In January, a team of researchers led by the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment released a report titled “The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal.”
The authors called it the first global assessment of the field and what gaps need to be closed to scale carbon removal.
The 101-page report covered how much CDR currently exists, the research landscape, existing policy support, and the gap between current plans and what will be needed to reach climate goals.
It contained some good news: CDR is scaling fast, and managed forests are doing a lot of drawdown already- and some bad: we’re not on track to have enough.
Today we’ll review this comprehensive snapshot with our science panel: Dr. Jane Zelikova and CRN producer Asa Kamer.
On This Episode
Asa Kamer
Radhika Moolgavkar
Resources
CarbonBrief article about the report- w/ charts
Bloomberg article on potential of voluntary carbon markets
Subscribe to Climate Workers Anonymous
My other show, Reversing Climate Change
Books referenced in the podcasts, at Bookshop
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal, from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Hello, everybody. Welcome to our February 1st Science Carbon Removal Newsroom. We will be talking about a very recent report that was led by the University of Oxford Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment called The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal. The authors call it the first global assessment of the field and talked about the gaps that needed to be closed to scale carbon removal. The report is 101 pages and it Covers what currently exists in CDR, the research landscape, existing policy support, and the gap between current plans and what will be needed to reach climate goals.
It contained both some good news. CDR is scaling fast and managed forests are doing a lot of brought down already, but also some bad because as is a recurring theme within the climate sustainability world, we’re not on track to have enough. So today, we’ll do an overview with our science panelist, Dr. Jane Zelikova. Thanks, Jane, for joining us. And our CRN producer, Asa Kamer.
Asa Kamer: Hi, Radhika. Hi, Jane. Good to be here.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, not just producer, but Asa is really kind of the, he does the initial rate of everything. So he’s very knowledgeable in the CDR space.
Radhika Moolgavkar: He really is. He doesn’t give himself nearly enough credit, Jane. I agree. So Jane, let’s just start off with you. The authors found that the scientific research into CDR is growing. It’s doubling every three to four years. So what did they point out as the hot CDR research topics right now?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, they... This is so interesting. I’ve been kind of curious because like if you’re in the space, it feels like there’s just a lot happening, but you never know if it’s because the echo chamber you’re in or if that’s real. So it was actually really interesting to see a quantitative analysis and see that indeed research and carbon dioxide removal is definitely growing. And even though it’s a really tiny portion of the overall researching climate, The fact that it’s doubling every two to three years is a lot. The really hot topics, at least in terms of what these researchers found, were in the topics of biochar, soil carbon sequestration, and a bit on kind of reforestation and forest CDR in general.
And then a smaller portion, but a growing portion focused on more engineered novel solutions that they refer to. As novel CDR in the report, and those include things like direct air capture, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, enhanced mineralization, ocean alkalization. So those are kind of the things that don’t have as much research going on, but that’s certainly those topics are also increasing.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Jane, as somebody who is in academia, curious if you had a sense of why certain areas maybe had more focus than others? Is it just timescale that the engineered earlier or, you know, what’s your thinking about that?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I think it’s a matter of what you’re building, sort of like where, you know, we stand on the shoulders of giants. It’s the body of knowledge that we’re building on top of. So things like biochar, soil carbon sequestration and afforestation or reforestation, They’re 80% of the CDR literature today, and that’s in part because we have a large body of literature on those topics already. You know, soil science isn’t new, studying forests isn’t new, and the sort of The fact that the natural sciences in general are kind of playing a really big role here is not surprising.
Natural scientists tend to be really interested in things like environmental change and climate. So the interests sort of align and we have a large body of scholarship that we’re building on top of. Whereas the more novel things like director, capture, et cetera, they’re pulling in disciplines like chemistry, like sort of novel engineering, et cetera, topics that may not have been Historically aligned with climate change, but are now becoming very well aligned. And there’s a lot of kind of first innovation and discovery that has to be made in those areas because they’re very new.
So it’s like the body of scholarship you’re building upon is just a lot shallower. So I think it’s an interesting kind of, it’s an interesting difference. 80% is a really big difference, 80 to 20%. But I think it is really promising to see that it’s growing, even those areas that are considered novel are certainly growing as well.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Asa, as a non-scientist, but steeped in the CDR culture and business and all of that, do you think what was reflected in the science is what you see in the everyday CDR industry and the world at large?
