Nori's Director of Corporate Development Alexsandra Guerra, and AirMiners and Negative's Tito Jankowski, join the show to talk about Shopify's big announcement of the companies included in their new Sustainability Fund. It features two separate portfolios: Frontier & Evergreen, with the former focusing more on industrial tech, and the latter on biological/ecological sequestration. We dig into nuance around the permanence discussion, a succession theory for carbon removal, and celebrate so many cool companies trying to scale carbon removal. Congrats to all of them, and to Shopify!
Shopify's announcement: "Fighting for the Future: Shopify Invests $5M in Breakthrough Sustainability Technologies"
Fast Company article about Running Tide
Amazon Climate Pledge's first companies announced
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the lead strategist at the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today, I have with me a colleague from Nori, Alexsandra Guerra. Hello, Alexsandra.
Alexsandra Guerra: Hello, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Hey. Alexsandra is the director of corporate development there, and also Tito Jankowski of Negative and Airminers. Hey, Tito.
Tito Jankowski: Heyo. What’s up, Alexsandra and Ross?
Unknown speaker: Hey.
Ross Kenyon: Thanks for being here. Well, we wanted to come on to talk about Shopify’s big announcement, which Nori is involved in, but so are a number of our friends, fellow travelers and others. So maybe Alexsandra, it would be good to start with an overview of what they’re doing and their two portfolios.
Alexsandra Guerra: Sure. So thank you, Ross. Shopify, a year ago, announced, I think it was exactly a year ago, in September of last year, announced that they were going to invest $5 million in breakthrough sustainability technologies, especially focused on carbon removal. And they spent the year looking at all the different options for carbon removal. And they Have finally done it and announced it a few days ago. So they invested about 74% of their money in this fund into what they call a frontier portfolio and then the rest in an evergreen portfolio. So the frontier being like any groundbreaking technologies that will permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere.
And then the evergreen portfolio would include, you know, more nature-based like temporary or, I don’t know if temporary is the right word, but less permanent carbon removal, such as reforestation or regenerative agriculture, which of course Nori does, regenerative agriculture.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, this partition I find maybe I would want to challenge it a tiny bit, although it’s sort of hard to, because forestry’s had a tough week or two. I think that’s been revealed as not nearly the safe bet as people thought of just plant a bunch of trees and that’s like the safe, uncontroversial carbon removal approach. But then also some of these frontier techs, it’s unclear to what degree they do stay underground or do mineralize and how all that works is still to be, there’s still a lot of science being done on that.
I can see why they framed it this way, but I think the story is like a tiny bit more complicated, but whatever, it’s kind of a short document.
Alexsandra Guerra: Stripe had also a year ago, just a couple of weeks before Shopify announced their fund, had said, we’re going to spend a million dollars on carbon removal products. And they were very much looking to invest in, you know, a broad approach, very similar to Shopify. That was their intention. And then they just decided, no, we see a huge need. And it made sense, again, a huge need to invest in more permanent carbon removal solutions. And they’re not cost competitive. So let’s just like go all in and supporting this or the development of this industry.
But there’s still so much like to be learned. Yeah. We still don’t know how things will scale or cost. Yeah, Shopify did a really cool job, which is that they looked at a bunch of these, I mean, young, cool startups that are doing their best to solve these issues and need help and support to prove that there’s an actual business behind providing carbon removal services to the world. So I’m grateful for that, at least.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, me too. I’m happy they’re getting attention and funding. I just... Saying permanent in such a definitive way, I think a lot of that remains to be seen. I don’t know if you agree with this or not, Tito. I love all the things being funded, I think are important and should be supported. That framing makes me want to unpack it a little bit.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, totally. For what it’s worth, it’s very strong framing. If you go through their website where they break down the investments they made, they have a page for each one of the They have director capture, product, ocean, biomass, and then separate from their frontier portfolio, they have the evergreen portfolio. And I mean, the difference is every single one the frontier things is called permanent carbon removal. And then every one of the evergreen ones, it’s called temporary carbon removal. And they have a page for each one, which is admirable, right? They have like a description of, for example, like ocean carbon sequestration.
They have a whole cold page description of how it works and the companies that they supported and how much of their fund is going into it. But yeah, it’s definitely a segmentation.
