that direct air capture will be developed to draw down between seven tenths and 2. 2 billion tonnes of CO2 per year.
Now to put that in context, Currently, the 244 largest corporate emitters in the world, if we count their direct emissions and their customer emissions, so scope one and scope three, discharge a total of about just under 32 billion tonnes a year. So at the first look, it looks to me that they’re talking about direct air capture actually Addressing or drawing down the equivalent of less than 10% of the existing scope one and scope three emissions from the 244 largest corporate sources. And that seems small to me. I don’t know where they came up with the 2.
2 billion sort of top end of the range of the role of direct air capture. And it doesn’t even cover 100% of the direct emissions of those 240 large emitter corporations. So what’s in the background there? Are they assuming that almost all of that industry is shutting down and that’s why we only need 2. 2 billion? I don’t understand what the numbers assumptions and I’d be interested in learning more. And then coming from the complete opposite direction, So I’m saying that looks like a small number. I apply to sort of all new energy solutions and greenhouse gas reduction solutions, not just DAC.
When I look at the employment forecast, those are very, very big numbers. So for us to... Finance the DAC industry that has those large upfront capital and labor costs and then those large continuing labor costs, you are looking at if those employment numbers are taken as a given, you are looking at long-term continuing costs of supplying the DAC service that are very, very high relative to the actual market value of the assets We’re trying to preserve. So it looks to me like you’re saying we’re going to finance DAC even though the cost of financing DAC might be three to four times the cost of writing off all of the oil refineries in the world and replacing them with electricity storage and renewables at current costs of those solutions.
It doesn’t add from that side to me. And again, I don’t want to sound like I’m not a DAC supporter. I think I am. But the numbers in this particular report don’t add up to me. And it just might be that I’ve got more to learn. But the arithmetic isn’t obviously working for me at first glance.
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, I mean, I definitely hear a lot of your concerns. And I think it’s important to remember two key aspects. One is, at least from me, I don’t expect director capture to be a silver bullet or to be the one-step carbon removal solution. I think if anything, it’s complementary to a whole suite of different negative emissions technologies. And I think it’ll just play a role to help us reach those emissions goals, but by no means is it the technology to help us reach emissions goals. So I think that’s like an important...
And then secondly, in terms of like the finances and the numbers, I agree with you. I think as of right now, director capture is very expensive and it’s really dependent on federal support to not only bring the cost down for, you know, however many dollars per tonne it takes to capture CO2. And that will involve a lot of policy levers that need to be pulled today in order for it to become cost effective later down the road. Does that kind of address some of the concerns that you were mentioning?
Aldyen Donnelly: Well, I totally agree with what you just said. But if what we’re saying is there’s a huge new high wage labor pool we’re going to generate, but to do it, we need government subsidies because the fact that this is A high wage and large labor generating solution means it will never be a cost effective solution. We’ve got to come to terms with that chicken and egg situation. Just when it comes to looking at our history, including getting the SO2 reductions in the electricity sector under the acid rain program, in many of our successful precedents, in the end, it turned out to cost a lot less to reduce the emissions.
Then we had all thought it would cost before we started. And in almost every precedent, the reason was one major explanation is the following, which is when we costed the issue before we started to work on it, we pretty much asked ourselves and came up with pretty good estimates of what it would cost to control, reduce or offset emissions, given the assumption that we would be operating the high emitting plants to the end of their normal operating life. And when it came time for industry to actually control, they found writing off and shutting down those plants early and replacing them with new solutions to supply the services and products they continue to supply ended up being cheaper than continuing to operate the existing asset base and offsetting the emissions.
And I worry that The DAC business model is consistent with that old mistake of saying we’re assuming everybody’s going to continue to operate their existing plants through the end of their normal operating life and that demand for DAC will derive from that starting place when in fact shutting down the replants and replacing them with new sources of energy and building product might prove cheaper.
Ross Kenyon: Well, any last comments about this? Obviously, links are in the show notes in case you would like to read this for yourself. Ugbadi wrote a nice little piece for Carbon 180 summing it up. There was also a webinar y’all did with Rhodium about this report, which I imagine must be online. If it is, I’ll put a link to it. But is there anything else that you think is worth saying about this for now?