Asa Kamer: Yeah, I mean, like Jane said, it is a little hard at times to be in sort of a bubble reading certain news outlets or even certain online groups and trying to ascertain, you know, is this real? Like I see people talking about it at COP. I see, you know, billion dollar announcements, you know, the president of the United States talking about it. So it’s obvious that something is bubbling. But like Jane was saying, what we really want to see is the quantitative change. Findings about what’s being deployed, what’s actually happening on the ground, because it seems like it’s a field and this report sort of validates this where there’s a lot of interest.
There’s a lot of research. I think there was one graph that I saw that said that in AR6, there were 23,000 Pieces of scientific research, 23,000 papers, I guess, about carbon removal. And that’s a lot. I mean, obviously, a lot of those are about forestry, soil, things that would kind of be studying anyway, even if would be studied anyway, even if the phrase carbon removal never existed. So, yeah, I think this this report, my kind of takeaway was it kind of confirmed what I think we What a lot of people probably think who follow carbon removal, there’s a lot of positive developments happening, but there are big gaps still and time is short.
So maybe we all probably knew that before this report came out, but to have some Very knowledgeable people look at the data out there, evaluate the research, have that be the finding. I think, yeah, kind of confirms what I probably thought about carbon removal. So good to have that affirmation, I guess.
Jane Zelikova: Here, I will just say two things. The first is that feeling as an academic that you can never catch up on the literature. It feels very validating to me to see this because I’m like, okay, I can never catch up because literally I can’t read two to five times more per day. My time isn’t growing exponentially. So that’s like good personal validation. And the other thing that I have noticed, and this is more like in the climate change and soil carbon, soil science literature, is that the terminology of carbon dioxide removal is being applied to studies that we were doing before under a different sort of banner.
So part of this, I think, is also artificial inflation. Like we were already studying sort of the transformation of carbon molecules in the soil under the guise of just understanding fundamentally what’s happening. Understanding how different management affects soil function. And now we can do that under the banner of climate change. And there are lots of different reasons why folks might want to do that from sort of the personal wanting to like align your work with your personal values to sort of the funding, the fact that now there’s funding for climate change, all of a sudden gives us, you know, the ability to put climate change into our research in ways that we haven’t been able to before.
So I suspect some of this is artificially inflated.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So one of the interesting things that the authors found was that only 3% of CDR research is in the social sciences. I mean, I think intuitively it kind of makes sense because the hard sciences drive the tech. But as we’ve talked about a lot, you can’t implement CDR solutions without the communities that will be hosting these solutions, if you will, accepting them. So I’m curious, Jane, what do you make of this? Because I know how passionate you are about this subject. And how do you think This knowledge gap, one, affects the implementation of CDR approaches, and how do academics rectify that problem?
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. As a wannabe social scientist, this is the thing that I really think about a lot. And I went to a lecture last night by Catherine Wilkinson, who is one of the authors of the All We Can Save book and project and Drawdown Solutions as well. She kind of asked the audience this question, like when you think about climate change and you think about climate change solutions, what comes to mind first? And it was interesting because for me, in my mind, I saw people. And I wonder sort of based on the audience and your own personal kind of leanings, what are the things that you see?
I guess, what do you see, audience, when you think about climate change solutions? For me, it starts and ends with people. This is intricately a people problem. It’s, you know, the It’s fundamentally what we decide to do and how we do it. And so the fact that only 3% of the research is in the social sciences is a really huge alarm belt because we can’t do any of this without understanding the fundamental sort of dynamics of how people interact with each other, with their environment. We can’t sort of technology our way out of this problem.
And I think a lot of the people that are coming into this space are really excited about solutions, but also really have a techno...
Radhika Moolgavkar: Asa, I’m kind of curious. You live in California, which I think is a fairly climate sophisticated, if you will, state. What’s your usual interaction when people, when you mentioned carpet removal to like your friends and family, do they know what you’re talking about? Or is it kind of like, what is that?
Asa Kamer: Yes. No, they don’t know what I’m talking about. And maybe in the last couple of years, the phrase has kind of gotten out there a little bit and people have a bit of an understanding of it. And there’s also a big terminology issue in terms of is it carbon capture? Is it related to because we have a big Like longstanding political fight here in California over point source carbon capture at power plants and industrial facilities, because we have a lot of local environmental groups or environmental justice groups who have put up a lot of resistance to state, um, the cap and trade system we have here, which allows has allowed for some carbon capture, um, which is great to capture that carbon, but it, in the views of some of these groups as a lifeline to, uh, Facilities that cause other forms of pollution that are detrimental to themselves.