Unknown speaker: Adam Finkelstein, I think it’s good. I think it nudges things and says like, okay, like, is this is this the way it’s gonna is this how we’re going to start looking at at forests and soil is temporary carbon removal and Adam Finkelstein, Yeah, these past couple weeks have been been tough for tough for the case for for forests. Adam Finkelstein, They also have. They also have carbon reduction stuff in there in their evergreen portfolio. Adam Finkelstein, Yeah, I think it’s Yeah, it’s interesting to see a company step into this and kind of make a statement about what they think is permanent and what they think is temporary.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, maybe just that choice of word too is a bit touchy for those working on the biological or ecological side of carbon removal because it certainly can be temporary, but the hope is that it actually is not. I don’t know. It depends on how far out you’re looking too. We’ve talked about this a bit too. Which of these technologies, if you think about forestry succession, which of these are the pioneer species that start us out? And which are the ones that long-term sequesters the most carbon dioxide? And you’ve ended up in some sort of like, I don’t want to speak out of turn, but some sort of synthetic biology engineered organism that we create that sequesters huge amounts of carbon dioxide.
It’s not here yet, but maybe some of these other technologies hold us until we can get to this holy grail of it. And depending on who you talk to, They’re different. And if you’re talking to someone involved in one of these companies, I feel like a lot of the times they’re like, oh, that’s what we do. We’re going to be like the long-term thing. I don’t know. I don’t know what you think about it.
Tito Jankowski: We’re the magic solution. Yeah, definitely. Certainly when I think about nature or technological solutions, which also that sort of language came up in this announcement too. To me, I just think that it’s some combination, which normally people think means like, oh, well, that’s a few natural solutions and a few technological solutions. What I really mean is like a few bioengineered solutions. Um, I just think that’s, you know, long-term that will, uh, that’s where, that’s where things are going.
Alexsandra Guerra: I think it’s kind of fun though, right? To see that, um, all of these companies started out like a couple years ago, like right before, like in anticipation and some of these, you know, uh, industrial director capture companies started way before, but in anticipation of There’s going to be a huge demand for carbon removal because we need it in order to address climate change. And so we’re all these startups or long been startups just like coming in and creating a market. And so we’re all different in different ways. We solve different problems for different types of customers who are looking to prioritize nature-based solutions or not.
But it feels like a really good time. And I’m glad that Shopify did this, which was investing on all the different types because there’s so much that’s still unknown about soil, about mineral carbon storage, about direct air capture, about how you would manage and keep verification of reforestation projects. So a little bit of competition makes it a little exciting and definitely keeps us honest and everybody kind of improving. So I think I prefer this to... Any other way that it could go where there was only a few key players and it’s a good sign for the planet that there’s like a broad approach and also broad support of these broad approaches.
Ross Kenyon: Yes, I really like the portfolio approach both here and with Stripe and with others. Amazon just had their climate pledge get announced or at least the first stage of it. Also taking a pretty strong portfolio approach. I like that. We don’t know which of these technologies is going to Play out in the best kind of way. Also soil, even for croplands, also quite a hard nut to crack. There’s a reason why we’ve been in development for, you know, some years trying to figure it out and make sure we get it right.
Cause it’s, you know, it’s not a simple problem or set of problems. So it isn’t like a soil is the silver bullet for in how Nori views this either. They all have this, like it’s part of the portfolio. That’s what’s important. Let’s zoom in. And let’s walk through these companies and maybe start with the Frontier portfolio. Tito, as the air miner’s lord. Oh my gosh. I don’t know how you identify.
Alexsandra Guerra: You just introduced him as lord.
Ross Kenyon: Lord, Tito. Air lord. Air bender. Yeah, okay, fine. You can be an air bender. Can you walk us through some of these companies, some of whom are alumni of various of our podcasts, but some of which are not?
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, that was one of the exciting things was seeing some new players come up in this. I was like, oh, what do they do? Yeah, so there’s some familiar faces, certainly from the, if you’re familiar with the Stripe program, there’s a couple of companies here that are participating in that as well. But yeah, kind of some of the people you expect, Carbon Engineering is here, Climeworks is here, Carbon Cure, who also just had a big announcement today about some funding, Amazon and Breakthrough Ventures. But there’s also Charm Industrial. They were on the Stripe list, but they’re a little bit less well known.
Puro. Earth, I don’t see them come up that much, but I met the founders last year at Verge, so they’re here. And there’s this new one that I’ve never heard of, Running Tide. They actually just had a feature in Fast Company kind of in conjunction with With this Shopify announcement. And so they are running tides working in Portland, Maine, and they are growing sea kelp. They’re also doing stuff with oysters and they’re using kelp as this mechanism to pull carbon dioxide out of the ocean and indirectly the air and then sink it to sequester it under the ocean.