Ugbaad Kosar: No, I think, I think it’ll just be good for folks that are interested in learning a little bit more about the report and what are some of the thoughts from, you know, labor unions and folks from direct air capture plants themselves. I think it’s really important to check out the webinar and listen into the discussion because I found, I found it to be very, very enlightening. And I think it helps put a lot of this into context.
Ross Kenyon: Definitely me too. And also, Not a secret, but not not a secret is we have a Rhodium Group reversing climate change episode coming soon. So if you care about this, stay tuned. There will be more to discuss.
Tito Jankowski: All right.
Ross Kenyon: Well, this next topic, I’m going to lean on you again for this, the Growing Climate Solutions Act. It had a full committee hearing. What exactly that is and what happens now, I imagine is puzzling for many listeners. So what happened and where is it going next?
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, definitely. So just to reiterate, the Growing Climate Solutions Act is a bill that would create programs at the USDA to support emissions reductions and carbon sequestration in the agricultural and the forestry sectors. It’d be providing technical assistance and organizational infrastructure to help farmers, ranchers and foresters participate in a voluntary carbon market as they adopt practices to help them reduce emissions and sequester carbon in the soil. So There was a committee hearing, a full committee hearing last week on this bill. And I think it’s important to note first off that the fact that there was a full committee hearing to begin with is a pretty big deal, given how overwhelmed the Hill has been with so many other things that are going on right now.
So the fact that Senator Stabenow was able to have this committee hearing, I think is a signal to just how Big this bill is going to be. That’s completely just my opinion, though. But pretty much what happened was Senator Sabinow and Chairman Roberts were opening up the hearing with some sweeping support and statements of the importance of this bill, how it’s going to help give farmers long term security, really highlighting the importance of things like accurate data and carbon sequestration. And accounting, carbon sequestration in soils in particular. And then just really highlighting the important role that the USDA can play in all of this.
They also called on a number of witnesses. There was four in particular. And my takeaway from this hearing was there was support throughout the hearing from pretty much everyone that was sitting on there. Of course, there were questions and concerns that were raised. But given the fact that all four witnesses seem to really support this bill and the statements from a lot of the senators that were present were also very much in favor of the bill, I think is a signal to how important and how bipartisan this bill is. Just to highlight a couple of things, we had Brent Bible, who’s an Indiana corn and soybean farmer.
And also the Farm Advisor for the Environmental Defense Fund. He testified in support of the bill and he argued that, you know, we need Congress to step in and provide policies that incentivize further adoptions and really refer to the need for federal policy to help encourage, you know, widespread adoption of sustainable farming practices that can help lead to soil health and air quality and that sort of thing. There was Zippy Duvall, who’s the president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, also He praised the bill and the idea of creating the certification program that would allow the USDA to certify third party carbon credits.
And he argued that it would make it easier for farmers to participate in the larger carbon markets. We also, the president of the National Farmers Union, again, also supported the bill and argued that it would lend legitimacy, were his words, to carbon markets. And this would allow family farmers and ranchers to engage in this market and the market opportunities that are offered by or through carbon sequestration. And then he did advocate for further policies. So including things like carbon sequestration tax credit or some sort of like carbon bank at USDA to allow federal government to serve as yet another buyer of some of these offsets.
And then lastly, we have the president of Trutera, which is a division of Land O’Lakes. And he described the bill as an important step to developing these viable carbon markets that will advance the potential for agriculture and forestry sectors to reduce sequester GHDs while also providing new resources of revenue for farmers and ranchers. So just taking a step back, I think that it was a very positive hearing. And I think that there was Pretty much support on both sides of the aisle, both reflecting in the witnesses that were there and the comments and the questions that senators had.
And I think it’s important to notice that one, the House is going to be introducing a counterpart, and that’ll probably happen very likely. That will be led, I believe, by Representative Spanberger and Representative Bacon. And then also, Just, this is completely my take on this. I suspect that there will probably be a fast pathway into signing this into law. And I just think it really fits this niche of, you know, having bipartisan support to begin with, addressing farmers that, you know, many people care about and are trying to support during these times.