So because we have that longstanding fight and for other reasons, I think there’s a bit of skepticism. Obviously, we’re a liberal state. So a lot of the people and where I happen to live in the Bay Area, a lot of the people that I talk to fall more on that side of things. So there’s skepticism. Is this going to delay emissions reductions? But because like you said, it is a climate change. We like to think we’re doing a lot. We’ll see how it goes. People want solutions. And I think we also have a tech orientation.
And so there’s a lot of interest also in technological solutions. And we find that a lot of the carbon removal startups are located here in the Bay Area. So I would say mixed bag. Like may have been found in this report, public knowledge and public acceptance is maybe you could say shades of positive, but certainly not set in stone. And there’s a lot of... Most people don’t feel strongly one way or the other, and it’s possible to be convinced. And so like Jane said, this is a big problem highlighted in this report, this 3% of the studies being social sciences.
To me, I agree. This is like one of the big red flags for me in this report. I mean, we all know there’s not enough government support for carbon removal. That wasn’t news, but this was kind of like, whoa, that’s a problem. Because We were going to talk about Vera and the Guardian report in a second, you know, there’s a lot of issues there about carbon project and this isn’t new either carbon projects having issues with local communities forestry projects. There was an article recently about the project bison DAC plant, which I know a lot of people are excited about and their work in their community, you know, in the community they’re trying to go into in Wyoming, a lot of uncertainty there among the population, according to at least one reporter.
So I mean, come on, like, this is at this is all going to happen where people live. I mean, or mostly, you know, and people local people are going to be employed or affected negatively. And we it’s like, this is the barrier that we need to like be so laser focused on as a field, I think to make people feel like this is a benefit. Long story short. This is a problem. We need to get social scientists involved and excited about figuring out how we can remove carbon from the atmosphere and have it be a good thing because otherwise it’s not going to happen even if the technology is great.
Jane Zelikova: Well, this is something I’ve been wondering about. Maybe like we get to ask Radhika a question.
Unknown speaker: Yeah, let’s do it.
Jane Zelikova: Every once in a while. We know social science is important from sort of the knowledge generation and understanding and sort of helping us be systems thinkers in a really holistic way. But you’re trying to build and build a profitable company. And so how does the kind of science and knowledge that social sciences deliver impact what you’re doing when you’re building a company for profit, even if you have a broader climate mission?
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, that’s a question I ponder all the time. It’s something I also ask all my guests, right, that I think have meaningful insights, like how do you engage with the community? I think for a company like Nori, we have two different kind of roles we play. So we work directly with farmers, as you know, and there’s a whole social science aspect of that on how you engage, how you talk to them, how you make them feel part of something, of the process, and that’s really down to individual relationships, and I think that’s very intuitive because those are like accounts that we’re managing.
But there is this broader nut that we’re still trying to figure out on how you engage with farmers at a higher level, help them understand the benefits of what they’re doing, help them transition. And, you know, I think a lot, a big thesis has been like, it’s just about the money. And I’m less and less thinking that as I see the reaction of farmers. I think it’s so much bigger than that. It’s about identity. It’s about their soil health. It’s about so many other things. So like trying to figure that out as one piece of the social science.
And then the second piece that I think about a lot is when we start engaging more directly with CDR companies, the more technologically focused, engineering focused, And I think from a Nori perspective, we’re just gonna have to use the best social science to figure out which companies to engage and partner with. It’s something actually I’ve talked to Holly Jean Buck about, our friend, but how do you engage with companies that are doing the meaningful type of community outreach? How do you engage with companies that are truly trying to build products that are beneficial to the people where they are being built And it’s not just because it’s touchy-feely and it’s a good thing.
It’s also because I think it makes smart business because uncertainty makes things less good and brings more friction to business. And the more certainty we have that projects will happen, that communities will embrace it, that litigation won’t happen, the better those projects are. And so I’m looking forward to the development of some of the social sciences projects. To help us identify that, you know, I was struck by that Project Bison article because they use the word bison and that was like very inflammatory to the community. I would have never thought of that, but why the people building it didn’t like know that before they named something and why the people that they engaged with in the state of Wyoming didn’t realize that, I think raised some red flags.
So the other thing that I’m really Interested in is how we develop processes and procedures that actually meaningfully engage with the community. And this comes from my time and working in the government rather than performatively engage with the community. And, you know, whatever companies we partner with, I hope that we can have a conversation and be part of that development process.