So that’s an interesting one to see them come up. So I reached out to them to see if I can learn more about what they’re up to. But if you’re interested, there’s a Fast Company article by Adele Peters, who’s a great writer, always covering carbon removal technologies and stories. So you can check that out.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, she’s covered Nori before too, and a lot of different groups in this sector. I’ll do this a little bit tighter so people have little blurbs to hang on to. Yeah, Carbon Engineering, Climeworks, Are both direct air capture companies. Carbon Cure deals with concrete. Charm Industrial does biomass and then converts it into some type of hydrocarbon that goes back into oil wells, in my understanding, and they will be on the show at some point here. Puro. Orth, Antti V. Hivainen has been on the show. Antti, sorry if I messed up your last name, but hi, I’m waving at you virtually right now.
We haven’t spoken in more time than we really should. And then also, yeah, planetary hydrogen. I’ve seen their name before, but I’m not too familiar.
Tito Jankowski: Yeah, if the name Greg Rau means anything to you, he’s one of the founders behind that. So they’re working on creating kind of this scheme that it creates hydrogen at the same time as it sequesters carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere It’s changing its form in the ocean. So they’re very much like an up and coming one. There’s something in the Shopify press release that was like, you know, we’re investing in these portfolio or these frontier companies like carbon engineering and planetary hydrogen. And it’s cool to see like, okay, carbon engineering is super established in the direct air capture space.
And then planetary hydrogen is this up and coming one that I bet for a lot of people they’re hearing about for the first time on this podcast.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m sure that’s the case. Oh, and sorry, with Puro Earth, it’s mostly biochar, and they also use cool stuff with the built environment, though that built environment stuff doesn’t look like it’s funded in this particular purchase.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah, I just wanted to make a distinction here as we’re going through the list of companies. What’s so interesting is we’re all kind of doing something different. Some of them, some of the companies listed here, including Nori and Puro, Are marketplaces. So they actually don’t, you know, develop the projects. And then a lot of these are project developers. But it’s like the only sort, like maybe you can go directly to a project developer like Carbon Engineering that’s doing this work and pay them for this. Or you could go to a marketplace like Puro And I imagine that as this market of carbon removal continues to evolve and develop, you’ll start seeing some of these companies feed into marketplaces.
At least that is our hope at Nori. So we might be regenerative agriculture for now, but you could see more kelp stuff. That’s why we named it Nori too. So I bet Running Tide is a little jealous of our name. Just kidding.
Ross Kenyon: And domain. Yeah. They might be jealous, but there’s also one in every four sushi restaurants is called Nori.
Alexsandra Guerra: We definitely get requests asking for where people can buy Nori sushi wraps, and I’m like, wrong website.
Ross Kenyon: I haven’t seen that, but it does not surprise me one bit. Yeah, that’s certainly true. You have groups like Climeworks, which is offered subscriptions, which is really cool. I imagine there’s others who have taken that approach too, but I do think we will see more marketplace development. And yeah, good luck to everyone taking that approach or the more project development focus. Yeah, we need it all. Okay, how about we move on to Evergreen? And this is more Nori’s turf, at least for now. Which of you would like to run us through them?
Alexsandra Guerra: I’ll do it. So in the Evergreen portfolio, there are four companies. There’s yours truly, Nori, which were market plates for regenerative agricultural projects. Or now, as I said, we will expand. There’s also Soil Value Exchange that matches ranchers and farmers who practice soil carbon storage with companies. There is Indigo Ag that also works with farming practices. And then there is Pachama, which we’ve also had on our podcast. I think it was season one, episode 104. I like that number. And it’s also my favorite podcast episode. Diego’s great. And they work with, they use LIDAR and machine learning to help monitor and remote force carbon credits and reforestation and conservation projects.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think actually Indigo’s been on Carbon Removal Newsroom. Pachama’s been on Reversing Climate Change. Soil Value Exchange has not been, but probably should be at some point. I mean, any of these companies that hasn’t been certainly could be. They’re all our peers and we’re happy that they’re here. Yeah, that’s cool. Indigo is definitely more broad. So it’s very well capitalized Boston company focused on seeds, but also trying to create like a very nice walled garden in my understanding, or like a one-stop shop for farmers who want to have a lot of the services and agronomy sort of built into this sort of like nifty Almost like app platform.
That’s my understanding of it, at least. And then also Pachama just had their, they just got announced, yeah, Amazon’s Climate Pledge, which they’re one of the companies, so is Carbon Cure, by the way, at least off of this list. And that’s big news, too, that we’re not fully prepared to talk about on today’s episode. But does anyone want to take a stab at that?
Unknown speaker: Not yet.