And just the conversation around this topic and the interest that we’re seeing and How charged folks on the Hill are about this, I think it has a really good chance of moving forward.
Ross Kenyon: I have thoughts. Aldyen, I know you have thoughts. Without going full Nori on this, I would love to hear your take.
Aldyen Donnelly: I try not to go full Nori. And last time we talked a bit about this, I said the following, and I mean it sincerely. If the bill, with its current words, no changes, is the only way to get it passed into law, then yes, go for it, thumbs up. I perceive, and I’m going to say I because I’m not sure that it’s right for me to attribute this view to my other NORI partners. I perceive some of the detailed outcomes that are outlined in the existing bill might not be... Completely informed.
I won’t say ill-informed. They’re ill-informed. But the good news is as I read the bill, it creates a window of a year or more for experts to really dive in, look at the market and perfect their concepts of what the services USDA would deliver. And I think that window is really, really important for there to be a little more examination. Of what’s really needed here. And maybe I’ll bother you with two examples. There seems to be a perception underlying the wording of the bill that there’s a shortage of qualified carbon offset verifiers in the marketplace right now.
And the reality is that the American National Standards Institute certifies offset credit verifiers to a very high standard. I’m of the view that every organization that has been certified by ANSI is very, very capable. And at this time, there are only 13 certified and good standing ANSI verifiers. And there are 23 major U. S. companies with large payrolls who have let their ANSI certification drop. And it’s not because they’re bad guys or anything like that. It’s because There hasn’t been sufficient demand for their services to bear the continuing costs of maintaining their certification.
So I’m not sure I see a shortage of qualified verifiers as an issue. There’s a lot about how verification might be done and how data standards might be set that would massively increase, reduce the cost of verification, which is a barrier to getting these markets rolling. So I think there is a huge opportunity for the USDA pursuant to this bill to do make contributions that would be highly valued but I’m not a hundred percent sure though that I agree with the prescriptions as to what’s needed in the bill. But the good news is I think the bill has embedded in a window to work this stuff through and get it right.
So that’s all really good news in general. And I don’t wanna sound like I’m dissing the bill in that regard The other little caution I would throw out there is it does, again, it does say in the bill that they might certify or approve protocols and carbon credit creation mechanisms. And certainly NORI is a competitor in that market. So that would make us, put us under the umbrella of that certification or approval process. And I’m okay with that. But the reality is if you take one class of projects and look at how Carbon credits are currently created, how the protocols operate in, say, four existing U.
S. offset markets, VERA, ACR, CAR, and CARB. The CARB last market being administered by the state of California. Those protocols differ in substantial ways for otherwise similar projects. So this is a proposal, however, unintentionally perhaps, That the USDA steps in and to complete that commitment that’s in the bill, they’d have to say, California, we don’t approve your approach because Vera’s approach is right. Vera, we don’t approve your approach over here because Carr’s approach is right. And California has already agreed not to agree with Vera’s approach or Carr’s approach. And does the USDA really want to say we’re the body that steps in and says which certification body of the existing bodies out there is right?
I’m not sure the USDA wants to go there. I think there’s a lot of, again, data standard guidance and work the USDA can do that is going to be really, really highly valued, but crossing the line into actually saying yes to this protocol and no to that protocol, given the prior existence of a lot of protocols and who the certification bodies are that are behind those protocols, I think that could be a real mess that the USDA does not need to step into.
Ross Kenyon: Very interesting. I haven’t heard that take just yet. I have an even more basic question that maybe you can help me with. For creating policy like this, why bother creating market mechanisms, especially voluntary ones? Why not do something more like reform policy so that crop insurance and various types of tax credits or other more conventional elements of policy Why not focus on those as a way to get people to move rather than creating something that might be a more more complex or confusing like markets can be?
Aldyen Donnelly: My reaction. Oh, sorry.
Unknown speaker: No, go ahead, please.