Jane Zelikova: I feel like in this and in this business framing, which I’m not a business person, I It’s interesting because one frame that I think makes sense and where social science is really critical is sort of risk assessment and de-risking. And I don’t think people take that really seriously. And you can have the best technology or the best sort of approach in the world, but if you haven’t de-risked or addressed the risk associated with the human dimension, Um, or can’t even describe it’s sort of, if it’s contours adequately, then your project isn’t really going to succeed.
So from a business function perspective, I feel like this is the kind of risk assessment that people would want to one fund and to engage with.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I couldn’t agree with more Jane. Yeah.
Asa Kamer: Yeah. Susan says on our business shows, she has some phrase about uncertainty is the enemy of liquidity. Sorry, Susan, if I didn’t get that right. But like in layman’s terms for myself, I figured out that she means uncertainty means people aren’t going to invest in your situation, in your project. So we need certainty to feel like these projects not only work scientifically, but work on the ground. And that’s, what’s going to get companies, governments, and whoever else to invest in this stuff.
Jane Zelikova: Although like certainty that is like, I don’t know how to say credible, rigorous, because lots of startups come into the room with all kinds of certainty that is being communicated, but isn’t real. Right. So a lot of what I take issue with our startups that are like really bringing lots of technology and technology speak and venture back sort of speak into the space and claim a lot of certainty. But it’s not real from a climate benefits perspective. And we can talk about that when we talk about the Guardian article and why those things actually have to be real and why they’re not.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So when I think about certainty in this situation, separate from the science, I’m just thinking about the certainty of having communities who are embracing what is being built, because the type of uncertainty I’m thinking about is stopping buildings Litigation that prevents things from moving forward and your dollars basically not going to work for what they’re supposed to, but for, you know, defending and that can all be properly addressed if the social sciences around these projects is properly understood, I think, and then the uncertainty around the tech. It’s like a whole nother piece that has to be thought about in a completely, I think, different way.
I’m going to pivot us to forestry. I’ve talked enough. I’ve done my one question for the next few months. And I want to talk about the fact that one of the major findings from this latest report is that the most current CDR comes from forests with about two gigatonnes per year being removed via managed forests globally. So Jane, what did you think about just generically the locations and projects responsible for capturing that much carbon dioxide And there are, speaking of uncertainties, uncertainties that should be considered.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah, I don’t think my read of the report was deep enough to remember specific locations. Although I think they do point out that areas that continue to be understudied in this context tend to be in the Global South. And so I suspect that the data paucity for those areas It means that a lot of the data that they’re accounting for are places we know a lot more about, for example, parts of Asia, North America, and Europe. So in terms of geographic context of where these projects are taking place, I suspect that the major meaningful sort of carbon removal in forestry is happening in tropical forests.
And a lot of that is probably from delaying or avoiding deforestation or planting new forests where deforestation has occurred. But one of the things that really struck me about their finding, though most of the CDR is happening in that sort of afforestation and reforestation spaces, It’s interesting because there’s a huge discrepancy between the methods that they’re using and the numbers they come up with for how much CDR is actually happening relative to what national determined contribution documents sort of hint at in terms of how much can be removed per year on land and also other kind of what they’re calling bookkeeping models or models that are putting the direct removals in forests somewhere in between.
National determined contributions data or like basically emission inventories that countries are conducting are putting those removals much, much higher, like two to three times higher than what this particular report is able to estimate. It’s a really big difference. And I think it’s partly a couple of problems that they point out. One is that the indirect emission reductions or removals are accounted for by Nationally determined contributions in a way that may be problematic and may actually be double counting. And so if you remove those indirect effects and you just focus specifically on the carbon that is being removed by live biomass, then that number becomes a lot lower.
And then the other thing they point out, and they haven’t really been able to address in this study or in any others that I’ve seen, is sort of the difference in timing between when the carbon is being removed from the atmosphere Relative to sort of the storage timelines or what’s happening to that carbon ultimately. Either it’s like ending up in a storage situation or it is being put into a product that is eventually going to release it back into the atmosphere. Of that delay and release into the atmosphere matters a lot.
And it’s not really being accounted for in these models. So it’s interesting that the projects responsible for capturing that carbon, there’s such a discrepancy between our different estimation methods. I mean, the same land area, basically.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, forestry seems so straightforward, and then it always gets more complicated, as all natural sciences should and tend to, which makes me want to pivot to The Guardian, which I’m sure everybody who listens to this podcast saw their recent article where they covered some new research that found more than 90% of the carbon offsets on the platform of VERA didn’t lead to actual carbon removal. These are forestry offsets. Vera has disputed the findings and says it’s, you know, not a measurement issue, but a baseline issue. Anywho, the bottom line is that this is not the first time that forestry carbon offsets have been questioned.