Ross Kenyon: Too scared?
Unknown speaker: Yeah.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I need to like dig in and read more details. That happened not even long before we’re recording this. But yeah, big deal. And then Breakthrough Ventures, Bill Gates is Bill and Melinda’s investment arm. They’re doing stuff in this space too.
Tito Jankowski: So we’re talking about the Client Pledge, we’re talking about Stripe, we’re talking about Shopify. The pace of these announcements and investments is pretty fast. I think Stripe was seven months or something from announcing they were going to do it to rolling out the awardees. Shopify, it sounds like it was September last year. I’m blanking on when Amazon’s Client Pledge, but I think it was...
Alexsandra Guerra: Wasn’t it?
Tito Jankowski: Maybe it was a whole year ago.
Alexsandra Guerra: It was a year, yeah.
Tito Jankowski: So that kind of sets the pace for this stuff. And I’d love to see it continue to happen faster. It’s like announce and do it within six months. But obviously, doing this stuff for the first time in a year is really incredible. So it’s good to see all three of these programs really starting to launch. And that’s how many of these new programs are going to launch in the next year. Maybe we’ll see three more or six more or 10 more.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: So that’s a big part of what we do with both of our podcasts and trying to highlight the work of people who are in carbon removal now and also make people jealous who are not already in carbon removal. Get that brainpower surging in here because we certainly need a lot of it. And I hope that there’s more and more companies. This is like the most frequent lament that we have to do is we don’t want to be a carbon removal meetup and we know everyone and we have for five years.
Alexsandra Guerra: Yeah. The idea is that this becomes super old news that people, that organizations are making carbon removal commitments and sticking to them. Like it should be just how business goes. It should be business as usual. And that’s the goal.
Tito Jankowski: I like that. I think that the room that I see that Shopify and Stripe have created in their announcements is by going so detailed on this, they’re not just saying, okay, we bought, you know, carbon removal. Credits from carbon engineering, we bought carbon credits from planetary hydrogen. Each one of them, if you read through the description, says, you know, this is specifically the way it’s going to support in terms of impact, not necessarily in terms of, you know, what Shopify gets. So, for example, in Charm case, they said they’re able to bring their, this new method they’re working on, another 10% down the cost curve, right?
That’s cool. I think that kind of approach leaves a lot of room for this to continue to be newsworthy in a way. I think if it was just, oh, XYZ bought some carbon credits, there’s not much of a future there. For example, Stripe, they published all the applications. That was super cool to be able to go through GitHub and read everybody’s applications and see how it works. I’m looking forward to programs like this where they’re certainly buying a product, but they’re also really Creating more space and more room for these companies to grow and kind of sharing that story.
Ross Kenyon: One other partition I note here that’s interesting to me is software versus hardware or like digital versus physical reality. Because one of the lamentable things about the BC world, Silicon Valley is it’s all like software is eating the world. And hardware is neglected and we actually need quite a bit of work being done with like physical reality, taking carbon out of the atmosphere, et cetera. It isn’t just about apps, you know, nor is a software company. So I’m, I’m allowed to gripe about it and grouse I will, but that’s not the full story.
There’s, there’s a lot more that needs to be done and hardware doesn’t get its fair shake a lot of the time. Okay. Well, that’s fine. I think that’s a fair place to end it then the link to This announcement is in the show notes. Congrats to Shopify. Thanks for taking leadership on this. Very exciting. And congrats to all the companies and efforts here that are being shown off to the world as Shopify giving a big thumbs up too.
Tito Jankowski: Can I add one more thing?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah.
Tito Jankowski: And so I just found out this morning that we are going to be having a new Airminers event on September 30th about this Shopify announcement. And Stacy Cock from the Sustainability Fund at Shopify is going to join us. We’re also going to have some of the awardees come there. So it’s going to be very participatory. And Alexsandra is going to be the moderator. So come there and ask your questions, make your comments. You know, kind of read up on this. You can join at conference. airminers.org for more information. And if you’re already on the list, you’ll just, you’ll get an announcement about it, but that’s in the works.
Ross Kenyon: Link is in the show notes. And if you’re not already in the Air Miners group, why not? You’re listening to this podcast. This is your group of people to connect with. You clearly should. And click on the link in the show notes. And thanks for being here, Alexsandra and Tito.
Alexsandra Guerra: Thanks.
Ross Kenyon: That was great. Thanks. Yeah. And if you like the show, would you please write us a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes? Same thing, really, depending on how you use it. But it certainly helps a lot getting this content out to more people. We would all be grateful. And thanks so much for listening.