Aldyen Donnelly: My reaction to that is that’s a really good question. And that also leads me to just another thing that I did. I did comment on last time this topic came up came up. Which is historically, of course, all of our food and fiber producers directly or indirectly depend on government subsidies, indirect subsidies coming through crop insurance. Most food and fiber producers can’t survive without them, but would love to imagine a future in which they weren’t so dependent on government subsidies. So whenever it comes to these kinds of interventions and opportunities for USDA to be helpful, and I really think it’s important that the USDA steps in now and is helpful.
If the focus was starting with how do we spend the public resources that are available to us in such a way that we lever a change in how things happen out in marketplaces so that if and when All of a sudden, reasonably, Congress is focused on starting to reduce government debt. And we pull the government funding that we have when we had the funding in place levered a whole new market. So the market takes over when our money’s gone. There is too much of a history, and this is not just about USDA.
It’s about every ag department in every developed nation, country that I can think of. It’s too often the case that the initiative ends up being an initiative where if the funding for that initiative goes away, the market crashes. So we have to make sure that the spending is creating a market that can survive after the funding goes away. And there’s the list of opportunities to get things right with that being the first test. Our art is long, is good. So let’s get focused on that. How are we spending public dollars to create a market that takes over and survives when the public dollars aren’t there?
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, I definitely echo a lot of what Eldon said. And Ross, I don’t think that’s a very basic or simple question. I actually think that’s a very Complicated, multifaceted question. It’s the idea of how do we know which policy levers to pull? How do we know which policy mechanisms are actually going to work? Who is going to be interested in one piece versus the other? And the answer to that is, it sounds like it’s straightforward, but everything that you introduce, there are folks that are for it and there are folks that are against it.
And so what we end up having to do is try to navigate Which of these mechanisms are we going to be able to get the most support with? How are we going to be able to ultimately, in Carboni’s case at least, ultimately scale up carbon removal and help address climate change? But in the process, ensuring that we’re getting the champions that we need and figuring out what their priorities are versus how we think we’re best able to address it. So something like crop insurance, federal crop insurance. I mean, we have talked about, you know, making changes and adjustments to help farmers who are trying to implement, you know, soil health practices or trying to step outside of, you know, your traditional, conventional agricultural practices to more regenerative.
And it sounds like an easy fix. It sounds like something that’s straightforward, but it’s really not. And it takes a lot of conversations, a lot of explaining, a lot of Negotiating and sometimes no matter how hard you try or what information you bring forward, there are just folks that are not interested and that’s the reality of working on federal policy is maneuvering these different interests and these different ideas that folks have.
Ross Kenyon: So Tita, are you just glad to be in the jewelry business, consumer products?
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, really. For me, I go to, you know, how can people from the Airminers community get involved in this or individual people who are kind of in a way like looking at this from the outside saying like, wow, this is really interesting, powerful stuff. Does anybody have any suggestions for where people should get connected if they want to follow up on this?
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, I think you can try. That’s a good question. I guess it depends on Where you live, because, you know, constituents as individuals have a lot of power. And I think if one of your senators or when it gets introduced to the House, if one of your members are involved in one way or another, I think reaching out to them and expressing your interest or expressing why you think it’s important can really go a long way as an individual, I would say.
Tito Jankowski: Thanks.
Aldyen Donnelly: And I also I also want to go from my I hope not to overly negative sound back to the positive. The thing I love about this bill is it’s built in that, as far as I read it, it’s built in that window for an advisory committee and the principals to really spend some time on resources, on figuring out how to get the publicly funded solutions right. So while I’m a little bit negative about the suggested solutions that are written into the bill, that window of opportunity To consult widely and get it right is a huge asset in that bill.
So there’s going to be as much time to discuss and work through what right looks like after the bill is passed into law than there is between now and when the bill is passed into law. And that’s a huge, huge positive aspect of the bill that we think is really great.
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, and I think a lot of those findings could also potentially inform, you know, the Farm Bill that would be coming up in a few years and be able to, you know, inform some changes, make sure that the research that was done in that period of time can really help address the barriers that may not have been addressed in the last Farm Bill. So that’s also something else that could come out of it.