We talk about this all the time. So Asa, I’m going to start with you again as a person who’s more like the man on the street. What have you seen as the reaction to this report and how are people within the CDR community You know, thinking about it.
Asa Kamer: I mean, it’s brutal. You know, this is bad news for carbon removal, for forest carbon, for carbon offsets, for the climate fight. Like, things would be, we’d be a lot better off if we could have a trustworthy way to get cheap carbon offsets for all the money that wants to go into carbon offsets that actually offset carbon, or at least, you know, pull down some amount of carbon. And, you know, like you said, Vera did Have their dispute, and I just transparently am not knowledgeable in this area enough to really compare the two arguments and say that one is more convincing to me.
But I do think, you know, it wasn’t just the Guardian reporters that found this. This was based on, I think, two different studies by forest scientists. And I think maybe there’s a baseline issue that could account for some difference. And I think, you know, Perfection should not be the enemy of the good, but 92% difference is a lot. And if I was Vera, I can only imagine they’re not happy that they had legit scientists come in and say that their process isn’t working. That’s not a good, that’s not good news.
Even if they say there’s a baseline issue, I don’t, I mean, can a baseline issue explain 92%? I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want to make anyone mad, but it seems this, to me, this seems like a bad result. And it just points out there’s so much room for improvement, even in the field, the segment of, you know, what we call carbon removal or our voluntary offset markets. That’s the most established that has 99% of, you know, the money, like, Jane was saying the NDCs, like this stuff is built in to our climate, you know, governance globally, like we really would like this to work, even though it’s not all of the carbon removal we’ll need.
So it’s tricky. I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I think there’s some people who are, you know, coming more to the defensive era. And I think that’s fair. And like Susan was saying in our episode last week, you know, it’s a nonprofit, there’s a lot of smart People with great intentions working on it. So I wouldn’t want to say anything other than that, but it points to the quote MRV challenge that we find with all this carbon removal. And it’s a little dispiriting that even the one that we want to believe in, and there’s so much money going towards.
I don’t know, but there was a report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which is one of the places I go to explain all this complicated economic stuff, because it’s hard to understand sometimes. And They, this article, which came out on January 23rd, so after the Guardian article, the headlines, carbon offset market could reach 1 trillion with right rules. And they’re basically saying that, you know, there’s a lot of doubts about carbon markets because of all the bad headlines. This is not the first one. And you can imagine being some sustainability coordinator, whoever’s in the, you know, office of some big corporation and they want to buy carbon offsets.
They want to at least do something in terms of climate, even though they probably should be reducing their emissions, but that’s another story. Yeah. Or that is the story. I don’t know.
Jane Zelikova: I was going to say, no, that is this story. That is not another story. We’re in the same freaking story.
Asa Kamer: Right, right, right. Exactly. So, you know, they want to do it, but they see these headlines too. And every one of these reports and headlines about forestry that comes out, you know, probably gives pause to people who want to dump money into this whole concept. You know, we have this capitalist system we live in. We’re not getting any mandated reductions from any corporations in much of the world that I know of. So this is how it’s happening right now. And, you know, basically they’re saying if the right rules exist and if the right You know, guardrails exist, like there’s a lot of money that can go into carbon markets.
And whether or not you think that’s the perfect answer that can definitely do a lot of good, I think, in the short term. And according to this report, we’re talking about most of the carbon removal we’re going to have up until 2050 is going to be natural, natural solutions, you know, sorry for the, you know, don’t want to go down that road either, but it’s going to be from forestry and soil. So we need to get this right. So I don’t know. Maybe it’s not really a groundbreaking observation, but there’s a lot of money that can go into this if it gets figured out how to do it right.
Jane Zelikova: Gosh, there’s a lot of money going into this, even though it’s being done wrong. Yeah.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s where I want to leave it with you. When you look at this, not only the report where you were talking about how difficult the accounting was within even a rigorous report, but also then this Guardian and How do you think about forest offsetting programs just from a purely scientific perspective? What could be improved? What should we be doing?
Jane Zelikova: So as Asa said, this is not the first time that inconsistencies, and that’s just a really nice way of saying it, in carbon offset projects in general and forestry projects specifically because they’ve been around longer and there’s a lot of sort of Transacted, crediting and transacted retirement that have occurred so we can look back. So a lot of these projects haven’t met the sort of the climate requirements and rigor that we would like for them to actually be able to offset what we know are real emissions, right? So the issue is that they’re offsetting, they’re being used to justify or offset emissions that are happening for reals.