Aldyen Donnelly: Could I just add an anecdote? I think if you look back at the 2002 Farm Bill, It got a lot of stuff related to just what we’re talking about really, really right. But then a lot of the initiatives that were initially funded under the 2002 Farm Bill got defunded before they were completely delivered or while approved in the bill didn’t get funded at all, didn’t get appropriations at all. The reason I’m so cautious about this is I think you’ve seen really, really, really good legislation in the past, but getting it legislated didn’t mean getting it done.
So that’s the part we’re kind of focused on.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. And we’re going to move on to this final topic now. I should also say that or disclaim that we’re speaking individually here and not for NORI as an entity or anything quite like that. I’ll figure out exactly how to do that in the future. But OK, this final item, I’m going to ask you once again to introduce what is happening with the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah. So first off, who is the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis?
Ross Kenyon: A great place to start. Yes.
Ugbaad Kosar: So there’s a number of Democratic members that were grouped together to help Pen a report that would create a congressional action plan or a framework for a clean energy economy and a healthy, resilient and just America. So we’ve got about 10 or 12 representatives that were brought together to collect Um, submissions from stakeholders and come out with a whole host of recommendations on how we can reach net zero emissions by 2050. And when I say a whole host, I mean like 500 pages worth of information and recommendations and background. It had it all.
And I was really impressed by this document. Um, I think just taking a step back, it covered so much in, I was going to say in a short period, but it’s 500 pages, so not really. But it still covered everything that I think is really critical and important in addressing climate change. I think throughout it, it really weaved environmental justice concerns, but it also really They heavily relied on science. I mean, they use the IPCC 1. 5 report to help determine their emissions goals and to help guide them. The National Academies of Sciences to provide them some of the science and the background that they were then able to create some of those recommendations on.
And, you know, just to hone in on the carbon removal piece, they covered pretty much every aspect or every type or form of carbon capture that we work on. And that is not a common thing. I think usually There’s a focus on reducing emissions, which 100% is absolutely critical and important in addressing climate change. But carbon removal is a bit of an up and coming, or maybe it’s almost there type of area of research. And I think having it on full display on the report is a real testament to growing interest and support in it.
So it covered soils, forests, Direct air capture, carbon storage, even BEX, it touched on bioenergy carbon capture storage. Some really big key takeaways, it really pushed for a really big carbon removal federal RD&D program. And this came out of the NAS’s recommendation from their report in 2019. But really push for like a cross-sectoral multi-agency program. And I think that’s the really important piece. Typically, when we’re talking about carbon removal, we’re looking at something like the DOE, which houses a lot of those carbon capture programs and where a lot of that research and money comes from, or the USDA, when we’re talking about things like we were just talking about, like agriculture and forestry.
I think it’s important that this report really takes a whole of government approach to not only carbon removal, but to climate change. And I obviously I have not gone through all 500 pages because it came out yesterday. But some of my first thoughts is that I think, honestly, a job well done I do want to mention, though, that it’s just a report and not to play it down or anything because, you know, Carbon 180’s recommendations were spotted throughout the report, which was really exciting for us to see and really kind of gave us that boost that we wanted.
But at the same time, it’s just a first step. And I think we need to really make sure that we hold Congress accountable to not only take these recommendations into consideration, but then change them into legislation and bills and actually enact these recommendations.
Ross Kenyon: You saw a bunch of carbon 180, were they direct references or were you like, that looks familiar?
Ugbaad Kosar: It was both. I mean, at one point they actually referenced like one of our fact sheets and I saw that and I got excited because I did control F carbon 180 just to see what would come up. Why not? But not only that, but yeah, going through it, we kind of split it up throughout our team to figure out, you know, what are some of the key recommendations that are in here? And there was definitely direct references and direct links to recommendations that we put forward, especially like in the agriculture section.
A lot of the stuff that you’re going to see in our leading with soils report were shown throughout. And like, you know, the USDA programs that we’re really into, they were calling specifically for funding for them. So yeah. I thought it was a good note for us yesterday and we ended the day on a high note.
Ross Kenyon: That’s great. Did Tito or Aldyen, do you have any reactions to this?