And yes, none of these entities really in the voluntary market are being regulated and they’re voluntarily choosing To do this, but they’re not really voluntarily choosing, right? They’re being pressured by their stakeholders, their stockholders, their customers, et cetera, to do something about climate change. And this is what they’ve chosen to do. They have other choices. Buying offsets is a choice that is being made. That is all to say, carbon offsets have been a problem for a long time. There’s a large body of literature that kind of points to these projects not meeting their Stated Mission of Climate Mitigation.
This is kind of the latest headline. There were many headlines a couple of years ago about several Nature Conservancy projects that were also sort of like basically not meeting basic rules of additionality. In this case, these projects were not meeting rules of additionality or counterfactual. And in many cases, there continued to be deforestation and projects that were supposed to like be halting deforestation. So not surprised is what I would say. And I think In my mind, what needs to happen? So we have a couple of choices. We can try to sort of remedy this finance carbon markets approach, offsetting approach to try to, as Asa was saying, put better guardrails in place because we’re really committed to this being the solution.
So basically we just need to capitalist harder, more, more capitalism harder, whatever that is, more of that. Or we could think about regulating these emitting entities, and we know there isn’t an appetite for that, but in reality, you know, the carrot or the stick, I tend to think the stick works pretty well. And then the other option is to decouple sort of the things that we’re doing to protect forests, which we have to do, and lots of sort of other things that forests give us, biodiversity protection, water and air protection, Clean air, clean water, sort of like places that are meaningful for lots of reasons.
Decoupling that from the carbon services in quotes delivered, I think could be really helpful. Now people say we need to protect these places and carbon finance is the only way we have to do that. And I think that’s the sort of the cynical, unfortunate reality, but we could also make a different choice and decoupling Our need to protect forests from our need to address climate and carbon pollution. We could, we could choose to do that too, right? That is a policy choice and we are people, people get to make choices.
And if we did that, then companies could certainly have budgets in place to address their broader sort of sustainability and being a good steward in the world. License to Operate is another way to say it. And they could decouple that finance mechanism from their sort of what they’re doing to actually address carbon pollution. And yes, there are benefits to protecting forests that may have carbon outcomes. But in a system where we can’t actually even measure that very well, I think it’s really hard to tie them together. We get into a situation where we have more sort of guardian articles pointing out all the different ways that these carbon projects are falling short.
Yeah. And it’s, you know, I love that scientists are doing this work and are like going in and actually pushing these registries. And I’m going to put nonprofit in quotations because there are certainly profit mechanisms at play even for Vera that make them not be an impartial actor in this space. So even though they’re legally a nonprofit, they certainly are motivated by money first and foremost in this case.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I think, Jane, you put it very well when you talked about the benefits of the forests and carbon just being one amongst many and decoupling it. It may be where we need to go because the current system certainly seems to be like, you know, fool me once, fool me twice kind of thing. Like how many times do we see the same story? I want to end on some good news and I’m going to let Asa do it today because, you know, he’s our special guest. So, and he found the article.
So, our Twitter thread. Asa, please tell us the good news.
Asa Kamer: Sure, sure. I would love to. Okay. So, the good news for this week is new paper that has found that the... Future demand for clean electricity can be built with the current materials that we have access to, and doing so will not break our carbon budgets. And there’s a great tweet thread from Zeke Housefather on Twitter that we’ll link to in the show notes that basically finds that, yeah, there is, given different scenarios, There’s enough of the materials, minerals, et cetera, to build out all the clean electricity we need. And doing so will not actually, the actual building of it won’t actually cause so much carbon emissions that build out also blows up our carbon budget.
So obviously it’s a huge topic of discussion, but this paper is good news and we will link it in the show notes so everyone can take a look and see what you think. And yeah, hopefully we keep the energy transition going.
Radhika Moolgavkar: All right. Go team. So Jane, as always, thank you for being here this month. I appreciate it. Asa, thank you for jumping in at the last second today. Appreciate that.
Asa Kamer: Thanks for having me.
Radhika Moolgavkar: We look forward to next week when we will be talking about policy.
Jane Zelikova: Yeah. And Shannon Valley, Dr. Shannon Valley, you were missed. We can’t wait to talk to you again next month. Yeah.
Asa Kamer: And make sure to be here or else our audience is going to have to listen to me again.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Oh, you’re amazing, Issa. All right. Thanks, guys. Bye.
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