Aldyen Donnelly: I’ll kick to Tito. I haven’t got far enough through the proposed measures to have an opinion that matters to anybody.
Tito Jankowski: I’m happy to chime in. I’m a kind of Apple F type person, so I look to see what terms come up. Direct Air Capture came up 17 times, so that’s pretty cool. Yeah, and it was great to hear Udbad’s summary of it. I think it’s everything from, at least from looking through it, from my perspective, there’s everything from a prize for Direct Air Capture type R&D at the exploratory level. As well as the nuanced level of modifying 45Q to, I think, remove the lower limit in terms of how much carbon dioxide you need to capture in order to qualify for 45Q.
I can’t remember if it was to lower the limit or just to remove it entirely, but I think in terms of thinking about smaller scale director capture, modular director capture, that’s the type of stuff that just really can open the door to new types of developments and new types of thinking.
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, it eliminated the plant threshold altogether, which is exciting. And then it extended the commence construction deadline and it extended the credit payout period. And then it just, yeah, like you said, it really took not only just a research, you know, investing in research and development, but then it took it all the way through and it really helped, you know, fund investments, incentives, you know, like the whole scope of carbon removal, which I thought was important.
Aldyen Donnelly: My question is, what are you detecting as level of enthusiasm or interest in the initiative?
Ugbaad Kosar: From other ENGOs or from the Hill?
Aldyen Donnelly: I’m thinking from the Hill.
Ugbaad Kosar: That’s too early to tell. I can’t say off the top of my head right now. I think I’ll be interested to tune in and see and definitely keep you guys posted on As folks are able to actually get through the report and create their own opinions, I can definitely relay that back to you. Thank you for that.
Ross Kenyon: The way that this works too, I always find myself baffled by it, but this report Non-binding, of course, but it’s just something that they might build future legislation around. It’s a way of informing their peers on the Hill. Is that what this is?
Ugbaad Kosar: That’s exactly right. Yeah, it’s just a it’s just a roadmap. It’s a congressional roadmap, and it’s a way to consolidate all of the bills that are out there right now and figure out how they complement with one another, how they could be implemented, identifying areas of improvement or gaps. And it’s really just a way to come up with ideas, but not necessarily it doesn’t direct Congress to do any of this. It just gives them the idea that this is what stakeholders are interested in and this is how we can help address the climate crisis.
Ross Kenyon: Got it. OK, thank you. Well, I think this is running a little bit long, so I think we should wrap it. I think that entire report probably deserves a beep or die episode all of its own. Maybe that will be something that we’ll have to do in the future. Your Twitter handles of all the people here are going to be in the show notes as well as the organizations such as Nori, Negative, Air Miners, Carbon 180. Anything burning any of you want to say before I sign us off?
Aldyen Donnelly: Happy July 4th. Be safe.
Ross Kenyon: This is technically Canada Day as we talked about earlier.
Tito Jankowski: Oh, I have one. The Air Meyers community is hosting a kind of matchmaking networking session coming up. So if you want to join that, it’s going to be live over Zoom. We’re going to match you with a bunch of random people for a short discussion to get to know people that you’ve heard of and to get to know people that are new. And so if you want to hear more about that, you can check out at conference. airmeyers.org. And that’s coming up in about two weeks.
Ross Kenyon: That sounds fun. Do you want to continue the tradition of plugging the Carbon 180 newsletter?
Ugbaad Kosar: Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve got a weekly newsletter that comes out. It’s called the Carbon Copy. Every week we put out articles that we’re reading or any of the big news across carbon removal. So if you’re interested, please go to our website, carbon180.org and subscribe and get in tune. We’ve always got really funny videos. BCC’s at the bottom. So if you’re ever interested in some funny Twitter stuff, it’s for you.
Ross Kenyon: It’s good. It informs a lot of what we cover on this show, actually. So it’s a great resource if you’re listening. I would definitely recommend signing up and also joining the Airminers community too. I should be there, Tito. Thanks for lining something like that up.
Unknown speaker: Yeah, looking forward to it.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. If you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, tell your friends. And thank you so much for listening.
